“The saddest picture I saw in recent times is that of Dino Melaye displaying Hajia Naja’atu to Mr. Abubakar like a kid displaying a new bicycle won in a raffle draw. Truly unfortunate.”
*Photo: Naja’atu Mohammed*
By Maiwada Dammallam
I so much respect Hajia Naja’atu Mohammed just as I respect her right to support any candidate of her choice. That, however, should not come at the expense of facts, logic and common sense. I don’t believe her decision to dump the APC at the tail end of President Buhari’s 8-year tenure has anything to do with Nigeria or the suitability (or lack of) of any presidential candidate.
It’s merely an expression of incertitude which could be traced to the near invisible role she played in the Buhari administration despite her overhyped loyalty and expectations of preferential treatment and better reward. Truly, at some point I used to argue Hajia Naja’atu was not recognized and rewarded by the APC commensurate to her nuisance value. It’s with a good mind therefore, that I’m of the opinion her migration to PDP/Atiku is more a political decision to negotiate personal relevance than a drive for the betterment of Nigeria or its democratic processes.
It’s obvious reasons she gave for dumping APC are as watery and untenable as they are ambiguous and bereft of logic or common sense or proper contextualization. Among the reasons, actually the most untenable, is the rather bizarre reason that “she decided to stop supporting Tinubu because he “hardly thinks straight.” It’s reasonable to ask Hajia Naja’atu how long it took her to collate and review Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s mental certificates to deduce he’s not thinking straight? I will discount the source of her medical certificates to speed up the process of resolving the bizarreness of her motives.
This is a valid question given that only 2 or 3 months ago she was appointed a member of the Tinubu/Shettima Presidential Campaign Council as the Director, Civil Societies of the APC Council. It’s curious why she accepted to serve in the Presidential Campaign Committee of a candidate whose thinking she’s convinced is impaired? Sure, Tinubu’s thinking couldn’t have degenerated in just 3 months to attract such a drastic decision from especially people who know him closely as to be appointed directors in his Campaign Council.
By the way, how’s a man whose thinking is impaired able to defeat a sitting Vice President and a serving Senate President to clinch not just a presidential ticket but the presidential ticket of a ruling party? More than many observers, Hajia Naja’atu should know better what it takes to pull a stunt like this given her experience as a career candidate of various political offices at different times.
Then it means there’s something more logical and acceptable than “Tinubu’s thinking” behind Hajia Naja’atu’s swift defection decision. If it were “Tinubu’s thinking” why did she accept to serve in APC’s Presidential Campaign Council? The fiery activist Hajia Naja’atu is, she won’t accept to serve in the presidential campaign council of a candidate cognitively defective.
It’s fair to say, then, her reasons are either unreasonable or less attractive than the reason she’s hiding behind to ditch ship. This is even more reasonable given that she did not release Atiku Abubakar’s cognitive suitability to justify her simultaneous subscription to his candidature. Perhaps, her defection may not be unrelated to the rumored almost N500m budget of her Civil Societies Directorate which was rejected by Presidential Campaign Council.
Talking about Hajia Naja’atu’s new idea of a Nigerian savior, Atiku Abubakar, is she not putting the cart before the horse by pitching tent with Mr. Abubakar without first clearing the mess trailing him? Of recent, series of audio clips released by Mr. Michael Achimugu, his former media aide, are still trending. In the viral clips (heard a new episode is out), Mr. Abubakar was caught narrating how, as Vice President, he advised former President Obasanjo to float companies with a clear motive to use same to fleece Nigeria by awarding dubious contracts to the companies and channeling the proceeds into private pockets.
Secondly, glancing through Nigeria’s history book, the most notorious chapter is the one dealing with $16bn appropriated by the Obasanjo/Atiku-led PDP administration to improve the power sector. While it’s undebatable that $16bn could upgrade the entire Nigerian power sector significantly, Obasanjo/Atiku applied the $16bn and left Nigerians without commensurate benefits. Actually there’s a video of Mr. Abubakar making rounds in which he voiced his regret for not achieving anything for the power sector despite such a multi-billion dollar investment (emphasis mine). There’s also the question of stripping Nigeria of valuable assets and investments under the Obasanjo administration and directly supervised by Atiku Abubakar.
Without Hajia Naja’atu reconciling these aberrations considered as part of the greatest setbacks Nigeria encountered in contemporary history to justify her claim for ambassadorship of good governance and social justice, her defection will remain just what it is — the seasonal migration of politicians from one party to another for self-serving rather than patriotic motives. And what are “the recent political developments in the country’s democratic space” she quoted as part of her reason to defect? One should expect more than mere political talks woven around ambiguous or indecipherable connotations from a seasoned activist cum politician like Hajia Naja’atu to make sense of the bunkum political developments on which her defection is rested.
What are these “recent developments” that Hajia will rather run away from Tinubu and straight to Atiku in search of a personal solution instead of approaching a court of competent jurisdiction to resolve? Is Atiku bigger and more promising than Nigerian courts? Again, were these developments before or after her appointment as Director in the Presidential Campaign Council? This is pertinent as it will put the matter into proper perspective and explain if her reaction is patriotic.
She also mentioned politics of religion, tribal and regional sentiments as a reason. It’s like Hajia Naja’atu was pricked by her conscience. How’s Tinubu guiltier of playing politics of religion, tribal and regional sentiments more than she is by abandoning Tinubu, a Southern Yoruba candidate, for Atiku, a fellow northern Fulani kinsman? In case her concern is APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket, then I will be forced to ask if she will abandon Tinubu had he picked her instead of Sen. Kashim Shettima as his running mate as proposed by some people probably encouraged by her?
And if APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket is enough to provoke such migratory reaction from Hajia Naja’atu in line with PDP’s make belief agitations for religious balancing, why is it as a woman, a very energetic activist at that, she sees nothing wrong with the gender imbalance of the tickets of the two major political parties and indeed all the other political parties? Should Nigerians expect her to abandon Mr. Abubakar on election day on the basis of a belated realization of PDP/Atiku’s gender imbalance given her penchant for delayed decisions as it is with her realization of “Tinubu’s impaired thinking?”
Hajia Naja’atu accidentally let the cat out of the bag when she opined thus:
“If you remove tribal sentiment, if you remove the Lagos/Ibadan press, if Tinubu were not a Yoruba man, he will not dare contest election because they will crucify him, but people are all there to defend him because he is Yoruba, it’s egbe omo Oduduwa over everything else.”
Only those passively following the ongoing presidential campaigns would buy this falsehood. Critical observers will attest that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is the biggest victim of a gang-up by a renegade section of the Lagos/Ibadan press led by Arise TV and Thisday Newspaper.
Probably Hajia Naja’atu is not even aware that the arrowhead of the campaign of calumny against Tinubu by the renegade part of the Lagos/Ibadan presse, Arise TV, was sometime in November 2022, fined N2m by NBC for propagating falsehood against Tinubu for falsely claiming that INEC was investigating him over alleged criminal forfeiture of money on offenses bordering on narcotics and illicit drugs, a claim INEC denied and for which NBC fined Arise TV, again, for which Arise TV had to apologize to Tinubu.
And if it’s the unnecessarily overhyped physical fitness of Tinubu that forced her to abandon him, one will like to know why she didn’t support either Vice President Yemi Osibanjo or Senate President, Ahmed Lawan from the APC during the APC primaries or why she didn’t jump ship to join her Kano next door neighbor, Senator Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso? I’m sure she will agree these 3 seem more physically fit than Tinubu and Atiku. In any case, if contesting elections is all about physical fitness, how many elections did she contest without victory despite her physical and verbal fitness?
Perhaps out of desperation to either justify her defection or inflict maximum damage on the APC campaign, Hajia Naja’atu claimed Tinubu told her he has nothing for the north. This is absurd unless she’s taking abut another Tinubu not the Tinubu that went to Kaduna and told northern elders what he has in his kitty for the north. How could Tinubu not have anything for the north anyway?
Let’s discount Sen. Shettima, his running mate, how is Naja’atu the only northerner aware of the proposed denial she’s flashing as a red card for Tinubu despite the Ribadus, Masaris, Sen. Abu Ibrahims, all but few of northern Governors and Ministers working closely and tirelessly with Tinubu at different levels to score victory for APC? Is she the only northerner with the love of the north at heart? Is it even possible for Tinubu (or any president at that) to have nothing for the north and make a business of announcing it to not just to any northerner but one known to be balky? The north would definitely have members in the Federal Executive Council and the two chambers of the National Assembly.
How possible is it for Tinubu not to have anything for the north with some northerners proposing budgets as Ministers and a very significant population of northerners in the National Assembly to pass the budgets?
Finally, I can’t help wondering if Hajia Naja’atu will be drastic and swift in taking this decision if she were a Minister in President Buhari’s cabinet not just a member of the Police Service Commission. Honestly, I can’t help but see her last minute ditching of the APC from a “Pay Day” perspective.
It’s obvious the Buhari administration in which she expected preferential treatment and a bigger role is coming to an end. It’s very likely she’s convinced she may not generate as much relevance with Tinubu as she did with Buhari hence the likelihood she’s taking her pound of flesh while simultaneously negotiating her future political relevance in an envisaged Atiku led government otherwise. The choice of Atiku might have been informed by the obsession of PDP/Atiku with anything APC/Tinubu and their attraction to even the garbage thrown out of the APC garbage bin.
The saddest picture I saw in recent times is that of Dino Melaye displaying Hajia Naja’atu to Mr. Abubakar like a kid displaying a new bicycle won in a raffle draw. Truly unfortunate.