Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall, is a saying that perfectly describes the fate of outgoing Zamfara State Governor Abdulaziz Yari, after the Supreme Court nullified the elections of all the candidates of the All Progressives Congress in the state for the recent 2019 general elections.
The apex court upheld the decision of the Sokoto Division of the Court of Appeal to the effect that the APC did not conduct any valid primary election and as such had no candidate for any of the elections in the state.
This is a smack in the face of Yari: His well-laid plans of retiring to Abuja to live large on the country’s resources as a Senator, while imposing his stooge on a citizenry he helped impoverish, have crumbled like a sand castle.
Yari had controversially handpicked his former commissioner for finance, Mukhtar Idris, to succeed him as governor against his party’s wishes.
But the national headquarters of the APC had issued a statement, three days to the deadline for primaries, dissolving the Zamfara State executive and banning Yari from participating in the conduct of primaries because of his interference.
However, Yari hurled insults and threatened his party’s chairman, Adams Oshiomhole. He was prepared to destroy the APC in Zamfara to have his way. For Yari, it was his way or the highway.
This led to weeks of political turmoil, with INEC eventually banning the party from submitting the names of candidates because it failed to meet the deadline given by the commission.
Curiously however, the Court of Appeal in Abuja, two days before federal elections on February 23, cleared Yari (and others) as senatorial candidates, and Idris as a gubernatorial candidate for the elections.
Recall that the said elections were supposed to hold on February 16 but were suspiciously postponed after Yari openly boasted that elections will not hold until he and his minions were on the ballot.
Miraculously, Yari’s APC won the gubernatorial election after he himself had secured a seat to the senate, despite not campaigning prior to elections.
Although the candidates of Yari’s faction had their election nullified by an appeal court, they went about strutting the political scene acting untouchable.
Idris attended the recently concluded induction for new and returning governors-elect despite not being issued a certificate of return by INEC.
And Yari was parading himself as senator-elect with all the swagger in the world, hauling his bloated ego around Abuja, where he permanently resided during eight years of being governor, abdicating his duties as chief security officer of the state that – under his watch – has been overrun by bandits.
Unfortunately for Yari, his own electoral heist has come to nought, with the Supreme Court judgment putting a spanner in the works.
