The two senators implied in the title of this piece are Senators Shehu Sani, representing the Kano Central senatorial district and Dino Melaye, representing the Kogi West senatorial district. And yes, in the title of this piece, I do intend an allusion to the celebrated novel of Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities. But only ironically, as imaginatively counterfactual to the historical and political resonances of Dickens’ novel. As is well-known, the novel is set just before and during the earth-shaking social convulsions of the French Revolution. In the novel, Dickens is both fascinated and horrified by the revolutionary upheaval, as can be seen in the very first few sentences of the novel, incidentally perhaps the most famous opening words of any novel in world literature: “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom; it was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief; it was the epoch of incredulity. It was the season of light; it was the season of darkness. It was the spring of hope; it was the winter of despair.”
Yes, we have two senators in the “tale” in this essay, but who can describe life in Buhari’s Nigeria as both the “best and the worst of times”? Who can say of the whole period of the PDP/APC era that it gave Nigerians both the “spring of hope” and “the winter of despair”? Has it all not been one-sidedly the worst of times, the age of foolishness and the season of darkness? To respond productively to these queries, let us now bring into the discussion our two senators and the current travails they are both receiving from the ruling party – to which, incidentally, both Senators belong.
Briefly stated, Senators Sani and Melaye are outright personae non grata to the establishment of both the APC and the Buhari administration. As I write these words, Melaye has just gone through what will perhaps count as the most traumatizing two weeks of his life during which he encountered the following things one after the other in quick succession: he was arrested, released, and then rearrested; while being transported from Abuja to Lokoja in a police van, he allegedly escaped from his captors by leaping from the speeding vehicle, in the event sustaining serious injuries even though he did manage to escape again from the police. But not for too long as he was fished out of his hiding place in Abuja and rearrested for the second time. At the present moment, Melaye languishes in police jail in Lokoja and he will be there until the first week of June as his bail application was denied at his arraignment. Meanwhile, please note that it was from the hospital and on a stretcher that Melaye was brought for the arraignment. We shall presently get to the reason for his arrest in the first place as this is remarkably, perhaps even uncannily similar for the reason why Senator Sani has become a target of both the police command of Kano State and the Governor of the State, Nasir Ahmad el Rufai.
Admittedly, the travails of Sani have been considerably less dramatic and traumatic than those of his colleague, Melaye. But then, he is wanted for questioning on a murder case that is already under trial in Kano. Please note that the invitation for him to report to the Police Command of Kano State was made very public, the letter sent to him having been made easily accessible to the press. But what was not made public, what became common knowledge only after Sani himself released pertinent documents to the press, was a letter from Governor Rufai to the Judge trying the relevant murder case informing the judge that he, the Governor, had an interest in this murder case before him. For this reason, Sani has loudly and credibly claimed that he is being carefully and deliberately framed for a murder charge, the purpose being of course to get rid of him judicially through capital punishment. And if that does not work, then politically through the ripple effects of a long trial for murder allegedly committed by thugs and hoodlums said to have been hired by Sani. It is worthy of note that although Melaye’s arraignment did not mention murder, he faces basically the same charge for which Sani is being hounded by the police – that of hiring thugs to cause mayhem and insecurity to political opponents in his home state.
This last point leads us directly to the remarkable similarities between the confrontation of these two senators with the powers that be in their respective states, Kano and Kogi; the powers that be in their political party, the APC; and the powers that be in the National Police Command that normatively acts under the behest of the Buhari administration. Permit me to be as specific as possible on this point, this chain of cause and effect.
Sani and Melaye have each been embroiled in a long, bitter and fractious feud with the Governor of their respective state, Nasir el Rufai of Kano and Yahaya Bello of Kogi. Since each of these Governors sees himself as the President’s point man in his state, this means that the feud between Governor and Senator in each state is more or less a feud between the Senator and the President. And indeed, Sani has been remarkably outspoken in his criticisms, his outright condemnation of the vision and the political will of Buhari. More on this point later in this piece, especially in the Epilogue.
Melaye has not been as frontal as Sani in his opposition to Buhari, but everyone knows that he is a point man for the current Senate President, Bukola Saraki, whose ambition for the presidency is the most poorly kept political secret in the country. For this reason, Melaye cannot be said to be exactly in Buhari’s corner now, if indeed he ever was at any point in the past. At any rate, this is the essential point being advanced here: Sani and Melaye are, at the present time, the foremost dissenters from the status quo in their party, the APC, as this is represented by both the state governor and the president. Moreover, both senators are, in their own right and in the existing scheme of things, the ultimate mavericks in their party in particular and more generally, among the country’s political elite. But that is about all that can be said to be a common or shared trait between the two politicians. This is the point of departure for this essay.
Even with the greatest charitableness in the world, it is difficult to take Melaye seriously on almost any count private or public, personal or political, objective or subjective. This is compounded by the fact that he appears not to take himself seriously – even when he seems to be serious. The impression he never fails to give is that he is forever trying to be as entertaining as possible a parody of himself – which is already a parody. How else can you explain the motivations of a man who claims and boasts of achievements and accomplishments that can very easily be shown to be fake? The degrees he claims to have bagged from prestigious universities at home and abroad, most of them shown to be non-existent? The number of awards, prizes, accolades, honours and citations that he touts? The large fleet of very expensive and very exotic cars whose ownership he flaunts and boasts on Instagram and Twitter? The bizarre acts of insulting political opponents in his own party through sexist insults directed at their wives, juxtaposed with his publicized arrest for physically battering his own former wife while pointing a gun to her head? The Trump-like propensity to lie easily and shamelessly? The list goes on and on and on. That Melaye stands out among all our politicians is an understatement. But he stands out as a refutation, not a realization, of his claims to being motivated by the interests of the poor and the downtrodden of our society.
Like Melaye, the roots of Sani’s career as a politician lie in proven records of student union activism in his youth. But there ends any and all further comparisons between them. Sani, it seems, has never really departed from the idealism and the “recklessness” of his youth. In the period of the long struggle against military dictatorship in the country, he distinguished himself by the constancy and the courage of his campaign against the dictatorships. These came to a head when Sani Abacha had him condemned for execution which sentence was later commuted to 15 years of imprisonment, his release from prison coming only on the heels of a general amnesty to all political prisoners after Abacha’s sudden death. Indeed, Sani was a loud and clear voice in the call for the actualization of the electoral victory of M.K.O. Abiola and the SDP in the fateful elections of 1993. And his antecedents, his comradeship with radicals of the North and South is as rare as it is extensive and highly pedigreed. When he became a Senator in 2015, he startled the Nigerian public by the nature of the voluntary declaration of assets that he made to the Code of Conduct Bureau that included among his “assets” his wives and children! Perhaps most notable and pertinent of all to the present discussion, from his election to the Senate in 2015 to yesterday, Sani has been very scathing, very unrestrained in his critique of Buhari himself, his party and the political order in general. Even as I write these words, he faces the threat of “discipline” from the top brass of the National Assembly for spilling the beans on just how lavish and obscene are the salaries, allowances and remunerations that our parliamentarians collect monthly and annually.
To bring this “tale” of our two senators to its conclusion, permit me to make it clear that I do not see in the differences and divergences in the personalities and careers of Sani and Melaye the two contrastive faces of the “best and the worst” of the Buhari ascendancy. Definitely, Melaye unambiguously presents us with the decadence and the darkness of these times, especially as sedimented above all else in the political class. But more than that, to the extent that he promotes himself as a champion of the downtrodden, especially in his state, Melaye is an accurate reflection of the absurdity and the self-deception of the claim of the Buhari ascendancy as a change agent. From the likes of Dino Melaye, change will never come. Ditto from the likes of Mohammadu Buhari. How deeply ironic then that Buhari and his servitors are hellbent in writing the obituary on the political career of the Senator.
Shehu Sani presents us with a more complex scenario. Although he is both a published poet and playwright, he is far from being an incarnation of the Dickensian “spring of hope” and “season of light” as expressed and explored in A Tale of Two Cities. But I think Sani and those around him provide the best case that we have of a genuinely reformist formation within the APC in particular and the political class in general. However, it is clear that Sani’s days in the APC are numbered. I said in the APC. For it is certain now that men and women like him have no place in the APC precisely because APC has no place for them. Here, I have in mind Sani’s recent observation that leaving the PDP for the APC is like moving from Syria to Afghanistan! In this respect, if he can sustain his political relevance beyond and outside the APC, it might just be the sort of indication we need that the present winter of discontent might lead to a future spring of hope.
Epilogue: A small sample of tweets from Senator Sani
he roots of Herdsmen Murder and kidnappings in other parts of Nigeria is in the policy of paying “Fulani Herdsmen” by some Governors. They appeased a monster with public funds and now the monster is going from door to door: Sahel, Savanah, Mangrove Forests.
5:22 AM – Apr 12, 2008
The mass killings & kidnappings going on in parts of Kaduna state is systematically suppressed in order not to embarrass the state govt. and the FG. Poor people burying their dead with tears and others paying ransom to Herdsmen. The victims are expected to praise Govt. for ‘trying’
8:02 AM – Apr 12, 2018
Those who abuse power by thinking that they can use security forces to silence us or tarnish our reputation have taken on the wrong person. They will always fail as they usually do.
5:22 AM – Apr 13, 2018
When a government fears the truth, it can strike a shadow with a sword.
3:07 AM – Apr 14, 2018
Biodun Jeyifo
bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu