Vacate that seat, let me sit

VIEW FROM THE GALLERY BY MAHMUD JEGA

Seven different stories in the newspapers last week reminded me of a local story that made the rounds some years ago. It was about two village princes in, I think, Katsina State, who contested for the stool of Village Head. Prince A won the contest and became the Village Head. He soon heard that Prince B, who lost the contest, was heaping insults on him wherever he went, so he sent for Prince B and asked him, “I hear that you abuse me wherever you go.” To his amazement Prince B replied, “Yes, it is true.” “Why do you heap insults on me?” Prince B said, “Stand up from that chair, let me sit on it, then you can go everywhere you like and insult me.”

Governor Mai Mala Buni of Yobe has begun his assignment to resolve conflicts in, according to one report, APC chapters in eleven states. Only eleven? I thought 37 is more like it. I cannot imagine any of the 36 state APC chapters, and the FCT chapter, without conflicts for party and government positions. Back in 1998, I remember asking the then Kaduna State PDP governorship aspirant, Alhaji Ahmed Makarfi, why there was a crisis in the newly formed party because he rejected a proposed harmonization agreement. He said briefly, “What we are doing here is politics, not religion.”

In every state in Nigeria, there is only one governor’s seat and dozens of people want to sit on it. If the person sitting on it is eligible to seek a second term, the number of aspirants is reduced because not many people have the nerve to challenge an incumbent who has the state treasury and appointments at his beck and call. Where the incumbent is completing his second term, the number of aspirants balloons. A party may try to prune their number by using zoning, promises or some agreement to rotate between party factions, but the outgoing governor almost always has his preferred choice of successor. How will Oga Buni go round telling which people to abandon their aspiration, for which reason, and in return for the promise of which office or largesse? Remember, as Makarfi said, it is politics, not religion, so there is no verse to quote from a holy book, only advancing various self-serving arguments, histories and alleged agreements. Probably Oga Buni’s biggest problem in this reconciliation matter is the large number of governors, legislators and other heavyweight politicians who flocked into APC in the past year. Harmonizing the aspirations of these “settlers” with those of party “natives” is like the old Ife-Modakeke dispute.

There was this story last week that a group called Oyo Heritage Forum petitioned the Oyo State House of Assembly asking for an investigation into the process that produced Oba Abimbola Akeem Owoade I as Alaafin of Oyo. They said traditional and legal procedure was violated because Oyo’s traditional kingmakers, the Oyo-Mesi, under the Alaafin Chieftaincy Declaration of 1961, had elected Prince Lukman Gbadegesin for the throne, only for the state government to appoint Owoade. In other words, Oba Owoade should stand up and vacate the exalted seat for Prince Gbadegesin to sit on, and he can then go to court and the press and say whatever he wants.

He is not about to do that because, according to another story at the weekend, Alaafin Owoade is fighting another battle, this time for supremacy between himself and the Olubadan, Oba Rashidi Ladoja. It is an old contest; in 1991, when then President Ibrahim Babangida was about to create nine new states, an elder statesman in Kaduna told me that IBB told him he wanted to split the old Oyo State in order to end the embarrassing tussle between the Alaafin, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi and the Oni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade Olubuse [both now deceased] over chairmanship of the Oyo State Council of Obas. But 35 years since the Oni moved to Osun State, the problem is still there, this time between the Alaafin, Olubadan and Soun of Ogbomosho, the three rotational chairmen of the Council. Each one wants the others to vacate the seat so he can sit on it.

Across the border in Ogun State, another major struggle is unfolding, this time for the throne of the Awujale of Ijebuland, made vacant by the departure last year of Oba Sikiru Adetona. Among the contestants is Fuji musician Wasiu Ayinde, alias Kwam I, who wants to throw away the drums and sit on the Oba’s throne. Ogun State government is in a real dilemma over this matter and accusations are already flying around. To be shortly followed by protracted court cases.

Not to forget the crisis in Rivers State, where state MPs loyal to FCT Minister Nyesom Wike made a move to eject both Governor Simi Fubara and his deputy from their chairs so that the pro-Wike Assembly Speaker can sit on it for a while. Fubara can then go and heap insults at Wike wherever he goes, but he instead found a way to stall the impeachment process through the courts. A High Court judge issued an order restraining his boss, the Chief Judge, from constituting a panel to probe the allegations, and Chief Judge Simeon Amadi [happily] complied.

There was this story also last week that first term Governor Ahmed Usman Ododo of Kogi State has been told [I don’t know by whom] to not seek a second term in 2027 so that MP James Abiodun Faleke, a diehard Tinubu loyalist, will sit on the governor’s chair at Lugard House. Oga Mala Buni should go there in a hurry, because Kogi politics has a heavy ethnic bent, and with the majority Igalas already antagonised, ejecting Ododo will antagonise the Igbirra, the second largest bloc, and that is bye bye to APC rule of the state.

However, by far the biggest story of stand up from your chair so that I can sit on it concerned Vice President Kashim Shettima, the most visible face of the Tinubu Presidency on many domestic social, economic, political and also international circuits. The story alleged that the [erratic] US Presidency of Donald Trump is demanding that Tinubu picks one of three Northern Christian persons, namely Bishop of Sokoto Mathew Hassan Kukah, former House of Representatives Speaker Yakubu Dogara or current Defence Minister General Chris Musa as his running mate, assuming APC renominates him for the 2027 election.

If Trump indeed gave that advice, then his aim is probably to push President Tinubu off the political cliff. I doubt if Bishop Kukah is available because I remember John Cardinal Onaiyekan saying, with respect to the political activism of Father Mbaka of Enugu, that the Roman Catholic Church does not permit its priests to go into politics. I however wondered if Father Moses Adasu and Father Hyacinth Alia both sought the Church’s permission before they became governors of Benue State. Former Speaker Dogara, who in 2023 quit APC because of the Muslim-Muslim ticket, badly wants to sit on the VP’s chair but doesn’t seem to have big political assets to bring to the table. While General Musa is widely popular in the North, he is popular as a soldier, not as a politician.

Right now, the Tinubu Presidency is quite unpopular in the North due to a combination of policy, project and appointment reasons. Keeping Shettima’s picture out of the lineup of party leaders at several party events, as well as the Tinubu Presidency’s stout refusal to speak up on the matter, is seen in the North as a typical Lagosian wayo, to woo several political blocs all at once by indicating to them that the vice presidency is still up for grabs. I suspect that the opposition ADC party is praying hard for APC to make this very big blunder.

It is a dicey situation. Many Northern Christians are still fretting about Tinubu’s Muslim-Muslim experiment of 2023 and are invoking [fake] American pressure to “correct” it. On the other hand, from all the talk on social media and in private chats, most Northern Muslims already feel that they were scammed by the Muslim-Muslim ticket thing, which is now the butt of jokes in many quarters. Yet, I suspect that any attempt to “correct” it by replacing Kashim Shettima will reverse that feeling overnight and will drive almost the entire North East and North West, plus a substantial portion of the North Central, into ADC’s waiting arms.

Those political princes who want Kashim Shettima to stand up from the vice president’s chair so that they can sit on it, would later come to realise that there will be no chair to sit on and the heaps of insults uttered by defeated princes will still trail them everywhere. It is the kind of thing lawyers call double jeopardy.