There is an
interesting power struggle within the ruling PDP in Adamawa State. Two antagonist
groups are involved- the Bamanga Tukur and Governor Murtala Nyako. Though the
Atiku Abubakar group is also involved, the other two groups appear to be in the
fore-front. The crisis in Adamawa PDP is simply about local politics. It has
been there since the time former President Olusegun Obasanjo mandated Professor
Jibril Aminu to seize the party structures from Atiku Abubakar and former Governor
Boni Haruna. So, the genesis of the current crisis is embedded in the
foundations on which the current PDP in Adamawa State was laid- the lack of fairness
within the party and conflicting personal ambitions of its leaders.
What is currently fuelling
the crisis is Governor Nyako’s clever usurping of most political positions and
government contracts for his friends and family members. The Governor is said
to be openly working hard to place his son, Abdul-Aziz in an advantaged
position to succeed him as Governor. Abdul-Aziz recently undertook a tour of
the state with the full protocol of a Governor. Opponents of Nyako said his son
went to the extent of making promises of what the government would and would not
do. Nyako is also accused of making an attempt to appoint one of his wives as
the Chief Judge of state, while his other wife is rumored to be the highest
paid medical consultant in the state.
On the other hand, Bamanga
Tukur is also said to be highly interested in positioning one of his sons or a
close confidant- Senator Silas Zwingina as Governor, come 2015. However, Bamanga’s
goal will be impossible without a firm control of the state’s party executive. The
opportunity to seize the party structure came when the state chapter of the PDP
conducted primary elections for councillorship positions for the local council’s
elections without approval from the PDP National headquarters. The National Headquarters,
apparently with instructions from Bamanga, subsequently voided the elections
and stopped the primaries for chairmanship positions. Nyako, desperate to keep
the party structures under his armpit, went on with the chairmanship primaries-in his sitting room.
From the way events
are unfolding, Bamanga Tukur seems determined to use the same political maneuver
that brought Nyako to power to flush him out of power. But in the end; some political scenario is
likely; Nyako still has control of the government, but if he eventually loses control
of the party then the PDP would be sharply divided. The opposition led by
former Governor Boni Haruna stands to gain from this. Consequently, come 2015,
the opposition may easily displace the PDP. Even when the PDP presented a
united front during the February 2012 governorship elections, the party could
only narrowly defeat the ACN with just 60,000 vote margin, which the latter
claimed was due to over-voting. And the
current situation could even be worse for the PDP if the merger talks between
the ACN and the CPC materialize- and if the opposition in Adamawa state is able
to formulate a winning arrangement. For instance, presenting Buba Marwa or Nuhu
Ribadu as governorship candidate with a deputy from the Chamber chiefdom and
also presenting Boni Haruna as senatorial candidate for the northern senatorial
zone, Marcus Gundiri for the central zone with P.P. Pwa for the southern zone
will be a hard nut for the PDP to crack. Though there is hint within political
pundits that intellectuals from Adamawa state are working hard to present
Hassan Tukur the Personal Private Secretary to President Goodluck Jonathan as
PDP governorship candidate, Hassan Tukur can easily win, but his likely platform,
the PDP, is in serious in-house power struggle. As earlier noted, the Atiku
Abubakar group is another group that can also alter the political equation
within the PDP. Whichever way the
pendulum swings, this group would try to take advantage of the situation to
establish a strong home support for Atiku’s presidential ambition as well for the
group’s governorship hopeful- Adamu Mua’azu Modibbo.
The climax of the
current fight would be when a new state executive for the PDP is to be formed –
there would be serious horse-trading as each of the political bigwigs would
attempt to grab the most important positions.
As observed above,
the current fight between Nyako and Bamanga Tukur is all about control of local
politics by four political bigwigs - Bamanga Tukur, Governor Nyako, Atiku
Abubakar and Jibril Aminu. Interestingly
each one of them was one time or the other a beneficiary or a victim of the
PDP’s style of using ‘Abuja power’ to
have one’s way. The fight would also
have a serious effect on the PDP and would produce some casualties. For
instance, If Governor Nyako insists on installing his son as his successor, but
without having control of the PDP, there is likelihood he may leave the party
to join another. But the biggest casualties would be the
present MPs representing Adamawa State in the National Assembly, because most
of them found their ways through their godfathers. Probably that is the reason they
appear to be ‘seat warmers’ at both the green and red chambers. Already, the Senator
representing Adamawa central has pitched his tent with the Bamanga Tukur camp, but
the Nyako camp said it is not bothered, describing the Senator as a gold-digger.
The Senator was once deputy to the former Governor Boni Haruna when Atiku was
in control, then he jumped to Jibril Aminu’s camp, later to Nyako’s and now to
Bamanga’s. One major implication of this in-house scuffle on the entire PDP
structure is that in future, most PDP governors would strongly avoid having the
national chairman from their state. Especially when they recall that what
Adamawa is experiencing now once occurred between Governor Sullivan Chime of Enugu State and the
then PDP National Chairman, Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo.
Zayyad I. Muhammad
writes from Jimeta, Adamawa State, zaymohd@yahoo.com, 08036070980
