We are also not unmindful of the fact that the Senator was a two term Governor of Kebbi state, a former FCT Minister and Senator at various times.
By Adamu Musa
It hit them like a thunderbolt. Their arrogance and self centeredness has beclouded their eyes from seeing the frailty of the tree branches they were holding. Despite the fact that they were navigating in troubled waters, they still held onto the straw against the run of play. The quicksand they clearly walked on never bothered them, even at the risk of falling.
Their ignorant followers and hangers on, who milled around them for the nectar they lick, allowed themselves to be led into believing that the senatorial ticket which they lawlessly wrestled out of an innocent man’s hand, after they had lost it in another party will be theirs for keeps.
The judgment, in Birnin Kebbi yesterday, which delivered justice to Haruna Saidu did not come to discerning observers by surprise. It took sometime in coming, but those who were on the trail of the case had an inkling that Mohammad Adamu Aliero – the usurper of the PDP Senatorial ticket of Kebbi central zone, was on borrowed times. Observers have been of the opinion that Aliero will lose it based on several factors – all of them grounded in law.
How can you participate in a primary contest in one party, lose the election and still rush down to another party which has ran its own primary election, under the same electoral process, just for you to, without any iota of shame, use all manner of subterfuge, to elbow the rightful winner out of the contest, by fiat?
Even if other tangible reasons have not been recorded and adduced in Adamu Aliero’s desperation to cling to his senatorial seat, the morality of
it alone, is enough to count against him. I understand that politics in Nigeria is not for the lilly liveried. It has been said that if you are not willing or if you don’t have the liver to play it dirty, don’t just come into it. Yet, the arrogance, contempt and muscle Aliero used to edge Haruna out of it, left much to be desired. It is true that Haruna was not as loaded financially nor does he have the war chest to go into dog’s fight with a man of Aliero’s towering political credentials and connection. We are not lost on the fact that he is the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Works – a money spinner and a very powerful position in Nigeria. We are also not unmindful of the fact that the Senator was a two term Governor of Kebbi state, a former FCT Minister and Senator at various times. He was, no doubt a powerful man blessed with the right connections and loaded with the kind of resources to buy his way through.
But when a man becomes arrogant and is fixated with power and began to flex muscles at weaker people, the day he will come down hard from his high horse of that arrogance will be so loud that the mere fact that it happened will be enough to take him down permanently. When people like Aliero bite the dust, especially at his age and position against a weaker opponent suffering injustice, they do it conclusively and they hardly rise out of the ashes of self inflicted ignominy.
We should not miss the fact that just a few days before this landmark judgement, Adamu Aliero was in the news in all the media outlets in Nigeria. He was reported to have connived with some government officials to siphon huge sums of money, from certain contracts whose money were collected without execution.
When the time come for arrogant politicians to hit the canvass or to come down to earth, they do it with a big thud.
Aliero was the architect of his own misfortunes. Fact is that he just didn’t know when to quit. Having seen it all, having paid his dues so clinically, having been this lucky and having been blessed this much, one expects Adamu Aliero to know that quitting when the ovation is loudest is every good politician’s manner of ending it.
Now that he has failed to accept the truism of it, I guess, he should carry his cross, all alone. As for Kebbi politics, it’s good riddance …
