One of those who masqueraded as Bauchi State gubernatorial candidates supposedly a man without clear political base, was thrown into a deep thinking on how to impose himself on the electorates by pulling through the shenanigan of foisting himself on his party as its 2023 gubernatorial candidate.
He scaled the hurdle of party primary with the active support and connivance of those that preferred to load him over and silenced the voice of other credible contestants with reliable political bases.
To be candid, I still wonder how he survived that long when it was obvious that he wouldn’t bulge on the vaunted, ambition to install himself as a gubernatorial candidate. As if he was under the influence of toxicants.
The man kept on pressing and pushing himself on with his disrespectful action, lashing on his presumed closeness to some selected party chieftains to cast aspersions on lower party members and even millions of supporters in the state including respected party, community, political and religious leaders.
For the period he held sway as the gubernatorial candidate of All Progressive Congress (APC) in Bauchi State, he played god and dared mere mortals to combat at the poll with pride and arrogance.
He arrayed himself in garments of a sitting governor with unimpeachable immortality, relying on the enormous power conferred on him by his hangers-on and appendages that went with full dose of rascality, vandalism and illusion.
He stretched his political infantilism to dizzying heights. He boasted that no man born of a woman could stop him from occupying Bauchi State Government House, not for anything, but to probably empty the state treasury and render the state financially insolvent.
Like pranksters from other climes, he was determined to actualize his plot of becoming a governor through any available means including threats to life of opponents, blackmail, intimidation, bribery, murder, hooliganism and thuggery combined. It was a classic case of political iberiberism as he was day dreaming and surrounded by the usual clowns, deceivers and professional extortionists.
The desperation was palpably discomfiting. While everyone could see the crying stupidity in the action and inaction of the team, the gang of yes men around him urged him to keep dancing the macabre dance until he dribbled and ridiculed himself down the lonely street called infamy when it was too late.
Decent minds asked: what kind of devilish pact did the man sign he couldn’t even think of other choices when it was manifestly clear that the electorates would not accept his brazen abuse of their intelligence?
From his antecedents, it wasn’t rocket science for any sane mind to conclude that the man was navigating to unsafe coast while living in a world of illusion surrounded by renowned sycophants, jesters and jobbers including the usual Bauchi self-appointed valueless godfathers that Bala Muhammed dismissed from his campaign team.
Unfortunately, their arrogance was found to be way higher than their candidate’s supersonic insignia of the office he desperately wanted to occupy, the extra-ordinary pride that ‘I’m’ the most qualified to be the governor. His ego was not only bloated, the man stuck to his make-believe world of self-conceit. He saw himself as an emperor in waiting and carried himself with a swagger that exhibited immodesty.
The man was vain and regaled in that aura of self-importance and infallibility. There were many men of power like that, but in his case was a study in political buffoonery. He was a man who rode on the popularity of other political paperweights and urchins within their party and against the interest of the party’s heavyweights to be the gubernatorial candidate but within few days, he turned round to abandon same people that sponsored and labored to install him as their candidate.
The man forgot the long days and anxious nights he spent visiting prominent politicians and illustrious sons to seek for support and assistance when he realized his political future was in shambles and needed desperate support and assistance that was only coming from his supersonic allegedly corrupt wife.
One recalls his pretentious humility with which he deceived some of those that were corralled by his ‘political godfather’ to save him from his misery with various tasks set before those persons in their areas of competence.
The Man we saw then was supposedly humble, decent and perceived to be gentle. He wasn’t barking orders neither was he throwing his weight around until the critical moment in the political journey. Anyway, the majority knew that he had nothing good to offer Bauchi State than unpalatable words which came in torrents.
They say you would never know a person’s capacity for mischief until you try him with power, riches or women. The man represents that physical reality of wisecrack.
But for the inebriating nature of politics, no one would have thought that the man, claiming to be a political lyricist but Asari Dukubo’s copycat in the political jungle, would have the temerity to reduce gubernatorial candidature to such a street side joke in Bauchi State, where a serious-minded governor, Sen. Bala Muhammed was busy constructing roads, erecting bridges and providing lasting infrastructural facilities, the self-crowned governor-in-waiting was devoted to settling imaginary scores with his party chieftains. He was brimming with confidence that he had done more than enough for the party that should guarantee the dream of his election with the support of political lepers the likes of Adamu Adamu, Maitama Tugga, Ali Pate, Ya’u Sule Darazo and a host of other day-dreamers.
But fortunately for the state, the people had a different idea. They saw through the deceit and spoke eloquently at the poll by picking someone else, Sen. Bala Abdulkadir Muhammed of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to continue piloting the affairs of the state in the next four years. Obviously, they could not subscribe to the rude joke traded in gray areas of the state.
The man’s capacity for mischief and his ability to ride roughshod on the backs of those that brought him into contest was the passion that drove him out. He wanted to be the real deal, a power broker in the state’s politics without learning the ropes from the masters. He was mean, vindictive and irascibly stupid. A self-confessed ally of their party chieftain exploited that window to his peril.
At their party’s gubernatorial primary election, he played god. He exploited and imposed his stooges in his infantile campaign team, threatened those who complained and frustrated the electable ones. He thought, he had won the day by declaring himself in collaboration with few others as the gubernatorial candidate. Such was the thinking of men with little minds—-those who think they are the only wise ones in a gathering of fools.
Well, the joke was actually on them. By the time the cloud was over, many such men were consigned to the bottom pit of hell as his rejection through the ballot box echoes loudly in March. He was beaten to coma and chased out to lick his wound while his scanty supporters were wailing and shouting abracadabra.
The man wondered the hit as he lives in self-denial, hoping that it was just one long nightmarish experience that would soon be over. Fortunately for the state, Sen. Bala’s victory has come to stay and it will remain so even through the temple of justice that the defeated hurriedly reached.
The electorates are getting more enlightened by the day and they now understand why it is deserving for them to free themselves from the shackles of ‘political rascality and deceit and hallow arrogance of those who have failed to come to grip with the immortal words that power is transient and should be wielded with utmost caution. When the curtain falls, it is always cheering to see those who assumed they have limitless immorality to hold the state by its dangling testicles being the tragic victims of their self-inflicted stupidity.
Bauchi State has now courageously unchained itself from political rascality and underdevelopment of the past courtesy of the governing style of Bala Muhammed. It has got a brand new captain piloting its affairs anchored on the doctrine of fairness, equity and justice. The people are with reality not fiction! The self-appointed godfathers have been retired for the good of the state. I Come In Peace!
Muhammad is a commentator on national issues
