There is something unfortunate about an otherwise informed and creative mind like Mahmud Jega, editor of the Daily Trust, joining the rabble to sanctify rumours. Going by the quality of his writing, it is even a tragedy that Jega would fail to abide by the argument of Mahmud Tukur (Buhari’s Minister of Commerce and the Philosopher of Values and Leadership) that in moments of strategic stalemate such as we are in Nigeria now, the option is not to try to reach consensus by intimidation and blackmail but to look at things in context. In his well publicized letter to The Guardian over the paper’s criticism of the late Dr. Liman Ciroma’s address to the “State of the Nation” talk shop on the post June 12 crisis at Arewa House in early 1994, Dr. Tukur gave warnings that should interest all of us at times like this, particularly on the limitations and/or potentials of certain course of action. 

Instead of such deep thinking, there is an avalanche of quick answers, part of which is the strategy of finding a bogeyman for our failure by abstracting certain individuals and putting the blame on their head. But it is a cheap option that might postpone but will never solve the real problem.

According to Mahmud Jega in his Monday column of January 24th, 2011 in the Daily Trust, the Jigawa State governor should be in hiding if Nigeria’s democracy were working normally. For what reasons should Governor Sule Lamido be hiding? Jega’s answer is because there was “spontaneous outpouring of the Jigawa people’s anger at what they saw as the ‘betrayal’ by Lamido and the state’s delegates at the PDP national convention in Abuja ten days ago”.

But, was there any outpouring anywhere in Jigawa State in the last ten days, beyond the figment of the imagination of the Jegas in Trust? Absolutely none other than the Trust media establishment’s self assigned task of launching a media cum psychological warfare on Governor Lamido and other governors whose states voted for Goodluck Jonathan. Thus on Sunday, January 16^th, 2011, the Sunday Trust, the only paper to report so, said that there was a riot in Hadejia against Lamido’s vote for Jonathan. The embarrassment is Trust’s when no other newspaper carried the story because the uproar in question in Hadejia was never about Lamido or PDP but strictly an internal uproar in Buhari’s CPC. As the Emir of Hadejia said subsequently, no such riot could take place in Hadejia that he would not know of within ten minutes. Although Trust’s reporter in Dutse sent a fairly correct story about the uproar, his story was reworked to fit into the phantom anti-Lamido riots some people in Trust crave for in fulfillment of their self-wish.

Disappointed that there was no riot to exacerbate, the Weekly Trust of January 22, 2011 went to town with a cover story titled “Northern Govs in Trouble Over PDP Primaries” in which Gov Lamido is prominently on display along with five other predictable governors. Then the Mahmud Jega’s Monday Column. All these point in one direction: a media persecution agenda. It is a project the Abuja based People’s Daily has also bought into, understandably so because of its baggage of Atiku Abubakar elements in the ownership structure.

On Saturday, January 22^nd, 2011, the Weekend version of the paper ran a story titled “Lamido sacks Iman over anti-Jonathan outburst”. The story which it promoted on its cover was a total figment of its own imagination as nothing of the sort happened. Because of the angle the story was taken from which was to cause disaffection, the governor called a meeting of all emirs in the state, the Jigawa State Commissioner of Police, Director of State Security Service, very senior government officials and all the Government House reporters on Monday, January 24, 2011 where he announced his intention to seek justice in the Sharia Court the next day.

Although Lamido eventually buckled under the appeal of the emirs, it turned out that neither the Trust reporter nor the reporter of the People’s Daily ever heard, saw or got just about any evidence that the governor instructed the Emir of Dutse to sack any Imam. In the same way, the Trust reporter to whom was attributed the story about a riot in Hadejia was neither in Hadejia nor did he have any credible source beyond casual scraps he picked up. But as I mentioned above, he got the story fairly correct. It was his editors in Abuja who obviously wrote their own script into it. One whished that Jega were at the meeting. He would have learnt one or two lessons in Islamic code of narrativity. He would have been educated by the apology of the two journalists who knew the implication of being taken to the Sharia Court for a case in which they had no shred of evidence.  

When Jega himself took over from where his reporters stopped, he too paraded non issues. This is in the sense that even the crudest empiricist could have done better than Jega’s assembly of unrelated circumstances, the totality of which did not scratch any issue of principle. He ended up parading plausible lies such as attributing to Lamido a justification for the Kano State Government querry to the Emir of Kano sometimes back. Such is not beyond Lamido but if he ever said so then, he would have said today that he said so. But he never said so. We know who said so but death, the other great arbiter, has intervened and we wouldn’t want to insist on producing the evidence that would have put Jega to shame.

And so it happened that, probably for the first time, Mahmud Jega wrote a very disjointed column, full of simplistic inferences such as Lamido raising hell over EFCC harassment, boycotting PDP meetings until EFCC backed off. Jega’s is a new speculation. Earlier on, it was that Lamido fell in line out of fear of EFCC. Now, it is getting EFCC to back off. Na wa for this Lamido oh! In all cases, the mischief intent is obvious. But why would Jega ever get himself into the nonsense that a Lamido would be bothered by EFCC as a sitting governor with full immunity when the same EFCC fire is not working in the case of many former governors with full blown court cases? Do people circulate this kind of stories just because it gives them temporary, empty psychological satisfaction? We wish them well even as we marvel at how the Jegas could fail to see the unislamic combination of Nuhu Ribadu, Bafarawa, Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Saminu Turaki and many other former detainees/guests of the former anti-corruption Czar in the Action Congress of Nigeria, (ACN). Nigeria, we hail thee, indeed.

The bottom line is Jega’s frustration that Jigawa delegates, under Lamido, did not vote for Atiku, the only other main challenger in the PDP Primaries. In exercising his right to feel frustrated, the editor paraded falsehood.

For instance, the quotation he attributed to Lamido in his Monday column “I have prayed extensively before I decided to contest for the Second term. Therefore, I am not afraid of any politician that may confront me in the race” does not exist. What exists is “God knows what we did yesterday, what we are doing today and what will do tomorrow. So, we fear no one”. We would return to this point when we transcribe and publish the transcript of the governor’s statement at that occasion shortly.

Be that as it may, there is a reason to take Jega’s assertion seriously because any democracy under which someone with Lamido’s political clarity and uncommon performance in office must hide from whomsoever must be worse than that of Mussolini and his Nazi brothers combined. May God save Nigeria from anybody with such level of prejudice that s/he cannot give the devil his or her due! It is important to point out a number of things for the Jegas of this world to ponder upon in writing about the current impasse in Nigeria.

One, what explains the collective or national opportunism which greeted the current repudiation of zoning even as obvious to everyone that zoning is strategic, foundational principle for national cohesion at this level of Nigeria’s development? Why wasn’t the national opportunism or soullessness worrisome to all parts of Nigeria? This should worry all of us. The Jigawa State governor was the first to draw attention of the country to this point via an advertorial on the May 6^th, 2010, edition of The Nation and the Daily Trust from where Jega is comfortably mangling history. 

Secondly, once the entire country bought into this collective opportunism, what were the options open to the North whose turn was being abridged as it were? One option was the Consensus Candidate strategy but what happened to it? It fell victim of the incoherence of northern elitism, producing an aspirant whose political baggage stood him in absolutely no position to defeat even the lousiest incumbent, no matter what. Imagine what would have happened were it IBB, for instance, who emerged as the consensus candidate. There is no way the outcome of the PDP Presidential primary would have been what it is. In fact, Jonathan would have been overwhelmed. It would not have been on account of IBB’s lack of blemish but on account that he is simply not in the same category with Atiku Abubakar when paired with a Goodluck Jonathan. Instead of facing such facts, writers like Jega are trying to blame others for the failure of the men they grew up to adore.

Thirdly, there is a terrible disinclination to be fair to Sule Lamido in all these. He has said consistently that he would go along with whomever the party picked. He made this very clear even in the Sunday Trust interview (September 12, 2010) which people like Jega and Professor Tam David West are quoting in clever ways to serve their own purpose. There is no moral or political problem, therefore, that he did exactly what he said he would do at the PDP Presidential primary. Those who have problems are those who wanted him to have done exactly what he never said he would do. 

While on this, it should be pointed out that Lamido had consistently cautioned against any resort to a regionalization of anti-zoning struggle. This is what he told every of IBB, Atiku Abubakar, General Aliyu Gusau and Dr Bukola Saraki and on this he stood to the last. If Lamido were the type who pretends, tell lies and sneak around, running with the hay and hunting with the hound, I am sure our critics would be happier with him. Fortunately or unfortunately, Lamido is not that type. But Lamido’s frankness better protects the interests of the North, however we define those interests. And it is because of this that Lamido is bragging, to answer Jega whose piece was titled, “Why is this man bragging?”

Whatever the case, this is when we must all go, look for Dr. Mahmud Tukur’s paper and read it thoroughly again. It is a very apt and important paper for all the hot headed analysts choking under the weight of their one-dimensional view of the contradictions of contemporary Nigerian politics.    

Kyari is Special Asst to Gov Lamido

Related:Sule Lamido's Ultimate Defiance-By Umar Kyari