Premium Times published an article titled “Zamfara, APC, and the politics of opportunism” written by Reuben Ubati where he tried to take a deep look into the political crisis that recently played out in Zamfara State. He tried to present his arguments like a journalist but he woefully failed as the Politician in him glaringly overshadowed his thinking and guided his pen throughout his uninformed article.. It fantastically played out in the said write up so immaturedly a simple reader can decipher. However, that is very typical of many Nigerian professional journalists who turn out to be bitter partisan politicians.
Reuben Abati has turned out to be PDP stalwart, unfortunately, a warped commentator who can never be just to another political party, especially that which demystify his own party’s interests as Matawalle did in Zamfara State. It is Obvious from his presentation that he has no knowledge of Zamfara politics. Although he printed fine words to sway many a gullible mind, he ended up re-echoing same fallacies dished out to similar commentators by the PDP and the embittered Gusau family.
We are the Gusau residents and we not only follow Zamfara politics, but we are surrounded by it. BELMAT, a popular acronym for Bello Matawalle is a household name in politics of Zamfara State. He has curved for himself a very strong political base and structure in Zamfara State that he could take from one party to another if he so wished and also make it tick. When BELMAT decided to join the PDP in Zamfara State, it was practically a dead horse which he revived with his structure. He put life into the dead and made it work. His sheer efforts single handedly fetched the Party the second position in the 2019 elections.
Reuben Abati subtly presented General Aliyu Gusau as the political benefactor of Governor Bello Mohamned in 2019 elections. No. General Aliyu Gusau has never and can never be the political god father of Governor Bello Mohammed and has not helped him win his elections at the polls. If Matawalle has any political godfather, it was Governor Ahmed Sani Yarima who made him a Commissioner in His Cabinet in 1999. General Aliyu Gusau, by virtue of his influence at the National headquarters of the PDP might have had a grip on the PDP structure in Zamfara State when Governor Matawalle joined the Party, but it is a common knowledge that he is not respected politically in Zamfara State and can never make someone become a Governor as claimed. Matawalle injected life into the the PDP in Zamfara State and when he left, he went away with its very soul.
Mahdi Aliyu Gusau, the son of General Aliyu Gusau, is a political neophyte who could have learnt the art of the game if he had respected his principal and stayed to work along with him . But he chose the ignoble way of abdicating his responsibility, left for Abuja where he lived and launched unsavoury attacks and castigation against his principal in the media. He actually abused and denigrated the State Legislature, and, as a lawyer, it baffled everyone that he could even go as far as slide the Chief Judge in the state
Gusau, Abati and the PDP might have resorted to this article, like the rest in the past, at this hour obviously out of the fuffore and sudden excitement, buoyed by the recent developments regarding court verdicts on electoral cases elsewhere in the Country. However, “their teeth will bite the ground” as the saying goes, over the case of Zamfara state. Hence, if they have advisers, they should let them know that Governor Matawalle has been chosen to serve a term by God and people and so shall it come to pass.
By trying to create a hero out of a raw politician such as Mahdi, Abati must have forgotten that he cannot alter history as he is not the first time recalcitrant deputy governor in the past to put on similar resistance to his Principal, but could not hold it as it is practically and politically impossible for a Governor to work with a Deputy pursuing conflicting political goals. Such Deputies forgot that they were elected on a joint ticket and their constitutional responsibilities are to assist their Governors in all goals they pursue not to conflict with them.
What also gladdens the mind in Abati’s article was the observation he made about Governor Matawalle’s political anticedents. He pointed out that Governor Matawalle was originally an APC and his re-joining of the Party was a home coming. The good thing here is that Ubati is an enmeshed politician not the fair, dispassionate journalist who sees it from the neutral stance. It is not golden that Mr Reuben Abati is living on a faulty conscience of a partisan politician who struggles to maintain the face of a professional journalist.
Sulaiman writes from Gusau.
