By Malam Saadu Umar
Medice, cura te ipsum (physician, heal thyself)
Can Governor Bala Muhammed do, in the August 17 Bauchi State’s Local Government Elections, what he’s imploring President Tinubu and INEC to do in Edo and Ondo? Hell no. Qaura doesn’t live by the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. He’s duplicitous. Therefore, the chair of PDP Governor’s Forum and the Governor of Bauchi State’s Enugu duplicitous admonishment of Wednesday, 17 July 2024, to the President and INEC regarding the off-season elections in Edo and Ondo must be contemptuously treated as such.
Qaura should concentrate on confronting his own demons instead of engaging in sciamachy. It’s not surprising though. For whenever there’s an election, which he is not in charge of, Qaura appears to panic – induced by his guilty conscience, re-enforcing the saying: “A thief believes everybody steals”.
Make no mistake, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will not interfere, neither in Edo nor in Ondo off-season Governorship Elections. President Tinubu did not interfere in the Bayelsa Governorship Election held on 11th November 2023 where Governor Douye Diri of the PDP won his reelection. And INEC of today and since Attahiru Jega, is quite different from the INEC of Iwu during the dark days of the PDP. This INEC, under the APC, conducted many off-season elections where opposition parties won. Anambra, Bayelsa and Osun are examples.
President Tinubu and this INEC are unlike Bala Mohammed who in October 2020, conducted the worst Local Government election ever conducted in the history of Bauchi State. The good people of Bauchi called it Phantom Election. I personally experienced Bala’s rape of election. I was the chairmanship candidate of the APC in Toro Local Government Area.
Bala wrote the elections results in his house, days to the phantom election. And announced the results before ballot boxes reached the polling booths.
Now that Qaura is compelled by the Supreme Court to conduct another Local Government elections in Bauchi – over a year after he falsely promised to conduct the election in six (6) months; we urge him to practice that which he preached to the President and INEC in Enugu.
Qaura and the Bauchi State Independent Electoral Commission must, to borrow his words, “ensure that campaigns are issues-based, violencefree and in strict compliance with the provisions of the electoral law” and “provide a level playing field that guarantees transparent, fair and unimpeachable elections as any act of bias will be totally resisted.”
We equally urge Qaura to, again, in his words, “show leadership as a ‘true’ democrat by refraining from making any statement suggestive of political interference in the entire process.”
Well, we ain’t naïve. Qaura will never do any of that. He’s set to break his 2020 record come August 17. We know the dead could hear, the call of the good people of Bauchi for credible local elections, more than our governor! BSIEC is as unprepared as ever. It has so far convinced everyone that it’s not ready and are incapable of conducting a semblance of a credible election.
Regardless, and again, we earnestly entreat the President and INEC to dismiss governor Bala’s phoney-baloney communiqué. It deserves no dignity of a response. Qaura has no right to talk about credible election.
He doesn’t believe in it.
Moreover, we are most grateful to the President for the just judgement of the Supreme Court granting full autonomy to the local government areas which were hitherto emasculated by Qaura and his ilk.
Further, we appeal to the President to ensure that local government elections are removed from the hands of elections riggers like Qaura and put it under the INEC. This will make more meaningful the good judgement the President fairly obtained from the Supreme Court against Qaura and co. for the benefit of Nigerians, especially the grassroots. Local government elections will never be free, fair or credible under Bala and his breed.
Finally, we won’t end this without thanking our leader, elder statesman and the Senior Special Adviser to the President, Malam Ya’u Darazo for his immense beneficence towards the Bauchi APC and for his patriotic service to the nation. We’re also no less grateful for the contributions of our outstanding leaders: Professor Ali Pateh, Ambassador Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, Distinguished Senator Shehu Buba Umar, honourable members of the House of Representatives, House of Assembly members, Critical Stakeholders, elders and last but not the least, all members of the APC.
Thank you all.
May Allah bless the APC, Bauchi State, President Tinubu and the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Malam Saadu Umar. Chairman
