A Message For Would – Be Decampees From PDP TO APC In Kaduna State And Elsewhere
The Oasis Reporters
January 14, 2020
Decamping from one political platform to another is and has been a recurring decimal in politics and in particular the politics of Nigeria. This short essay is not concerned essentially with the reason(s) for decamping from one to another political party.
Since joining the APC back in 2014 given that at that time it appeared the party of hope on account of its wonderful manifesto, I had cause to rethink my membership of that party upon realising the vessel was taking in water particularly in Kaduna State. When there is a marked departure away from the agreed route to journey on, you need no priest or marabout to tell you that you will not arrive at your destination and so it has been in Kaduna.
Governance in Kaduna State has been a one man show with the present helmsman at the controls. Since then, Kaduna State has drifted into no mans land. The State has been reduced to a political garrison where you either obey the orders of the garrison commander or you are out.
Prior to 2015, Kaduna State may have wobbled which was reason for joining the alternative party the APC then hoping that stability will be achieved. Five years on, I’m afraid that Kaduna, our Kaduna State is in free fall. With people participation in running their affairs having been stripped from them, what has unfolded since 2015 has been a brazen dictatorship. With the education system serially raped and primary school teachers having their careers violently terminated and the efforts they had put in unappreciated, one is forced to wonder if any hope still exists.
With the hitherto vibrant Kaduna State Civil Service bastardized and personal initiative stifled, it is left to conjecture what hope remains if any. The dictatorship has gone further to adding insult to injury by following up to compound the woes of the dismissed civil servants by not paying their terminal benefits. For some who out of their penury managed to buy land locally to erect what we simply describe as shelter, some of these have been demolished without compensation.
Can you see or understand why there are many bodies in the morgues today?
Under a dubious and controversial Urban Renewal programme, many of the urban poor have been reduced to nothing as their business premises have been demolished. My understanding of good leadership has been to give hope not take hope away from the people.
Whilst as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, El Rufai neglected the other Local Councils making up the FCT and concentrated only on the Municipal Council to the extent the other Councils are simply appendages of the Municipal. That same script is what is being replayed in Kaduna State with 23 Local Councils but with almost all the resources applied only in a single Local Council, Kaduna North. This is a clear case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. It is well beyond the shadow of a doubt that Kaduna State is the most unsafe in this country. The dictatorship has only been voicing spurious claims on security. Creating a Ministry for Internal Security has not in anyway helped. It does appear that those gangs responsible for the insecurity are coming closer to the Kaduna City center to continue their violent trade. How else can the kidnapping of some Seminarians from the Good Shepherd Major Seminary so close to Kaduna along the dreaded Kaduna – Abuja highway be easily explained away?
Did the electorate in Kaduna vote for improved governance or for political vultures who have all but stripped them of what old legacies the State had prior? Choice government landed property have all been recklessly auctioned to family, friends and cronies of the regime.
A classical example is the land along Tafawa Balewa Way opposite Kaduna State University which used to house the Doctors Quarters. The quarters were demolished and standing majestically is a property called DIALOGUE CENTER which rumours by many are saying belongs to one of the spouses of the dictator. It is also shocking seeing how the fence of this property is so dangerously close to the major road. We wait to see what will become of this property and fence either in the course of the Urban Renewal or after the dictatorship has expired.
When yesterday. I chanced upon the nauseating news of some political honey seekers not limited to the Chairmen of Kachia and Lere Local Councils decamping to the APC, I was jolted as to what could have been the motivation to so decamp. The truth remains that where a politician is bereft of conviction, such must not be trusted with any public office or leadership responsibility. The 2 Council Chairmen who decamped certainly were moles deliberately planted in the PDP for a purpose and time such as this. I see something else in this bizarre dance of the shameless.
Two rerun elections are scheduled soon to be held in Sanga and Kagarko and the prognosis does not look good for the APC and in a vain attempt to preempt the outcome, why not give the signal to these moles to play the agreed script? Whatever excuses may be given as justification for this betrayal, we wish the decampees well and as already penned their fate will not be any different from those if other decampees before them..
Written by Col. Gora Dauda (rtd).
He writes from Kaduna, North West Nigeria.
