SOMETIME in September 2006, I was in the Aso Drive, Abuja residence of Prof. Jibril Aminu, the Senator representing Adamawa Central in the Senate, conducting an interview for his biography. It was a sunny Friday morning. The interview was disrupted by the arrival of an important guest.
When this rather frail looking elderly gentleman was ushered into the study where we were sitting, I saw he was a vaguely familiar figure, wearing a grey-tinged beard.
“I am sure you know Admiral Nyako”, our host said, holding Nyako’s hand, “and in sha Allah the next governor of Adamawa State”. I was shocked. In the first place, Prof had equally given me the name of a different person for the same post.
Perhaps, it did not work out between them? In the second place, why Admiral Murtala Hamman-YeroNyako (GCON, CFR, rcds, D.(Agric), a man who had been military governor, member of the Supreme Military Council and Chief of Naval Staff? Was he also being exhumed from retirement just like Obasanjo? Well, I never knew he was also into partisan politics.
It turned out that he was not. He had gone big time into mango farming. In fact, he was widely known as Baban Mangwaro in the Yola locality where he operates his farms. Nyako was not thinking of politics, let alone being elected into the office of governor. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo and his friend of many decades, Prof. Aminu, had joined hands to shuffle former Vice President Atiku Abubakar out of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to prevent Atiku from running for president on its platform.
In the same manner that Obasanjo handpicked Governors Umaru Yar’ Adua as presidential candidate of the PDP and Goodluck Jonathan as his running mate, the President and Senator Aminu(who had been given full charge of the PDP in Adamawa State) went to Nyako’s farm and literally plucked him out to stand as their trusted candidate for PDP governor of Adamawa State to succeed Atiku’s flunkey, Governor Bonnie Haruna.
No sooner had Aminu done with the introduction than Nyako launched a most effusive glorification of the Professor of Medicine, calling him the “leader of our Party in Adamawa, a great intellectual of international repute and a source of inspiration to all Nigerians”. Listening to Nyako, I was a little bit afraid for Aminu. He sounded too glib, but who was I to complain since the Professor seemed quite gratified by the Admiral’s grandiloquent exaltation of him.
It was not up to six months after Nyako took over the reins of Governor of Adamawa State that I heard that yawa don gas between him and his “Party Leader”. Things had fallen hopelessly apart between them. This godfather thing never really works. Nyako had taken steps to assert his independence, including snatching the reins of the PDP from Aminu and his supporters. He used his Chief of Staff, Alhaji Tukur Bello, to stiff-arm Aminu. Bello is now occupying Aminu’s former seat at the Senate. Not only that, Nyako fully intended to hand over power to one of his sons after his eight years.
That did not go down well because, as rumour had it that, Aminu also had the same ambition for one of his sons, and so did Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, who eventually was sponsored by President Goodluck Jonathan to become the National Chairman of the PDP.
The circumstances that led to Nyako’s departure from the PDP to the newly registered All Progressives Congress (APC) was traced to the irreconcilable differences between Nyako’s hunger to impose his son with his power of gubernatorial incumbency on the one hand, and Alhaji Tukur’s unbending resolve to use his position as National Chairman of the Party to crown his own son. Aminu had long been rendered a virtual bystander in the whole matter.
That is a taste of Adamawa politics for you. In Adamawa politics, just like that of Anambra, dog eats dog, and there is never really a permanent winner or loser, since the wheel of political fortune is always turning. But just like in Anambra politics, in spite of the sound and fury, you never easily get to hear about political assassinations, which is more rampant in South West Nigerian politics.
Nyako moved to APC, some say, because he was denied the opportunity to use the PDP for his purpose. But it remains to be seen if Atiku, a much savvier politician with deeper roots in the game will let him use the APC. He may climb down from his high governorship office and find no other alternative than to return to his farm from where he was picked by Obasanjo and Aminu.
Since Nyako went into APC, he has turned too viral for his own good, the good of people around him and the good of the country at large. Remember when, a few months ago, he snivelled that he is afraid of being “poisoned” by his colleague, Governor Theodore Orji of Abia State, whom he has always sat next to due to the alphabetical order of seating in the Council of State meetings.
That accusation, as shocking and lowly as it was, came from the blue and gave an insight into the quality of mental and psychological make-up of this retired naval officer. Poison you for what! A Niger Deltan was once told, at a public function: “please don’t kidnap me!” There was laughter in the hall. He nimbly replied his heckler: “But you have no kidnap value”. There was applause. Need I say more?
Politics of bitterness
Nyako’s recent poisonous letter to his fellow governors of Northern Nigeria accusing President Goodluck Jonathan of using the prolonged emergency rule in the North East (including his Adamawa State) to perpetrate “genocide” with a view to “depopulating” the North was politics of bitterness taken too far. Alhaji Waziri Ibrahim, the apostle of “politics without bitterness” and a Nigerian legend from the North East, must have turned several times in his grave when this letter made its ugly way into the public arena.
It was a lunatic rant, and the only people I saw applauding it were the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), an equally rabid and frustrated outfit made up of expired former public office holders who believe that Nigeria is a colony of Northern Nigeria being illegally ruled by a Niger Delta impostor, President Jonathan.
Nyako’s letter is not just unbecoming of a retired Admiral of the Nigerian Navy; it just does not make sense, which is why I called it a lunatic rant.
Boko Haram terrorists were created by failed political leaders of Arewa, such as Nyako. They are Arewa citizens of Nigeria, in cahoots with their relations, friends, associates and hirelings from across the border, killing, maiming, burning, looting, annihilating, abducting and slaughtering innocent Nigerians who are mostly Arewa Muslims like themselves in a core Arewa enclave. Because they are our countrymen marauding a part of our country, President Jonathan mobilised the armed forces to flush them out. It is his constitutionally bounded duty to do so. If he fails to do it we will send him out of Aso Villa.
Jonathan has handled the crisis, as some say, with kid gloves, perhaps mindful of the inciting blackmail that the likes of Nyako are ready to bandy. Jonathan started with police action, then limited military action, before he recently sent in a combined military operation.
Perhaps, his major fault is his refusal to sack the democratic structures headed by governors, some of whom have been reported to be Boko Haram funders. Nyako obviously knows all about genocides, because he was part and parcel of the Nigerian armed forces that massacred defenceless Igbo civilians in the North in the aftermath of the 1966 coups and also murdered many more inside Biafra. So he can talk.
But the good thing is that every decent Nigerian has condemned the shame of Murtala Nyako, a man sent to Dartmouth Royal Naval Academy, Englandin 1962 to become an officer and gentleman. Quite obviously, the training did not go beyond the surface of his skin.
How could such a character have attained the highest rank in the Nigerian Navy – an Admiral – without being seen for whom he really was? Obasanjo and Aminu should apologise to Nigerians for excavating and imposing him on the people of Adamawa State to cause trouble for Nigerians. Vanguard.
When this rather frail looking elderly gentleman was ushered into the study where we were sitting, I saw he was a vaguely familiar figure, wearing a grey-tinged beard.
Governor Murtala Nyako
Perhaps, it did not work out between them? In the second place, why Admiral Murtala Hamman-YeroNyako (GCON, CFR, rcds, D.(Agric), a man who had been military governor, member of the Supreme Military Council and Chief of Naval Staff? Was he also being exhumed from retirement just like Obasanjo? Well, I never knew he was also into partisan politics.
It turned out that he was not. He had gone big time into mango farming. In fact, he was widely known as Baban Mangwaro in the Yola locality where he operates his farms. Nyako was not thinking of politics, let alone being elected into the office of governor. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo and his friend of many decades, Prof. Aminu, had joined hands to shuffle former Vice President Atiku Abubakar out of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to prevent Atiku from running for president on its platform.
In the same manner that Obasanjo handpicked Governors Umaru Yar’ Adua as presidential candidate of the PDP and Goodluck Jonathan as his running mate, the President and Senator Aminu(who had been given full charge of the PDP in Adamawa State) went to Nyako’s farm and literally plucked him out to stand as their trusted candidate for PDP governor of Adamawa State to succeed Atiku’s flunkey, Governor Bonnie Haruna.
No sooner had Aminu done with the introduction than Nyako launched a most effusive glorification of the Professor of Medicine, calling him the “leader of our Party in Adamawa, a great intellectual of international repute and a source of inspiration to all Nigerians”. Listening to Nyako, I was a little bit afraid for Aminu. He sounded too glib, but who was I to complain since the Professor seemed quite gratified by the Admiral’s grandiloquent exaltation of him.
It was not up to six months after Nyako took over the reins of Governor of Adamawa State that I heard that yawa don gas between him and his “Party Leader”. Things had fallen hopelessly apart between them. This godfather thing never really works. Nyako had taken steps to assert his independence, including snatching the reins of the PDP from Aminu and his supporters. He used his Chief of Staff, Alhaji Tukur Bello, to stiff-arm Aminu. Bello is now occupying Aminu’s former seat at the Senate. Not only that, Nyako fully intended to hand over power to one of his sons after his eight years.
That did not go down well because, as rumour had it that, Aminu also had the same ambition for one of his sons, and so did Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, who eventually was sponsored by President Goodluck Jonathan to become the National Chairman of the PDP.
The circumstances that led to Nyako’s departure from the PDP to the newly registered All Progressives Congress (APC) was traced to the irreconcilable differences between Nyako’s hunger to impose his son with his power of gubernatorial incumbency on the one hand, and Alhaji Tukur’s unbending resolve to use his position as National Chairman of the Party to crown his own son. Aminu had long been rendered a virtual bystander in the whole matter.
That is a taste of Adamawa politics for you. In Adamawa politics, just like that of Anambra, dog eats dog, and there is never really a permanent winner or loser, since the wheel of political fortune is always turning. But just like in Anambra politics, in spite of the sound and fury, you never easily get to hear about political assassinations, which is more rampant in South West Nigerian politics.
Nyako moved to APC, some say, because he was denied the opportunity to use the PDP for his purpose. But it remains to be seen if Atiku, a much savvier politician with deeper roots in the game will let him use the APC. He may climb down from his high governorship office and find no other alternative than to return to his farm from where he was picked by Obasanjo and Aminu.
Since Nyako went into APC, he has turned too viral for his own good, the good of people around him and the good of the country at large. Remember when, a few months ago, he snivelled that he is afraid of being “poisoned” by his colleague, Governor Theodore Orji of Abia State, whom he has always sat next to due to the alphabetical order of seating in the Council of State meetings.
That accusation, as shocking and lowly as it was, came from the blue and gave an insight into the quality of mental and psychological make-up of this retired naval officer. Poison you for what! A Niger Deltan was once told, at a public function: “please don’t kidnap me!” There was laughter in the hall. He nimbly replied his heckler: “But you have no kidnap value”. There was applause. Need I say more?
Politics of bitterness
Nyako’s recent poisonous letter to his fellow governors of Northern Nigeria accusing President Goodluck Jonathan of using the prolonged emergency rule in the North East (including his Adamawa State) to perpetrate “genocide” with a view to “depopulating” the North was politics of bitterness taken too far. Alhaji Waziri Ibrahim, the apostle of “politics without bitterness” and a Nigerian legend from the North East, must have turned several times in his grave when this letter made its ugly way into the public arena.
It was a lunatic rant, and the only people I saw applauding it were the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), an equally rabid and frustrated outfit made up of expired former public office holders who believe that Nigeria is a colony of Northern Nigeria being illegally ruled by a Niger Delta impostor, President Jonathan.
Nyako’s letter is not just unbecoming of a retired Admiral of the Nigerian Navy; it just does not make sense, which is why I called it a lunatic rant.
Boko Haram terrorists were created by failed political leaders of Arewa, such as Nyako. They are Arewa citizens of Nigeria, in cahoots with their relations, friends, associates and hirelings from across the border, killing, maiming, burning, looting, annihilating, abducting and slaughtering innocent Nigerians who are mostly Arewa Muslims like themselves in a core Arewa enclave. Because they are our countrymen marauding a part of our country, President Jonathan mobilised the armed forces to flush them out. It is his constitutionally bounded duty to do so. If he fails to do it we will send him out of Aso Villa.
Jonathan has handled the crisis, as some say, with kid gloves, perhaps mindful of the inciting blackmail that the likes of Nyako are ready to bandy. Jonathan started with police action, then limited military action, before he recently sent in a combined military operation.
Perhaps, his major fault is his refusal to sack the democratic structures headed by governors, some of whom have been reported to be Boko Haram funders. Nyako obviously knows all about genocides, because he was part and parcel of the Nigerian armed forces that massacred defenceless Igbo civilians in the North in the aftermath of the 1966 coups and also murdered many more inside Biafra. So he can talk.
But the good thing is that every decent Nigerian has condemned the shame of Murtala Nyako, a man sent to Dartmouth Royal Naval Academy, Englandin 1962 to become an officer and gentleman. Quite obviously, the training did not go beyond the surface of his skin.
How could such a character have attained the highest rank in the Nigerian Navy – an Admiral – without being seen for whom he really was? Obasanjo and Aminu should apologise to Nigerians for excavating and imposing him on the people of Adamawa State to cause trouble for Nigerians. Vanguard.
No comments:
Post a Comment