Shehu Sani’s political scar may take longer to heal

Despite many months of struggles and manoeuvres triggered by a determination to embrace sound political principles, the All Progressives Congress (APC) was by last week still unable to degrade the suffocating hold Governor Nasir el-Rufai exercises on Kaduna State politics.

Shehu Sani, the senator representing Kaduna Central, exemplifies that bitter conflict between a powerful but helpless party and a cocksure and imposing and scheming governor. Conflict was inevitable. S

en Sani fairly approximates the modern political archetype of lawmakers who can call their souls their own, while still representing their constituencies robustly, walking many tightropes, and balancing all sorts of interests. Mallam el-Rufai on the other hand represents the monarchical proclivities of Nigerian politicians, for whom power and order must flow from the top down, brutally and relentlessly. All the three Kaduna State senators have had one axe or the other to grind with the unrelenting governor. In May, the governor even described them as useless for objecting to a $350m World Bank loan request by the state. “Today,” he began dismissively, “there are no haters of the masses of Kaduna State like Shehu Sani, Suleiman Hunkuyi (APC–Kaduna North) and Danjuma Laah (PDP–Kaduna South), God will curse them. God will reward their wickedness against the masses, may God never bless them.” Well, no one ever accused Mallam el-Rufai of elegance or moderation.

The battle for the soul of Kaduna State has been smouldering for more than a year. But the crisis came to a head in July when one of the three state senators, Suleiman Hunkuyi, defected to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). One of his houses, which had served as a temporary headquarters of his faction of the APC, was demolished at short notice in February on flimsy grounds. Since both the law and the party could not mediate the conflict between the governor and the APC senators in the state, it was not surprising that Sen Hunkuyi defected. But the governor had even heaped far bigger insults on Sen Sani, hoping and expecting that he would jump ship during the gale of defections that convulsed the APC countrywide between late July and early August. The Kaduna Central senator was, however, prevailed upon by party leaders to stay put in the party, with a promise, albeit unwritten, that he would be returned as APC’s senatorial candidate for his constituency.

In the opening weeks of the primaries season, when the parties elected their standard-bearers through direct and indirect primaries, it seemed all but certain that the APC would honour its pledge to Sen Sani. Indeed, the party engaged in such inspiring subterfuges that the senator was for a few crazy and satisfying days even returned unopposed, perhaps to make doubly certain that no one undermined the ticket, either within or without. The senator did not rest on his oars, for his main detractor, the impertinent and impulsive governor himself, was up in arms against the senator against whom he whipped up such a frenzy in the state that no one thought a politician, let alone a governor, could so brazenly transcend the bounds of reason and decency. But vigilance or no vigilance, Senator Sani did not prove a match. No one is sure how Mallam el-Rufai pulled off the joker, but when the APC submitted its candidates’ list to the electoral umpire, INEC, Sen Sani’s name, the man earlier returned unopposed, was conspicuously missing.

But on Wednesday, the APC gave a hint of what transpired in Kaduna that led to Sen Sani’s exclusion. In explaining the abracadabra that took place over the Kaduna list, the befuddled party waffled the following excuse to unravel the conundrum: “It was the outcome of the primary, properly conducted. The party tried to protect its members in the National Assembly for obvious reasons, following what has been going on at the National Assembly. We know the carrots that had been dangled before them. We have a responsibility to ensure that we have a grip on the legislative arm of government so that we can run a smooth government. So, we tried to protect our legislators. But the other people can only understand and accept that. If they say no, there is nothing the party can do, it is within their right to say we must go to the field. The initial effort of the party did not get the blessing of other people in that area who are also entitled to bid for positions. The primaries were eventually conducted, Senator Shehu Sani opted out. He relied on the earlier decision. At the end of the day, no matter what plan you have, even though you are acting on expedience, rule of law and democracy will prevail. It was democracy that prevailed in Kaduna.”

No party worth its name should ever grovel in that fashion. The APC not only reneged on its promise to the senator, it virtually acknowledged that it fought bravely but hopelessly to establish sanity and order in Kaduna State. It explained why it tried to coax the party’s Kaduna chapter into thinking futuristically, but agreed that it had to resign to fate, having failed miserably, and having capitulated indecently. Mallam el-Rufai, who appears set to become a liability to the party in that embattled state, has been left with a carte blanche to write his will and misshapen goals. Like other governors, he sees himself as an imperial leader who must neither be questioned nor the governor perceives Kaduna as a bride adorned for him. Governor el-Rufai is grandiloquent. By his strange logic, he sees himself as a great asset for his party, particularly for the next elections, but perhaps next only to the president. He is not perturbed that many people in the state doubt his assertions and conclusions. All he sees are his own strengths, attributes, actions and capabilities. But incapable of any kind of introspection, he stubbornly refuses to see the other side of even his own coin.

It will be strange indeed if the defecting senators and all other people who bristle at the governor’s impetuousness and arrogance have no electoral value. The national APC fears that these estranged members vexed by the governor’s style or pushed out of the party possess enough electoral strength to cause incalculable damage. This was why the party tried to mollify the governor’s rage and forge an agreement between the warring politicians. But since the governor does not take prisoners, and since he prefers a political environment where his words and laws are unquestioned, it was impossible to find common grounds between him and his opponents. They have fought, and he has triumphed, thus bequeathing a divided and probably weakened party to the next plebiscite. The next elections will, therefore, tell whether his victory is as substantial as he paints it or as pyrrhic as many fear it truly is. There does not seem now any chance that peace can be curated between the warriors. One way or the other, in the coming polls, Kaduna will say what it thinks. But it is doubtful whether what it has to say will be pleasant, regardless of the medium and language by which its decisions are couched.

It speaks volumes of the principles, strengths and ideology of the ruling APC that some of its governors have become so powerful that the party is unable to operate in tandem with its own rules and regulations, not to say curb the predilections of its boisterous governors whose short-termism is as offensive as it is bewildering. That Governor el-Rufai was able to twist the arm of the party to get what he wanted, even if it should endanger the future and health of the party, is a sign that both President Muhammadu Buhari and party chairman Adams Oshiomhole have still been unable to build a party of their dream. Well, it is not quite known what kind of party the president has in mind, nor has he taken any deliberate step in bringing it about; but Mr Oshiomhole is widely believed to be a dreamer able to conceive a party in the grandest fashion Africa can deliver. The APC national chairman may not be as exposed as his oratory has sometimes given indication of, and certainly not as wise as his conciliatory but rather fluid politics suggest, there is, however, no doubt that he means well for the party, and has since he assumed office been fired with the zeal to cobble together a party second to none.

Mr Oshiomhole has tried valiantly to forge a disciplined and pragmatic party anchored on rules, sometimes on expediency, but nevertheless on lofty ambitions. Unable however to match those great goals with a highly efficient set of undergirding principles, the party chairman has encountered frustrations and disappointments. Worse, he is being resisted by many governors and disaffected members, all of whom are fomenting rebellion with gusto and plotting to bring the whole edifice down. The rebels, some of them leading governors and top party members, are encouraged to dare the party because some others like Mallam el-Rufai fought their own battles against the party and, strangely, won. Ogun, Imo, Zamfara, and that most cantankerous of states, Rivers, have resolved to take the battle unflinchingly to the national leadership. They hope to prevail.

Sen Sani is perhaps the most unexpected and accomplished victim of APC’s internecine war, save Ogun State governor, Ibikunle Amosun, who was shocked to see himself disrobed so publicly and so ingloriously after the Ogun State governorship primary. The Kaduna senator has finally defected to the People’s Redemption Party (PRP). No one is sure what fate awaits him. Sen Hunkuyi, sadly, came a cropper in his new party; Sen Sani is unlikely to be so fatally wounded, even though some of his supporters felt it would have been more honourable had he defected in late July. Mallam el-Rufai thinks the image and popularity of President Buhari and the size and money of the APC can swing any election in the North, including Kaduna’s. No one can be certain. But except the disaffected and alienated Kaduna senators can find the muscle and tactics to beat the governor in 2019, or at least divide the vote so badly that no victor can afford to gloat, they will find their political reawakening from the dead fraught with more dangers than the punishment inflicted on them by the hubristic and divisive Kaduna governor when they lived.