A WAR AGAINST EVERYONE ELSE IN KADUNA
The Oasis Reporters
May 2, 2018
By Col. Gora Dauda (rtd)
Without bothering about the meaning of democracy yet again, I am content with the centrality of the very fact that democracy is all about the people. The moment the people are excluded from the decision making process, those who are affected have a dictatorship on their hands. That old Pirelli Tyre advert “Power is nothing without control” underscores this point.
Therefore, before seeking power, one should ensure that he must have learned how to deploy it, otherwise he may be heading towards a disaster as being clearly played out in Kaduna State.
There is power being wielded in Kaduna today, power which the collective will of the people of the State contributed but sadly very recklessly applied. The democracy domiciled in our hearts is opposed to that which is playing out on the ground. In our hearts we know that democracy abhors any form of manipulation and worst of all, violence.
The democracy we are desirous of must be contingent on consultation and participation, negotiation, horse trading, consensus are other values extant in a democracy. Sadly for Kaduna State, the electorate made a wrong investment in 2015 with their votes. What has accrued off that investment is violence in one form or another. The physical violence is very reckless, laced with inciting speeches whenever the dictatorship has cause to address issues of governance.
The electorate in Kaduna voted in 2015 for freedom of speech, expression and of assembly but these values are under a state of siege. It must be noted that any democracy without a vibrant opposition is standing on one leg.
The government of Kaduna State is a legitimate government given that it was voted to power by over 1.8 million votes but that was the beginning of our travails. The understanding was that this will be a people’s government but how wrong we all were. The dictator and his co-travellers had other ideas principal amongst which was to exclude the electorate from the governance process. The dictator simply found out in his warped judgment that the electorate who voted him to power are not good enough to work with. He therefore resorted to importing some of his friends from other climes and deploying them in key positions in the government at the expense of those who had manned those positions in previous governments. In other equally important positions, the dictator deployed his cronies and family members. It is actions like these which informed the rift between the government and the stakeholders of the party who had toiled to put the government into office.
Rather than a policy of appeasement the dictator became more combative and intransigent. With this kind of attitude, the government began to distance itself from the people. I listened to a would be gubernatorial candidate of an opposition party from the same enclave as the dictator spoke about his intention to contest for the governorship position in Kaduna State come 2019. In the course of his speech, he spoke about the need for anybody desirous of being a governor of this State to be humble, accommodating, have listening ears and compassionate.
I find these values completely lacking in the current leadership which is why today our people are stranded in the middle of nowhere. The would be gubernatorial aspirant said something that should be of interest to all of us, he said that it is very important that whoever aspires for a leadership position must have a good PARENTAL UPBRINGING AND BACKGROUND only then can such place a premium on the people they desire to lead. The very fact that a deficit exists in your upbringing or parental background, you can be sure of a bountiful harvest of reckless speech as well as the king of arrogance the people of Kaduna State have been witnessing since 2015.
As things currently stand in Kaduna, an ominous cloud of dictatorship hangs dangerously low over the entire State. The only viable strategy before the current government for maintaining its stranglehold on power is by deploying violence in one form or another. Their capacity for violence against bona fide party members has clearly been demonstrated at least during 4 incidences.
The first being the illegal and crude demolition of a property belonging to the APC North West Zone Chairman for purely vindictive reasons.
This was followed by the barbaric attack at the NUJ Press Centre in Kaduna when a press conference was underway. The attackers were undoubtedly sponsored thugs of one of the key appointees of the impish dictator. The attack was carried out with the police looking on and to date no arrests was made and so the attackers walked free.
There were physical attacks on some members of the Kaduna Restoration Group with injuries sustained and property damaged.
The impish dictator’s next target was No 11b Sambo Road a property belonging to Distinguished Senator Othman Suleiman Hunkuyi. The impish dictator deployed men in military uniform to facilitate the pulling down of the property. There were no grounds in law to have warranted this display of madness.
On the Sunday 29 April 2018 yet another vicious attack was visited on a political briefing by the Distinguished Senator Hunkuyi. The attack sponsored by some criminally minded elements in Sir Kashim Ibrahim House took the form of an assassination attempt on some key officials of the internal opposition under the Chairmanship of Dr Tijjani Ramallan but specifically I should think that their principal target was the Distinguished Senator. The thugs came rather too late as the Distinguished Senator had finished the briefing which had to do with the APC Ward Congress elections scheduled for 5 May 2018.
My understanding is that the impish dictator and his Arch Angels holed up in Sir Kashim Ibrahim House are scared stiff as the water in which they are swimming is shrinking by the day. Their understanding of the tenets of democracy is skewed towards violence. The people of Kaduna are all agreed that this government has to be kicked out by any viable democratic means. The culture of violence and impunity must be removed from our politics if our politic is to record any growth.
The most disgusting thing in all of this is that each time their thugs execute the orders received from their sponsors in Sir Kashim Ibrahim House, the vuvuzelas will come out condemning the outcome of the orders they gave out claiming that the criminals will be arrested and prosecuted but in the end nobody gets arrested let alone prosecuted. Tragically, those sponsoring this criminality are blind to the fact that it is the failure of governance that has produced the thugs they employ as convenient and ready tools with which to confront the opposition. The thugs and hoodlums on the payroll of government house have nothing to lose because they are essentially classed as low lives by their employers.
Thuggery should have no place in our politics. All steps necessary to do away with the embarrassing spectacle of thuggery in politics in a general sense will be a welcome development. To God Be The Glory.
Written by Col. Gora Dauda (rtd).
