7 Years After His First Bid, Dankwambo Throws His Hat Again Into The Ring For Gombe North Senatorial ticket
The Oasis Reporters
April 23, 2022
By Greg Abolo
Former two term PDP governor of Gombe State, Dr. Hassan Ibrahim Dankwambo has submitted his expression of Interest/nomination form for Gombe North Senatorial ticket. His first bid was largely unsuccessful, despite his praise worthy tenure as two term governor of the north east state of Gombe, it’s people stylishly call, ‘Jewel In The Savannah’.
The SSA Media to the former Governor, Junaidu Usman Abubakar and SSA Protocol, Wada Mohammed Sadiq, submitted the form on behalf of Dr. Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo on Friday at the People’s Democratic Party, PDP National Secretariat Wadata Plaza Wuse, Abuja.
During the ‘Buhari-mania’ sweep of the states in the north for home-boy General Muhammadu Buhari in 2015, the dykes Ibrahim Hassan Dankwanbo erected round Gombe state prevented the All Progressive Congress (APC) from running him out of town and he became the only PDP governor standing in the North East, where kingpin Atiku Abubakar holds sway, having defected from the PDP to the APC because he needed to humiliate his party and disgrace then President Jonathan out of power.
Atiku Abubakar succeeded in that mission, but today he is back to the PDP with his co-travelers, demanding for the PDP ticket under the bus that PDP governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike calls a trickish Trojan horse, named ‘Consensus’ to use the party in achieving a selfish agenda, because the ticket this time, belongs to the South.
Ibrahim Hassan Dankwanbo who was educated in Universities in the north and the South, first at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in North West Nigeria for his first degree before proceeding to Delta State University, Abraka in the South South for his Master’s degree and later capping it up with a doctorate degree at Igbinedion University in Okada, Edo State also in the South South.
He is urbane and suave, just as he is brilliant, serving at a time as Nigeria’s Accountant General of the Federation. At retirement, he emerged governor of Gombe state.
Curiously, while the so called PDP Consensus quartet who Nyesom Wike pinned to the ‘political gimmicks’ of northern politicians to hijack power from the turn of the South, Dankwanbo was neither invited to join the Consensus quartet in their unsmiling junket to sway Southern governors to join their train, nor courted to be with them.
Dankwanbo is a northern minority tribesman, and the neglect meted out to him has failed to give credibility to the acts of Sokoto State governor, Aminu Tambuwal, Bauchi State governor, Bala Mohammed, former Kwara State governor, Bukola Saraki and Shamsuddeen Usman, former Managing Director of FSB bank International. It was a bank that didn’t rise to the top billing and was swallowed up in the mergers&acquisitions that swept through the banking horizon under Prof. Charles Soludo, then Central Bank governor.
Ignored by the consensus quartet, Dankwanbo was recognized and courted by Rivers State governor, Nyesom Wike who visited him in Gombe recently.
Hassan Dankwanbo is one consistent politician who has remained faithful to the PDP and has never defected like Atiku Abubakar, Aminu Tambuwal and Bukola Saraki, powerhouses and backers of the Consensus agenda.
Political pundits say Dankwanbo is good enough material for the Vice Presidency if either Peter Obi or Nyesom Wike picks the PDP ticket going by the party’s Constitution of rotation of offices, which the northern PDP quartet wants expunged to give them the right to contest in 2023. Should either Atiku Abubakar, Bala Mohammed, Bukola Saraki or Aminu Tambuwal get the position, it would mean a back to back 16 long years of Fulani Rule over Nigeria.
Many citizens are opposed to the seeming sole right of only one tribe’s dominance at Nigeria’s top leadership.
Dankwanbo may seem to be holding the Senatorial ticket of Gombe North as a fall back position. If the presidential election ticket for the PDP goes to the South, Dr. Ibrahim Hassan Dankwanbo may find himself as a top contender for the vice Presidency.
