By Chika Onuora
It is no more news that after President Goodluck Jonathan left Kano upon conclusion of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) rally on the 15th of April 2014, the Governor of the state, Rabiu Kwankwaso, led his state officials to sweep off the president’s footprints in what was interpreted to mean that the president and his party, were not wanted in the North’s most populous state.
The image that was created in my mind, as I watched Kwankwaso and his team sweep, was that of the proverbial Yoruba allegory of “agbale oja” (market sweepers), a derisory activity. They did not amuse; rather, they were pathetically miserable. Unintended, perhaps, they communicated the wrong message: they meant to lampoon the president and the PDP, but it turned out that they were only parodying their own reality. Thus, the joke was on them, not on Jonathan and his party men.
Let me attempt a joke here: sweeping the market place is what Kwankwaso and his officials should have been doing for a living, not getting close to elective and appointive positions, which they have abused for self-serving and manipulative politics. He may not have known it, Kwankwanso’s resort to itinerant politics, for which he will find validation difficult, may have just begun. And this is sad.
A historical interrogation of Kwankwaso’s pedigree may have betrayed a real life nexus with the metaphor of the market place whether in Ogbomosho or Kano, depending on which truly is the case. So, it was easy to gravitate towards the broom because, beyond being the shambolic symbol of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the broom is emblematic of the slave mentality that is afflicting the party.
The impression they try to create that they are out to sweep out the old order as typified by the PDP and bring about change is patently false. Rather, what they intend to do is to turn the people of Nigeria, especially the masses, into market sweepers (agbale oja) while they simply help themselves to the people’s commonwealth. In some APC states, youths are employed to sweep the streets and this is celebrated as provision of jobs! Forget about the facade of the award of scholarship to some students in Kano. What is the ratio of the beneficiaries to the students’ population in the state? The gimmickry is to rationalise the perceived mismanagement of billions of funds collected from the Federation Account.
But the sweeping spree in Kano was a peep into the grand betrayal that is in the offing courtesy of the APC government if Nigeria experiences the tragedy of the party stepping in the saddle at the centre. Now, the jeers by Kwankwaso and his team after the PDP rally in Kano were colossally ineffective. If there was anything they achieved at all, it was the fact that they exercised their waists and assumed the responsibility of the men and women who would have been deployed to clean the venue of the PDP rally.
The truth is that Nigerians are very perceptive. They see through deceptions, most of the times: it is still clear to Nigerians that what Kwankwaso intended to achieve by the sweeping of the venue of the PDP rally was completely rubbished by the declassification of the governor’s fraudulent antics by President Jonathan who accused Kwakwanso of improper use of the state’s local government funds since assuming office. Speaking at the rally, Jonathan said the Kano government, under Kwakwanso, had received over N255 billion as local government funds since 2011. He asked the 44 council chairmen in Kano to challenge the governor on what he has done with the funds.
The president also accused Kwakwanso of refusing to release money provided for Kano delegates’ movement to the venue of, and provision of refreshment during the PDP presidential primaries; he was also said to have failed to remit the little money provided to the party in the state for logistics purposes during the 2011 presidential election.
The governor, rather than respond to these accusations, took to the diversionary strategy of sweeping the venue of the PDP rally. Another point made by Jonathan, which illuminated the politics of betrayal that Kwankwaso has played since 2010/2011 was the fact that he did not even vote for the president at the primary and in the presidential election. Jonathan, responding to Kwankwaso’s claim in the media that he regretted voting for Jonathan in 2011, said that contrary to Kwakwanso’s claim, he (the governor) did not vote for him in the party’s 2011 presidential primary and in the presidential election.
Kwankwaso did not also counter the president’s declaration on this, which means there is truth in the president’s position and this is further reinforced by the aphorism that “silence means consent.” The governor decided to throw the “sweeping antics” into the entire mix, ostensibly to diminish the impact of his declassification by Jonathan. Well, one would wonder if he, indeed, achieved anything by sweeping off the footprints of the President and his party members. The political symbolism did not fit in the picture of a fraudulent state governor painted by Jonathan.
Well, for Kwankwaso, his decision to challenge the president to a fight in the manner he is going about it, is not politically correct. He could have fought his war quietly without appearing and acting indecorous. For instance, how could he have declared that the president of Nigeria was not welcomed in Kano? Is Kano no longer a part of the Federal Republic of Nigeria? Or has Jonathan ceased to be Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria?
Granted that Nigeria is a democratic nation and people are at liberty to exercise freedom of association, which is a fundamental right; but the manner Kwankwaso has exercised that right rankles. How could he, for instance, have moved from the PDP to the APC with the mandate given to the PDP at the 2011 governorship election?
Kwankwaso is not the only one in this game of perfidy. The PDP governors that defected to the APC included Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers State, Ahmed Abdulfatah of Kwara State, Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State and Aliyu Wamakko of Sokoto State. Of all these men, it is only the Kwara governor that has not abused or shown disrespect for the office and person of President Jonathan. Regardless, like Kwankwaso, they have all become sweepers of markets. How does one explain this development? This is what befalls people like them when they exercise crass indiscretion by leaving the shade provided by the psychedelic and enduring PDP umbrella to quick-fix that the APC typifies.
Chika Onuora sent this piece from Asokoro, Abuja.