Senator Ali Ndume (Borno South) has seemed to master the art of propaganda for political self-preservation. He has embraced the art wholeheartedly, profited from it, and may have no reason now or in the future to abandon what has served him well. Last week, Sen Ndume, who is the Senate Chief Whip, was on television berating the planned relocation of some Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) departments as well as the headquarters of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) from Abuja to Lagos. The senator has inspired a campaign that views the relocations from the regional and ethnic prisms. Political consequences would follow the relocations, he roared. Working in tandem with the Northern Senators Forum (NSF) and the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), both of which incomprehensibly view the relocations as a ploy to stymie the development of the old political North, the sometimes controversial senator swore that the measures would be reversed for peace to reign.
Both the CBN and the Aviation ministry have tried to justify the movements on the grounds of administrative expediency. The former Aviation minister, Hadi Sirika, relocated FAAN to Abuja in 2020 against advice and sound judgement, despite Lagos remaining the country’s Aviation business hub. Relocating some five departments of the CBN to Lagos and other places, particularly Banking Supervision Department, in a country where most banks are headquartered in Lagos, makes a whole lot of administrative and financial sense. The northern political elite, who erroneously see Abuja as a regional preserve and conflates its role and location with northern goals and aspirations, argue that the relocation plans were inspired by a Lagos cartel misadvising President Bola Tinubu in favour of an ethnic agenda. The campaign has caught fire and massaged the sensibility of many northerners inured to the economic arguments for the relocations.
Sen Ndume may not have triggered the hysteria, but his habitual lack of reflectiveness, have led him to become the public face of the regional campaign for the revocation of the relocation plans. In fact, last week on television, he seemed assured that the relocations would be reversed if political consequences were not to follow, obviously in reference to the 2027 elections. There is nothing anyone can say to mitigate Sen Ndume’s hysteria. Hysteria is woven into his DNA, and he is never embarrassed even when his arguments are proved to be fatuous. Last October, he was proved wrong after walking out of Senate plenary following a minor altercation with Senate President Godswill Akpabio over what was termed a ‘procedural infringement’. It followed a motion he attempted to raise on the closure of Nigerian borders with Niger Republic. It became clear later that he acted in a huff; but he waved off his walkout as a coincidence. He refused to concede he was wrong, and the Senate which was unwilling to be distracted by a needless controversy did not push the matter.
In 2014, the senator was also embroiled in a controversy over Boko Haram, with the government prosecuting him for failing to inform law enforcement agencies on the activities of the terrorist group. Between 2003 and 2011, he represented Borno State in the House of Representatives. And since 2011 till date, he has represented the state in the senate. He is incontrovertibly well on the way to becoming a lawmaking legend from Borno State. But his rise and fame have not been matched by a corresponding assimilation of the calmness and maturity that come with age as a political leader, nor by the peerless experience that flows from longevity as a national lawmaker, nor indeed by any lawmaking sublimity. Armed with a master’s degree in Business and Computer Education from the University of Toledo in Ohio, United States, he is regarded as a brilliant educationist and a bold but probably impetuous politician and lawmaker. Yet, his judgement in regards to some weighty national issues had often fallen short of expectations. He had problems with the Bukola Saraki-led 8th Senate over his support for the Ibrahim Magu-led EFCC, and in 2022 was Rotimi Amaechi’s director of campaign for the presidency.
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How much of his dissonate politics is coloured by a lack of enthusiasm for the Bola Tinubu administration is hard to determine, especially seeing how his political predilections has been suffused by an absence of ideology. It is, however, significant that he is not inconvenienced by ideology, despite his long-term membership of both the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and the All Progressives Congress (APC). Like most Nigerian politicians, he is eclectic, dilatory, and prone to easy disaffection and defection. He has represented Borno State in both chambers of the National Assembly for a cumulative 20 years. Those years should have forged in him a transcendental grasp of lawmaking, and imbued him with ideas and methods that supersede but do not obliterate his ethnic, religious and regional affiliations.
Yes, Sen Ndume is at liberty to be conservative or progressive, indeed even unideological if he so wishes, but he does not have the freedom to be insular or reactionary, vices that war against the politics he claims to project. Indeed, in reality, and in the past few years, his politics has been marked by opportunism and desultoriness, vices and limitations that have disabled him from rising to the stature of a legend his immense talents and boldness should naturally confer on him. Indeed, if he was assisted by brilliant and remunerated aides seconded to senators of his rank by the state, and if he had taken time and caution to study the CBN and FAAN relocation issues beyond the private interests of the northern elite, he would have been less stentorian in assuming that the measures would be reversed. No, they won’t be; and this is mainly because they make a whole lot of sense economically and administratively. What is more, he must know by now that the administration under whose purview these changes are contemplated have never shied away from taking difficult and unpopular measures. They won’t start now, for vacillation is not their forte.