The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

Kwara massacre belies end of Mamuda/JNIM terrorists

In August 2025, National Security Adviser (NSA) Nuhu Ribadu enthused about the capture of Ansaru terror leaders, Mahmud Muhammad Usman (aka Abu Bara’a/Abbas/Mukhtar) and Mahmud al-Nigeri (aka Mallam Mamuda), as signifying the end of Mamuda terror masterminds in Nigeria. As he put it: “Abu Bara’a was the self-styled Emir of ANSARU and coordinator of various terrorist sleeper cells across Nigeria. He was also the mastermind of several high-profile kidnappings and armed robberies used to finance terrorism over the years. The second was Mallam Mamuda, Abu Bara’s proclaimed Chief of Staff and Deputy. He was the leader of the so-called ‘Mahmudawa’ cell hiding out in and around the Kainji National Park, straddling Niger and Kwara States up to Benin Republic. Mamuda trained in Libya between 2013 and 2015 under foreign jihadist instructors from Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria, specialising in weapons handling and IED fabrication.”

Mr Ribadu continued: “These two men have been on Nigeria’s most-wanted list for years. They jointly spearheaded multiple attacks on civilians, security forces, and critical infrastructure. Their operations include the 2022 Kuje prison break, the attack on the Niger Republic uranium facility, the 2013 abduction of French engineer Francis Collomp in Katsina, and the May 1, 2019 kidnapping of Alhaji Musa Umar Uba (Magajin Garin Daura). They were also behind the abduction of the Emir of Wawa, and they maintain active links with terrorist groups across the Maghreb, particularly in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.”

The exultation has proved to be short-lived. Barely six months later, the same group, having replenished and rebranded itself as a Boko Haram affiliate and produced vicious successors as well as rearmed its foot soldiers, has attacked Kwara State again and massacred dozens of people in Woro community of Kaiama local government area. Casualty estimates range from over 75 to over 170. The scale of the slaughter has shocked not only Nigerians but the rest of the world. The Kaiama attack was, however, not the first in the Borgu area of the state, and despite the continuing arrest of terror leaders, it may not be the last. Far beyond the discouraging scale of last week’s killings, and beyond the episodic and desultory response by Nigeria’s security agencies, it is time for a comprehensive review of the country’s security paradigm. The existing one, this column continues to argue, is simply not working. Whether in Kebbi, Zamfara, Nasarawa, Benue, Niger, Plateau, and now Kwara, the response to terrorist attacks has been chaotic and ineffective, achieving occasional triumphs, but in general unable to stanch the flow of blood in those theatres.

A security paradigm review is sorely needed, for the mere act of arresting or neutralising terror leaders in the Northwest, Northeast and now North Central has become an insufficient deterrence. Here are a few suggestions: (1) Nigeria must refuse to resign to the fatalism of accepting terror attacks as a way of life. It implies embracing, like Pakistan, Somalia, and DR Congo, the idea that the problem is insurmountable. (2) While the country rapidly expands military recruitment, it must recognize that it will never have enough troops to deploy to trouble spots. So, it needs winning strategies. (3) But it is time the country and its government realise that Nigeria is at war, and the country must be put on a war footing. It is futile thinking a few deployments here and there will be enough to pacify trouble spots that began in the Northeast, has spread to the Northwest, is now effectively in the North Central, and appears set, with probing attacks already taking place, to spread to the Southwest. (4) The new security paradigm must be firmly anchored on the right military doctrine that produces strategies, tactics and principles to guide how Nigeria battles and counters centrifugal forces encircling the country and gnawing away at its central nervous system.

Specifically and tactically, while the security paradigm must encompass all other threats, including providing for hybrid warfare, it clearly knows that the terror attacks on Nigeria have been largely asymmetric. This requires Nigeria to also be highly innovative, mobile, and equipped with diverse platforms. Consequently, among other measures, it is urgent to do the following. (1) The threat areas must be saturated with surveillance and intelligence gathering to locate and neutralise terror cells, regardless of the inhospitable terrains involved. (2) Divide the attacked states into operational sectors for monitoring and action, and equip troops with the most modern and secure communications gadgets to alert intervention forces. (3) Create rapid deployment intervention forces capable of deploying forces quickly and in all terrains and in all weather in response to alerts from forces near the epicenters of attacks. (4) Assign local commanders to the various sectors for close monitoring and control, reconnaissance patrols, initial interdictions, and capacity to link up with nearby sector commands for cordon, search, and elimination of enemy forces. And (5) enshrine the doctrine of hunting attackers down until they are eliminated, not repel, secure the release of abducted people, or keep attackers at bay. The best form of defence is always attack.

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President Bola Tinubu has responded to the attacks by ordering the deployment of a battalion of troops in the Kaiama area. But what is the size of the battalion? The Woro community recalled a previous deployment of 15 soldiers who were eventually withdrawn after an attack by the Mamuda/JNIM terrorists. The beleaguered community fears that local informants and collaborators might have aided the attackers and compromised the safety of the entire area. Why would there be no collaborators where terrorism has festered for too long? Indeed, the confidence rebuilding that must be done and the infrastructure needed to combat Ansaru will be much bigger than whatever had been mustered in the past or the current desultory approach. The president must get the security agencies to come together and plan a final assault. Enough of the pussyfooting. It is time to take the battle to the terrorists, as is being done in the Northeast, after many years of dithering and hand-wringing. Delay can be fatal to the country’s existence.

Importantly too, it is time the military reappraised their tactics. It is not enough to foil terrorist attacks, especially when the attacks target communities, or rescue abducted victims; they must, in addition to developing intelligence on enemy movements and camps, urgently develop the capacity to isolate the enemy and conduct large-scale encircling operations against them until they are choked and destroyed. Yes, there may continue to be a few collaborators and infiltrators, but these must also be ferreted out and terminated. Everyone in Kaiama Knows where the terrorists camp in the Borgu Reserve and Kainji National Park areas are located. Nigeria’s security agents can’t claim ignorance of those locations, especially after the Woro community passed on the threat messages sent by the terrorists. The massacre in Kaiama is inexcusable. It is time to do something about Mamuda/JNIM terror groups, whether they are affiliated to Boko Haram or Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb. There is no reason to allow the terrorists stay in those locations for much longer, not to talk of planning the next set of attacks, except compromisers have hollowed out the security services and are calling the shots. Hopefully, Nigeria’s military top brass and Defence ministry officials will visit the massacre scenes and be prodded into finally addressing the country’s intelligence failures and slow response time, both of which are costly and unpardonable.

February 8, 2026
PDP: Wike gets upper hand again

Nyesom Wike, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister, has an uncanny ability to stay on the right side of the law in nearly all his litigations within and against the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Unlike his opponents in the party, many of whom are not lawyers, his law education appears to confer some advantages on him. On January 30, a Federal High Court sitting in Ibadan voided the party’s November 15-16, 2025 national convention held in Ibadan. In the judgement, Justice Uche Agomoh held that last year’s convention was conducted in disobedience to two court orders, insisting that factional national chairman Tanimu Turaki’s effort to secure legitimacy for both the convention and the executives produced by the convention was an exercise in futility. Justice Agomoh was of course referring to the October 31, 2025 decision by Justice James Omotosho of the Federal High Court in Abuja halting the convention, and the November 14, 2025 decision by Justice Peter Lifu ordering the suspension of the convention in a case brought by former Jigawa State governor Sule Lamido complaining against exclusion.

The Seyi Makinde-led PDP inanely conducted the convention citing a November 4, 2025 ex-parte order issued by an Oyo State High Court sitting in Ibadan and presided over by Justice Ladiran Akintola. By early November, the dispute over the convention had virtually resolved itself through the two Federal High Court judgements, but the Makinde faction had spent too much to make a U-turn of fail to clutch at a straw by procuring the ex-parte order. But responding to the faction’s adamantine resolve to hold the convention, Mr Wike had sarcastically retorted that the intransigent party members were on a jamboree. The former Rivers governor, it turned out, was right, regardless of the causticity of his remarks. While the Makinde faction still continues to talk tough, Mr Turaki has sensibly headed to the Court of Appeal to see whether his faction could secure legitimacy. He won’t get his wish. Mr Wike, like him or hate his guts, has woven a tight web around the legal neophytes of the Makinde faction, so tight they can’t even wriggle. They are already suffocating, in contrast to the tough jurisprudential talk by the Forum of PDP chairmen who assert their determination to forge ahead notwithstanding court judgements.

Last Thursday, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) rubbed it in on the Makinde faction by proceeding to recognise the Wike faction. At the quarterly meeting between the Commission and leaders of political parties, Caretaker Chairman Abdulrahman Mohammed and Caretaker National Secretary Samuel Anyanwu, both of the Wike faction, were invited. Shutting out the Makinde faction executives may not sound the death knell to their leadership of the party, especially considering that they had lodged an appeal, but legal experts are not optimistic about a reversal of fortune for them. Leading PDP chieftains anticipated this conundrum long before the November 2025 dates for the convention were fixed. All warnings, however, fell on deaf ears. Now, with the neutering of the convention and the enthronement of the Wike faction in the PDP saddle, estranged PDP leaders will either have to swallow their pride and begin to deal and negotiate with Mr Wike or abandon the party altogether. It is not certain what kind of suicide they might opt for.

What is beyond controversy, however, is that because of his legal fleetness, Mr Wike has regained a party that former vice president Atiku Abubakar and his cohorts tried to snatch, after first leaving it for dead in 2019. To regain control of the opposition party, the FCT minister had played his politics right by declining to defect to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) that made him a minister, staying the course knowing full well that Alhaji Atiku and his crowd were feckless and inattentive, and lending the party character, style and purpose. Party chieftains like Bode George may find Mr Wike somewhat objectionable, and former senate president and Kwara governor Bukola Saraki may be unnerved by the FCT minister’s mannerisms; but both of them, and perhaps many more, recognise that Mr Wike’s doggedness, combativeness, and charisma were best suited to help the party survive the blitz that swept over it in the past few years.

Many times this column had advised the PDP to rebuild and reform and prepare itself for the 2031 polls, but the urgency of regaining power in the short run had always transcended the sensibleness of reclaiming its leading position in the medium to long run. It was that urgency, plus the indecipherable desire of Mr Makinde to run for the presidency in 2027, that led to the serial blunders of the past few months. Mr Wike, despite his flaws, not to talk of the collapse of his ambition in the 2023 elections, suspected that getting the PDP to root for 2027 was a far-fetched proposition. He had labored to stay in the PDP against his better judgement when Alhaji Atiku took the presidential ticket, but once the chance of a southerner winning the presidency arose in late 2022 and early 2023, his instincts led him to offer support to another candidate across party divides. He seems to believe that abandoning the self-sustaining logic that took a southerner to the presidency would be fatal to everything he stands for. If he appears to treacherously keep the PDP in subjection, it is less because he loathed his party than because he senses that it would be dangerous to fiddle with the logic that propelled Bola Tinubu to the presidency.

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In the months ahead, Mr Wike will continue to bask in the legal euphoria his court victory has rightly gifted his faction. His faction will win over many state chairmen who had backed the Makinde faction because they initially thought it was impossible for the pendulum to swing in any other direction. The Wike faction has set a timetable for the PDP national convention; it will follow it scrupulously, probably with a few amendments. They know it is inconceivable for the courts to backpedal, and they know that even if the other stray PDP faithful were to return home, they would be incapable or agile enough to upset the Wike apple cart. The Wike faction will consequently produce the next PDP executives. But whether the executives and party members will be united enough to queue behind his ginger straddle on the national scene or not is hard to fathom. For the many elected lawmakers and the few governors left in the party, some of whom are too galled by the politics of desperation of Alhaji Atiku’s African Democratic Congress (ADC), it will be a relief to finally reclaim the PDP, get their election forms properly and legally signed, and compete for offices, particularly at the lower levels.

The survival of the PDP is not really in doubt. It will bounce back after 2027, and will probably give a good account of itself before and during the 2031 elections. If Mr Wike survives the Rivers scare personified by the flighty Siminalayi Fubara, and if he continues to play his politics calculatingly and with less agitation and hysteria, he will not only hold on to Rivers, he will continue to find significant relevance in the Tinubu cabinet, where he is a performer, and will ultimately offer PDP the leadership it badly desires in the years ahead. While he is growing into a fairly endowed political tactician, his triumphs have so far seemed entirely fortuitous. To hone his political skills, and to continue to matter in the PDP in Rivers and nationally, he will have to eschew the impulsiveness and naivety that propel his choices, whether of succession at the state and party levels or his options at the national level. He has successfully encircled his remaining enemies in the PDP, after first indirectly getting rid of his more unappeasable foes. If his image is not to be sullied, and if his influence is to last for as long as he dreams, he must now find value in making more friends than enemies, being less brash and imperious, and developing the immense capacity to tolerate dissenters as much as his brittle image can sustain. But in all, Mr Wike has so much to be grateful for, for no politician in these parts and in recent years has so consummately run with the hare and hunted with the hounds.

February 8, 2026
Beyond trial of coup plotters

Last week, the federal government finally announced its readiness to constitute military judicial panels to try some 16 coup plotters who late last year allegedly planned to overthrow the government. Their civilian accomplices, still unnumbered and identities undisclosed, will also be arraigned sometime later. The plot, military investigators revealed, involved an almost total decapitation of the country’s leadership in a manner that gave indications that Nigerian soldiers have forgotten how to plan coups. While the law will almost certainly be applied to its fullest in the trial, the plot itself presents a few lessons to the government, the military, and the people.

The first lesson applies to the military. The last time a successful coup was planned and executed in Nigeria was actually in August 1985 by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida. The April 1990 Maj. Gideon Orkar coup failed disastrously, and the November 1993 so-called coup against the Ernest Shonekan-led interim government was not really a coup in any sense of the word, and was inspired by the courts which had declared the administration illegal. A Lagos High Court headed by Justice Dolapo Akinsanya had in November 1993 declared the Interim National Government headed by Chief Shonekan as ‘illegal and void’. Seven days later, Gen. Sani Abacha forced the illegal administrator’s resignation. And so, forty years after their last successful coup, ambitious military adventurers may have completely forgotten the dynamics of coup-making.

The Nigerian military has also never successfully executed a coup inspired by one region against another. The January 1966 coup led by mainly Igbo officers failed despite eliminating many political actors and overthrowing the Northern-led federal administration, while the retaliatory July 1966 coup merely restored power into the hands of northerners. In addition, the coup against Gen. Yakubu Gowon was led by his own kinsmen, while the one against Shehu Shagari was also led by his kinsmen, and the one against Muhammadu Buhari was again led by his kinsmen. How the 16 coup plotters of 2025 misread the dynamics of coup-making in Nigeria by leading a group of northern officers to attempt to overthrow a southern president may in fact corroborate the findings by military investigators that the 2025 coup mastermind failed promotion examinations. In other words the plotters were not bright and could not smartly interpret Nigeria’s historical and political circumstances. Had they succeeded in decapitating the administration, it is unlikely they would have been able to manage the aftermaths, regardless of how many thousands poured into the streets to welcome them.

A third lesson offers itself so clearly to the plotters that it is difficult to explain how they missed it. Quite apart from the internal logic of Nigerian coups aligning with ethnic consanguinity, the only two successful coups ever executed in the country came at a time when the population had not exploded to the level it is today, at over 200 million. How on earth did the plotters hope to manage such an explosive mix of people, and with how many troops, and at a time when the country is besieged on all sides by insurgents, bandits and self-determination forces? And, worse, how would they hope to accommodate intensely fragmented and fratricidal forces all over the country when democracy itself was struggling to gain and retain control? Contemporary West African coup affairs should have lent some lessons to the Nigerian plotters. Among the West African countries where successful or failed coups have taken place, none of them is considerably larger than Lagos State in population. Burkina Faso’s population is about 23.5m; Niger Republic, 27m; Mali, 24.5m; Guinea, 15m; and Benin Republic, 14.5m.

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It was not just incompetence that propelled the Nigerian plotters; their sanity should also be examined. Yes, they may be fit to stand trial, but it may in fact be necessary to find out how their minds worked or failed to work. That other coup plotters succeeded in some parts of West Africa does not mean that they would succeed in Nigeria regardless of its huge population and combustible ethnic mix. Did they forget that the January 1966 coup also attracted initial welcome in many parts of the North, only to collapse later when ethnic suspicion and rivalry issues kicked in? The bigger lesson for the military and adventurous soldiers is to do self-introspection on how easily susceptible they are to misreading the noise and incitement on social media or even the instigation by politicians grieving over lost elections. There were indications that those who investigated last year’s coup plot found out that the plotters misread signals from the populace. The plotters believed that the fiery rhetoric on social and mainstream media as well as the street protests against economic hardship easily amounted to wholesale disaffection with the government. It is true that as the new administration’s economic reforms began, hunger and other forms of sufferings also exploded; but many sensible analysts, economists and politicians understood that in order to make an omelette, egg had to be broken. However, beguiled public commentators ignorant of the scope of the economic troubles bequeathed the new administration in 2023 simply absolved the previous administration of blame, heaped all the troubles on the new government, and began whooping for coup or revolution, whichever came first.

The people and the government also have lessons to learn from the coup plot tragedy. It is bewildering that politicians, the media, and diverse commentators hitched on the agitation bandwagon to attempt to rewrite the country’s electoral laws after the elections by denouncing the provision of simple majority and 25 percent of two-thirds of the states, and also discrediting both the vote count in general as well as the eventual winner. They then campaigned openly and shamelessly for coup or revolution. Meanwhile, apart from being aware that some soldiers were probably listening, they also instigated children to man barricades, waved foreign flags of repressive and brutal foreign governments, and even readied themselves to tolerate and endure the collapse of democracy. It was, therefore, not surprising that eventually a group of soldiers hearkened to their cries and tried incompetently to unseat the administration. What of the people who spoke daggers on the social and traditional media? What absolution can they plead? In contrast, imagine if the First Republic had not been terminated by a coup. Imagine if the Second Republic had also not been terminated. More than four times after every coup the country had had to reboot, and each time, it had always encountered the same problems it tried to wish away or abridge.

It is too early to determine how the military tribunal would judge the plotters, or whether the true motives of the plotters would be exposed during trial. They may not give the tribunal or the public a window into their fears, whether if they had achieved partial success or even full success they could hold the country together. The country may also never know whether their private grievances or lust for power prompted their ill-fated adventure, or whether they harboured any noble motives for the country’s greatness and had a great and tested programme of social, economic and political salvation. What will be known or passed on to the public will probably be the extent of each plotter’s involvement and a confirmation of how they hoped to execute their plans. They will also probably reveal their financiers and indicate how they wished to constitute their government. As for the aftermaths of the coup, had they carried it out, they were probably too naïve to dwell on it or care.

It is also unlikely that the coup plotters would have nursed the ambition to overthrow the government if they didn’t think they would be lionised. The factor of incitement should be emphasised in the trial to serve as a lesson to those who think it is chic to indulge in all manner of ranting and fiery rhetoric on social media in the name of free speech. Unrestrained speech, it is now clear, sometimes produces terrible consequences. Calling for a revolution or a coup is equivalent to calling for the overthrow of the constitution. The agitators cannot, therefore, turn round to plead the protection of a constitution they wish to destroy. By not calling to account those who agitate in the media for the overthrow of the constitution, the government enables the subversive campaign to continue relentlessly, while some misled soldiers begin to harbour foolish thoughts as to the practicability of seizing power by force, regardless of the terrible consequences for stability and national unity. Already, some political leaders have begun wetting the ground to germinate chaos by suggesting that the 2027 elections would be free only if the opposition won.

February 1, 2026
ADC’s 50 wise, disputatious men

It has taken nearly seven months for the coalition of opposition forces herded into the African Democratic Congress (ADC) to get round to addressing what they plan to do should they win the presidency in 2027. Last Wednesday, they announced the constitution of a 50-member committee to fashion out what is, theoretically speaking, their response to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). The committee will be led by a triumvirate of familiar faces: octogenarian and former Edo governor John Odigie-Oyegun, Pat Utomi, and Bolaji Abdullahi. The 50, already dubbed wise men and women, will be inaugurated in Abuja tomorrow. According to a press release by the party, the committee is expected to “articulate a clear, coherent, and credible policy direction that reflects the aspirations of Nigerians and positions the ADC as a serious alternative platform for responsible leadership and national renewal.”

On what basis, therefore, did the party, which was controversially ‘taken’ from its former owners last June and rebranded, embark on recruitment of new members since last June? Founded in 2005 as the Alliance for Democratic Change by Ralph Nwosu but registered in 2006 as the African Democratic Congress (ADC), it had set up shop as a political brothel and fielded presidential candidates every election cycle since 2007, with Prof. Utomi as the first candidate. It was thus unsurprising that ensconced in so much pruriency, nearly all its past presidential candidates were hysterical in their campaigns. Last year, former vice president Atiku Abubakar led the effort to coax Mr Nwosu into early retirement. And with the inauguration of a policy and manifesto committee, it is assumed that the old identity of the party, including its nebulous ideology of ‘anti-corruption and good governance’ and amateurish slogan of ‘arise and shine’, will be completely erased. Prof. Utomi, the party’s first candidate in 2007, is not expected to wince at the erasure of the identity of a party he once took advantage of.

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Clearly, the new ADC leaders think the old identity of the party is no longer tenable. Remaking the party, probably in their own image, is thus the natural thing to do, assuming their disparate worldviews can be successfully coalesced into a coherent whole. The need for ADC rebirth, however, speaks inadvertently to the stridency of their politics and priorities as party leaders and early joiners. Their emphasis in the past months, not to say their sing-song, had been how to win the presidency, their main and unalterable fixation. Little or nothing was heard about their vision and expectations for the states and local government areas. Hence there were no policy frameworks or manifesto. Worse, even far less had been discussed about their vision for democracy, which they paid hypocritical and incomplete attention to, and for Nigeria as a whole, which they all seem eager to betray or trade for private gain. In no part of their public statements so far have they once alluded to anything noble or dignified about the country and its people. Instead they have obtruded upon the people as their champions, approximated their yearnings, no matter how vaguely and inexpertly, and positioned themselves as the people’s catharsis over Nigeria’s economic and social crises.

Despite their best efforts to conceal their real intentions, ADC leaders flocked together and recruited hundreds of aggrieved followers to achieve only one purpose – defeat the APC in 2027 and win the presidency. It’s all about power and office, and perhaps secondarily to avenge themselves on their implacable enemies in the APC. How they justify their membership of a hijacked party while it was shorn of a manifesto or policy direction is hard to fathom. But the new ADC leaders are not incapable of doing the extraordinarily unthinkable. If challenged, they will want to walk on water. And having scaled the first hurdle of assembling together ageing plutocrats sworn to overthrowing the ruling party, and having ensured that they possessed enough venom to fuel their objectives, they have now turned to the generally menial task of writing manifestos and programmes. But observe critically how scrupulously they avoid any mention of ideology. They remind themselves of how fleet-footed they have been in defecting from one party to the other, not once, not twice, but many times. Their restless search was in fact devoted entirely to achieving their life’s ambition, nothing else. If one political vehicle proves incapacitated, they simply hop onto the next available vehicle with Machiavellian glee.

The 50 ‘wise men’ may not end up writing a great founding document, as indeed they seem incapable of doing, and must find ways to graft some newfangled and untested ideas on the old ones they are discarding, but they will nevertheless produce a document of one hue or the other. It is, however, certain that the document will not stand the test of time, given the variegated experiences, backgrounds, and motivations of the drafters. A few of the wise men and women may still opt out of the caucus before the drafting is done, as indeed one has already done citing irreconcilable differences. But they will delicately sustain some form of unity in order to produce and publish a document that will be impressively high-sounding, one that elicits knowing winks from skeptical intellectuals but masks the party leaders’ ignoble intentions. In the end, no one will really care about the tone or tenor of the document, not the rabble they will co-opt into their column, and certainly not the ageing, unideological and combative politicians in the twilight of their careers or close to expiration. It will be just a piece of dated paper produced by a group of vengeful politicians accustomed, like their rivals in other parties, to fooling all the people all the time.

February 1, 2026
APC presidential running mate speculations

There were no indications that the All Progressives Congress (APC) ever contemplated modifying the formula it adopted to win the 2023 presidential election. But in January, and out of the blue, speculations arose that the party might be amenable to a Muslim-Christian presidential ticket for the 2027 election. After about a week of reportorial indulgence, the party put the lie to the rumours. In addition, months earlier last year, a media feeding frenzy also occurred over whether Vice President Kashim Shettima might be dropped from the 2027 ticket. Again, it took the president affirming on Mr Shettima’s birthday how loyal and diligent and complementary the vice president had been to douse the speculations. On a distant tomorrow, other speculations might yet arise. It comes with the territory. It’s all politics.

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What is evident so far is that in 2023 the APC proved and probably established for all time the following presidential elections formulae: (a) for a southern Muslim candidate to stand any chance of winning the presidential election, he will need a northern Muslim running mate; (b) for a northern Muslim candidate to win, he will be sailing near the wind to take a southern Muslim running mate; (c) for a southern Christian candidate to win, he will need a northern Muslim running mate; and (d) for a northern Christian candidate to win, as tough as that might be, he needs a southern Muslim running mate. APC merely and sensibly adopted MKO Abiola’s tactful and serendipitous 1993 presidential election formula. It was idle speculation, indeed childish controversy, to suggest that the APC would discard a formula that has worked well over two dispensations.

February 1, 2026
Trump, Hitler: eerie leadership parallels

It was not just Greenland over which he tried to muscle Europe into acquiescence, or Venezuela where the killing of about 75 security agents meant nothing to him in the process of subjugating that Latin American country, or Iran where he fearfully needed to latch on to Israeli aerial triumphs to enact his own heroics, or Ukraine which he gleefully and fiendishly throws under the bus while denigrating President Volodymyr Zelensky and idolising Russia’s Vladimir Putin, or many world leaders whom he bullied, insulted, and scorned. For United States president Donald Trump, there is so much more about his politics and leadership style, so much more that it eerily reminds the world of World War II German leader, Adolf Hitler, whose narcissistic and megalomaniacal style drove the world into unprecedented bloodletting that caused the death of more than 60 million people.

After his most recent rant over Greenland, an icy expanse in the Arctic which he has now obviously failed to add to his vainglorious collections, it is time the world began drawing a parallel between Mr Trump and the Fuehrer, as nightmarish as that comparison may seem. The two leaders look alike politically, sharing disturbing proclivities in a ghoulishly familiar way. Hitler burnt down the Reichstag and used it as a casus belli for the overthrow of democracy; Mr Trump inspired the storming of Capitol Hill, the home of the US parliament. Hitler dreamt up schemes for personal enrichment, such as embossing his image on stamps in order to attract royalties; Mr Trump has cajoled foreign leaders to gift him airplanes and invest in his crypto company (World Liberty Financial), amassing millions of dollars in the process, with the company now valued at some $3bn. Hitler lacked empathy and enthusiastically embraced warmongering; Mr Trump excels in both departments. Hitler had an insatiable appetite for foreign land acquisitions, which he couched as lebensraum (living space for Germans); Mr Trump exemplifies the same medieval land-grabbing propensity completely out of tune with modern realities.

Mr Trump does not merely fit into Mr Putin’s expansionist worldview, or China’s Xi Jinping’s ogling of Taiwan, or the late Italian leader Benito Mussolini’s fascist leadership style, he is much more. He combines their greed so exquisitely with their weaknesses, and blends and unifies them in his eclectic and anachronistic perception of ‘strong leadership’. He is not making America great again, as he myopically reasons, assuming he is capable of any form of rational thinking; he is in fact corroding the American essence in an irreparable way. Venezuela was too divided to stand up to him; China is too strong for him to trifle with; Russia, despite its humiliation in Ukraine, is too unpredictable for him to dare; Nigeria was and remains too religiously, politically and ethnically divided to resist him. But a clearly exasperated Europe, long used to short cuts and dangerous appeasements that fostered two World Wars, has finally dared him over Greenland and tariffs threats, and won.

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Struck with the grim similarity between Mr Trump and Hitler, this writer looked up an AI overview of the leadership style of Hitler and found the following on the internet. “Adolf Hitler’s leadership style was primarily autocratic, centered on absolute power, control, and the Führerprinzip (leader principle), demanding total obedience and eliminating dissent, combined with powerful charismatic manipulation through propaganda, mass rallies, and emotional appeals to build intense loyalty and a cult of personality, ultimately driven by his racist ideology, territorial expansion goals, and a task-oriented, directive approach that ignored empathy and input from others.” If a reader was not told whose character was being portrayed, someone unfamiliar with the history of World War II might confidently conjecture that Mr Trump was the subject matter. As enlightened as Germany was in the early 20th century, they democratically voted Hitler into office, enabled and applauded his madness, and even after the terrible tragedy enacted upon their country, some Germans regretted only the loss of the war, not the racism, the purges, and the genocides.

After World War II propelled the US into global military leadership and in scholarship, it easily became the undisputed number one in virtually everything, its worldview unquestioned and revered, and its culture eagerly adopted as the avatar. The US gifted the world their philosophic founding fathers, made global legends out of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and hoisted dozens of literary icons who penned what could be regarded as universal classics into worldwide fame; and despite personifying contradictions between ideas it eminently propagated and the practice it embarrassingly submitted to, it also gifted the world men and women who nurtured science, shaped ideas, pricked conscience over racial injustice, and nudged the world to nirvana, the American dream. But that same US, citing fear of racial eclipse and apocalypse, has, through undisputed elections, projected and enabled Mr Trump’s ‘malignant narcissism’, thereby enthroning probably the worst American and Western leader ever. Like Hitler, his policies have engendered surplus for the American economy and reminded the world that militarily the US is incomparable and unstoppable. But in the long run, the incalculable damage now in gestation will reach its apogee in the years and decades ahead as the world scrambles to find alternative financial tools, military alliances, inspire a new arms race, and unleash an assemblage of Barbarians at the Western gates of Rome as well as Ottomans at the Eastern gates of Byzantium.

January 25, 2026
Gov Abba Yusuf’s convoluted defection

The All Progressives Congress (APC) believes that with the defection of Kano’s Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf from the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), the ruling party has made phenomenal gains for 2027. Perhaps. But first, they must find ways to manage the nuances of the defector and his defection. To do this successfully and even profit from it, they need to be reminded of the dynamics of Kano politics, not just to focus on the governor’s intransigent mentor, former governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso. Mr Yusuf is leaving the NNPP with eight House of Representatives members, 21 House of Assembly members, 44 local government chairmen, and a host of other officials, nearly all of whom are tired of Dr Kwankwaso’s suzerainty, not to say his dictations. The defection will be formalised in days; it will not only reshape Kano politics, it will trigger significant waves all over the Northwest.

Perhaps caught in the frenzy of Kano’s defection dynamic, not many people remember that Mr Yusuf contested the 2019 governorship election against former governor Abdullahi Ganduje. The latter was fighting for reelection and the former seeking office for the first time. Mr Yusuf lost by a wafer-thin margin of 1,024,713 to the winner’s 1,033,695. His main backer was former governor Kwankwaso whom he had known now for about 37 years, and whom he had served as personal assistant and commissioner in the state cabinet, in addition to being his son-in-law. Unlike the parting of ways between Dr Kwankwaso and Dr Ganduje, which was to a large extent strictly formal, the rupture between Mr Yusuf and the former governor cuts very deep.

In the 2019 election, Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II drew the ire of then Governor Ganduje by backing Mr Yusuf. The ensuing bitterness, among other predisposing factors, eventually culminated in the dethronement of Emir Sanusi II. It turned out that the emir and Mr Yusuf are cousins, and throughout the emir’s battle with Dr Ganduje, up until he became governor, Mr Yusuf had planted himself firmly in the emir’s corner. Now, Mr Yusuf and Dr Ganduje are about to lie in bed together in the APC. The ruling party may have gained a formidable politician and dogged fighter in Abba Gida-Gida, as Mr Yusuf is affectionately known among his supporters, it may have also inherited a convoluted family and political dynamic. They must now go on to find the fulcrum upon which to balance the state’s delicate political culture.

Kano is the closest state in Nigeria to a civic culture. Managing it, as the Kanawa often do with aplomb, may accord with textbook practice, but it also demands huge attention to detail and awareness not commonly known to most Nigerians. If, against the run of play, and fighting an incumbent in the 2019 election, Mr Yusuf nearly caused a major upset against Dr Ganduje, losing by a handful of some 8,982 controversial and litigated votes, imagine what the outcome would be if Dr Kwankwaso’s support could be properly measured and discounted. In the 2023 governorship poll, Mr Yusuf finally got the coveted diadem with a healthy and incontestable vote of 1,019,062 to the APC candidate’s 890,705. Whether Dr kwankwaso likes it or not, the gun now appears loaded in favour of both Mr Yusuf and the APC, if not necessarily against him as leader of the Kwankwasiyya movement, or any of the two factions in the NNPP.

While opponents of the ruling APC suspect and sometimes say that the party is behind the frictions and fissures in opposition parties, the reality is far different. Both the opposition Labour Party (LP) and the NNPP were adopted or hijacked by opportunistic politicians gunning for high offices at state and national levels. Unfortunately, the surrogate fathers could not effectively manage the fractiousness of their adopted parties, leading to irreconcilable differences and intractable internal squabbles. The former Anambra governor and LP presidential candidate in the 2023 poll eventually fled his adopted party. It also made sense for about six governors so far to leap into the void from the listing Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ship, not only in order to avoid electoral pitfalls regarding legitimate candidature, but also to escape ignominious electoral defeat in 2027. There is nothing amoral about the defections; it is just plain political expediency, regardless of inaccurately attributing to the APC the deliberate sponsorship of revolts in the opposition. Kano’s Mr Yusuf simply made the same sensible calculation.

While Dr Kwankwaso embroiled himself in lengthy negotiations with both the APC and the coalition African Democratic Congress (ADC), Mr Yusuf recognised the danger of pussyfooting like his mentor when party primaries are just a few months away. He suspected that once parties firmed up their potential candidates, even before the primaries, just like Osun State APC did thereby making the defection of Governor Ademola Adeleke impossible, he would be stranded, his loyalty to Dr Kwankwaso notwithstanding. The NNPP, Kano’s leading politicians understand, is also embroiled in litigations over which faction should be legally recognised as the authentic one. This was why the founder of NNPP, Boniface Aniebonam, insisted last Friday that Mr Yusuf had merely resigned from the Kwankwasiyya movement rather than from the NNPP. Mr Yusuf had tendered his resignation to a different faction of the party, the illegitimate one, he insinuated.

Even though the Kano chapter of the APC believed it stood a good chance of winning the 2027 governorship election without Mr Yusuf and Dr kwankwaso, the national leadership of the party may have prevailed on leading aspirants of the party to shelve their ambitions for now in favour of certainty. One or two top APC national chieftains may also suggest that defectors would not receive automatic tickets, there are, however, no indications that they would not. Negotiations were thought to have been concluded concerning all the defecting governors and states before the mass migrations took place. Four more years for any elected office holder will not ruin anybody’s ambition or life. Mr Yusuf has probably made the soundest choice, notwithstanding the cynicism of his detractors, or the pained silence of some of his critics, or the threats from his mentors. He has bolted from a fractured party, and politely declined to vacillate like his mentor who will in all likelihood not be contesting for any office in 2027 except he takes former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s bait of joining forces with someone in ADC on an implausible ticket to nowhere.

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Some five months before the primaries, the real shape of the 2027 battle appears to have emerged from its silhouette. Former vice president Atiku Abubakar’s ADC has opted, together with Mr Obi and some other political bantamweights, for the traditional form of political war: pitched battles festooned with medieval arms and tactics, seizure of the moral high ground through deprecating the ruling party’s policies and appointments, amplifying setbacks in operations against insecurity, attacking the character and personalities of the leading members of the APC administration, and adopting bobbing and weaving measures as well as tactical and especially ethnic and religious feints. The ruling party on the other has plodded on by assembling a phalanx of coalitions and alliances, locked down states and political heavyweights by sheer realpolitik, and ran both a tight administration and party. They, therefore, don’t need to engage in bloody pitched battles to take grounds inch by inch; instead they have won over those who held those grounds, state by state, and panjandrum by panjadrum.

Egged on by a stabilised economy whose growth prospects have enticed and surprised the world, and helped in no small way by a well-run party generally devoid of litigations, the APC is in the process, if not concluding the process, of making the 2027 elections a foregone conclusion. Kano’s Mr Yusuf, more than any other defector whether in Delta, Rivers, Enugu, Taraba, Akwa Ibom, or Plateau, has typified and embodied what the new politics should look like. Some have feared that Nigeria might end up a one-party state; but those fears are exaggerated. This is not the first time a party would be coaxing dominance out of the polity, nor will it be the last time. Under former president Obasanjo, the PDP did it, at a time securing about 30 states into their column. And now under President Bola Tinubu, the APC has also coaxed some 29 parties under their tent. Today, the PDP boasts of only four states. Who can tell what the APC would look like on a tentative tomorrow?

Meanwhile, the APC, after months of proselytising rancorous parties, must now labour under the burden of managing its many converts, some of them exuding worldviews and temperaments very alien to the ruling party. Kano’s Mr Yusuf is genial enough to submit to the sometimes nebulous and often elastic progressive ideology of the APC, and will not menace the party or compromise its chances in the coming polls. But it will also be necessary to find ways either to mollify Dr Kwankwaso’s rage or contain his boisterousness for revenge. The Kwankwasiyya leader may now be left with two dismal options: either to defect to the ADC where he will undoubtedly be warmly welcomed but with no guarantees he would not be made ineffective in the long run, or to sensibly rejoin his alienated protégés – Mr Yusuf and Dr Ganduje – in the APC where it is certain he will be absolutely recognised and applauded and his political future guaranteed. It is admittedly not an easy choice, especially for a leading politician like him wounded by controversial and inappropriate choices. Had he made up his mind much earlier, he would have kept his movement, sold himself to his host at a great and commensurate price, and kept his powder dry for future ambitions. One way or the other, he will have to make his move, as Mr Yusuf has done. When that happens, he must hope in the end that he will not buy a pig in a poke.

January 25, 2026
*Adamant Kwankwaso versus Kano Emirate (First published October 20, 2024)

In an interview two Thursdays ago, former governor of Kano State and leader of the Kwankwasiyya movement, Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso, disclosed that the splitting of the Kano Emirate into five emirates in 2019 as well as the dethronement of Muhammadu Sanusi II in 2020 would be revisited. In May 2019, former governor Abdullahi Ganduje had assented to the Kano State House of Assembly bill splitting the emirate. With the assent, the emirate was split into five: Kano, the surviving rump, and Rano, Bichi, Karaye, and Gaya. Barely a year later, Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II was deposed, for, among other things, disrespecting the office of the governor, and land racketeering. Dr Kwankwaso insisted that the former emir was deposed because of Dr Ganduje’s inferiority complex. The former governor, however, countered by flaunting his own PhD and his wife’s professorship, mocking his traducers for not having professorial wives.

The Kano quagmire has become a huge entanglement, punctuated by bitter quarrels, trenchant language, and now almost irreconcilable differences triggered by a spectacular falling out due to unmet expectations of loyalty. Dr Ganduje was twice deputy governor to Dr Kwankwaso (1999-2003; 2011-2015), though punctuated by a two-term interregnum filled by ex-governor Ibrahim Shekarau. (They have rich CVs in Kano: highly educated, urbane, articulate, but cantankerous and unforgiving). Days after the Supreme Court gave judgement in the last governorship election dispute, Dr Ganduje invited Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf, a civil engineer who also brandishes a master’s degree in Business Administration, and Dr Kwankwaso to abandon their party, the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), and defect to the All Progressives Congress (APC). He, however, sarcastically added that he would automatically become their Jagora (leader). The invitation has incensed the duo, Dr Ganduje’s sense of humour being lost on them. Though Kano’s leading politicians have so much in common, particularly the more than a decade of camaraderie between Dr Kwankwaso and Dr Ganduje, the Kanawa are likely to remain irreconcilable and will continue to bait one another.

It is mainly in this context that the promised review of the Kano Emirate split should be understood. Dr Kwankwaso will remain adamant until it proves politically costly. It is obvious why he is at the forefront of campaigning for the review of the emirate balkanisation, but it is not altogether clear that it makes political sense to champion the cause instead of the governor. Gov Yusuf hails from Gaya, one of the beneficiary emirates consequent upon the Kano Emirate split. Whole new infrastructure and economies have followed the split; reversing history now will be more contentious than before the split. But this has not deterred Dr Kwankwaso. According to him: “Honestly it (the Kano emirates issue) is one of the things that nobody has sat with me to discuss so far, but I am sure we are going to sit and see how to go about it. Is it going to be allowed, demolished, corrected, or whatever? It will be revisited, and what’s supposed to be done will be done. There were a lot of things and this was a trap. All these things were not done in good faith or intention. It was brought with some bad intentions which every one of you here and our listeners are aware of. Sometimes you come with things that are good and they turn out to be bad while sometimes you bring bad things and they turn out to be good…”

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For now, two things seem uppermost in the mind of the NNPP leader. One, he wants the Kano Emirate reunified. The previously monolithic emirate has a nostalgic hold on him and perhaps on many other Kanawa. It was a symbol of bigness, power and influence. But has the rump Kano Emirate become less influential in the cultural and political scheme of things in the state, and indeed in Nigeria where everyone is still besotted to Kano as a thriving and powerful emirate and entity? It is doubtful; for water is finding its level and course, especially after five years. To begin rebuilding the emirate through reunification will probably throw up fresh uncertainties. Will it not be better to let sleeping dogs lie, regardless of the politics that underscored the balkanisation? As the Hausa idiomatically put it, “A bar kaza a cikin gashin ta’. It is, sadly, very tempting not to let bad enough alone. The itch to tamper with things based on sometimes indefensible or untenable sentiments is always high. That the split was also ‘bad intentioned’, as Dr Kwankwaso said, and coming from, of all people, the hated Dr Ganduje, seems especially galling to the leader of the Kwankwasiyya movement and protector of the emirate council.

Two, somehow, either because of the goodness of his heart or for reasons not even he can properly decode, Dr Kwankwaso wants the ‘historic wrong’ done to Emir Sanusi II redressed. The deposed emir was not even Dr Kwankwaso’s first choice when he was appointed in 2014, a year before the former governor’s second term ended. Obviously he has grown to like him immensely. But since the NNPP controls the legislature, the lawmakers can of course be made to do the NNPP bidding. However, the emir wasn’t just deposed for thumbing his nose at Gov Ganduje, he was also probed for unregulated and liberal spending habits, and then queried for land racketeering. The NNPP will have to get all those inconvenient details expunged to legitimately return him to office. Reinstating Emir Sanusi II may not be the chief goal of Dr Kwankwaso, but he will do anything to rub Dr Ganduje’s nose in it.

Targeting and trashing his former deputy, who is now chairman of the APC, may, however, be far easier than managing his new mentee and governor, Mr Yusuf. On both the emirate matter and possible reinstatement of Sanusi II, the more candid and less bashful Dr Kwankwaso has thrust himself forward and spoken more authoritatively than the governor. He forgets that a new sheriff is in town, and his obtrusions will in due course be resisted more and more as state affairs get more volatile. It is inevitable. All it takes is a little more consolidation by the governor, and the new helmsman will begin to assert himself, differ from his mentor in policy perspectives, and eventually strike out from under the shadows of his leader in whose government he was once a Commissioner for Works, Housing and Transport between 2011 and 2015. Sooner or later, Mr Yusuf’s mollifying and conciliating rule will contend with Dr Kwankwaso’s fierce and adamant disposition until something gives. No state has yet balked this trend. It won’t begin with Kano.

January 18, 2026
Discourses on Kwankwaso’s Kano

Last year, this column predicted the parting of ways between Kano’s Governor Abba Yusuf and his mentor and godfather Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, a former governor himself. Both politicians have now acrimoniously reached a point of no return in their relationship. The governor has virtually defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC), tired of his mentor’s dithering, while Dr Kwankwaso has been left stranded in the litigious New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), angry with his mentee for his impatience and flirtation with the enemy. For more than one year, Dr Kwankwaso negotiated with APC leaders to facilitate his defection, but every time the ruling party met his terms, he shifted the goalpost. Vexed and irritated, the APC separately courted an already disaffected Mr Yusuf who was anxious to avoid the legal pitfalls in the NNPP that threatened his reelection. It turned out that the governor couldn’t wait any longer, while his mentor could afford all the time in the world. The explosion that followed in the last two weeks between the somnolent mentor and his agitated mentee was predictable and inevitable, as this column anticipated in October 2024.

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One more prediction can be ventured on the Kano affair: Dr Kwankwaso has been left holding the short end of the stick, and Mr Yusuf is left with all the advantage. Having tarried so long in trying to negotiate a deal worthy of his stature, the Kwankwasiyya leader will now have to fight for his political life with little chance of stalemating the war or emerging victorious. He faces the unpalatable choice of either migrating to the African Democratic Congress (ADC), where there are covert and cowardly talks of unhorsing the immovable former vice president Atiku Abubakar, or of staying put at the forlorned NNPP. Whatever he does, he faces a veritable Hobson’s choice. To return to the APC suitor is to follow his mentee to the new watering hole while simultaneously losing face. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is out of the picture, while the ADC, now seething with plots and dreams of utopia, will test his forbearance to its limit. Enjoy the following 2024 discourses that presaged the Kwankwaso debacle.

January 18, 2026
*NNPP will not be outdone (First published October 20, 2024)

No one thinks that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) state chapters are free of bickering and rancour. If the rancour appears subdued, or if party elders still command respect and exert tremendous influence on quarrelsome rank and file, it is because the party controls the national levers of power and distributes patronage. The opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party (LP), and the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) are not so lucky. Since they lost the presidential election last year, both the PDP and LP have been at once strident in opposition and wracked by guilt and rage. Last week, this column explored the tangential issue of electoral cooperation between the NNPP and LP, wondering why instead of tackling their identity crises and internal conflicts, they chose to focus on the more ambitious project of taking the presidency in 2027. The PDP, as nearly everyone knows, had sunk into crisis since 2015. It is now the turn of the two other opposition parties to confront their fates.

While the cancer gnawing at the liver of the PDP has festered for nearly a decade, some three weeks ago, the tremor coursing through the body politic of the LP assumed monumental dimension. Now, the NNPP, an otherwise fringe party controlling only Kano State, will not be outdone. Party leaders, led by the pugnacious and vengeful Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, have managed against the run of play to furnish themselves not only an internal crisis but also a war. No party has a monopoly of internal crisis, not even the APC, let alone the naturally fractious PDP; but the NNPP is determined not to be a laggard. The Young Turks in the party, though still scheming in the shadows, and working in concert with a smattering of old and calloused hands, have signaled the start of a rebellion. Their goal is to either dissipate the influence of Dr Kwankwaso or overthrow his suzerainty altogether. They feel his overbearing presence too constraining, and his diktats, not to say his malice, bilious and anachronistic. They also empathise with the ‘helpless’ Kano governor Abba Kabir Yusuf whom they are secretly nudging to extricate himself from the stranglehold of the party leader. But they do not yet have the courage to challenge their mentor in open fight. They know a thing or two about the unappeasable Dr Kwankwaso, with a few of them having at one time or the other been scorched by his fury; and they know quite well that he does not take prisoners. For now, however, they will fight him secretly, and even hide behind the thin flak jacket of the governor.

This is of course not the first time the NNPP, which was founded in 2002 by the Anambrarian Boniface Aniebonam, will be engaged in fratricidal conflict. Since its takeover by the Kwankwasiyya crowd in 2022, the party has been ill at ease. Last April, Mr Aniebonam accused Dr kwankwaso, who is now informally described as NNPP party leader, of hijacking the party, changing its logo and flag, and mutilating its constitution. But that initial fight was half-hearted and stalemated. A new chapter in the fight has now been opened. Unsettled by how the party leader has been riding roughshod over everyone in the party, particularly Gov Yusuf, a few party top shots reportedly schemed to throw off Dr Kwankwaso’s yoke. The alleged rebels refused to confirm the existence of any plot, but the state chairman of the party, Hashim Sulaiman Dungurawa, zeroed in on a few of the alleged masterminds and suspended them from the party ostensibly for disrespecting the party, disloyalty, and abuse of power. They are the Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Abdullahi Baffa Bichi, and the Commissioner of Transportation, Muhammad Diggol.

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The story of the brewing revolt in Kano is, however, not the usual kind. Sources suggest that the so-called rebellion tagged ‘Abba Tsaya da Kafarka’, meaning, Abba stand on your feet, was plotted to put an end to the dominance and dictations of Dr Kwankwaso. The suspension of the two officials has since been rescinded, and both of them have disowned the plot, but the feeling persists around the seat of power in Kano that the party leader is unsparing and megalomaniacal. The party leader himself refused to comment on the matter, especially on the suspension of the two government officials, preferring instead that all inquiries be directed to the party chairman; but no one is deceived that his reticence means absolution. The plotters may have shriveled like worms on a hot plate, but everyone knows that it is a question of time before the silent war breaks into the open. The excesses of Dr Kwankwaso will make an open confrontation certain.

Gov Yusuf is unlikely to join any rebellion now, regardless of how much Dr Kwankwaso needles him. Though it is clear to many Kanawa that the governor does not enjoy as much freedom as he would like, he would, however, continue to walk the tightrope for as long as is humanly tolerable. He has been made to inherit the party leader’s enemies, chief among whom is former governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje. But he has probably seen why his predecessor fell out with the party leader. Whether his education is complete on this issue or not, he will nevertheless be wary of fighting his benefactor openly. Two reasons will account for his restraint. Firstly, he won the Kano governorship poll by a wafer-thin margin, scoring only 52 percent that was controversially upheld by the Supreme Court. If he is keen on reelection, he will try his utmost to accommodate the eccentricities of his mentor and party leader.

Secondly, Kano has an unenviable history of godsons fighting with and alienating their godfathers, as exampled by the late Governor Abubakar Rimi versus the statesman and NEPU legend, Aminu Kano. The end result of that open warfare did not bode well for the former governor’s political career. However, Dr Kwankwaso probably exaggerates his influence and power in Kano, and by overreaching himself too many times, he may already have compromised the reverence in which he is held. But Gov Yusuf will not want to find out whether he would be undone by an open warfare with his party leader. More, seeing how the SSG and Transportation commissioner ate crow last week, no one in public office in Kano will be eager to flex his muscles anytime soon. Discretion, they say, is the better part of valour. Borno, Katsina and Niger States are some of the very few states where godfathers enthroned godsons without acrimony or subsequent interferences. Kano and Rivers States could borrow a leaf from any of those three states had godfathers Kwankwaso and Nyesom Wike been made of subtler and more nuanced stuff.

January 18, 2026