Will Al-Makura’s return to Wamba re-enact 2011 magic?

Wamba was strategic to Governor Umaru Tanko Al-Makura’s win in 2011. He recently visited the local government to campaign in what his supporters say is in hope for the re-enactment of the 2011 magic.

Governor Umaru Tanko Al-Makura was in Wamba on February 2.
It was Wamba’s day for the All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship campaign rally which train hit the Nasarawa-North zone a couple of days back. 
Wamba was strategic to Al-Makura’s victory in 2011, when he defeated Aliyu Akwe Doma of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) who was seeking a second term.
Al-Makura campaigned on the platform of the then Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and terminated the 12-year rule of the PDP. 
At the time Al-Makura won the 2011 vote, the CPC was hardly known to the people, with membership strength of only about 14,000. 
Widespread disaffection within the PDP which structure was widely accused of colluding with the then administration to manipulate the aspiration of Al-Makura and several other aspirants who sought to fly the party’s flag for various elective offices, saw the flow of its leaders and their supporters into the CPC.
By April of that year when the general elections were held, the PDP was already looking like a ghost of its former self, as it lost the government house, four of the five House of Representatives seats and one of the three senatorial seats. A young party, the CPC, took over from the PDP to swell its ranks.
The perseverance of its leaders, who faced various forms of bullying from traditional rulers, security operatives and the government, cast the CPC in the mould of a movement.
There was General Abdullahi Aboki, a former military governor of Kwara State; Solomon Ewuga, a former minister; Dr. Yusuf Musa Nagogo, Tanko Wambai, Musa Ilu Mohammed, Dr. Joseph Haruna Kigbu, Ishak Kana, David Ombugadu, Musa Onwana, Zakari Idde, Hamza Elayo, Barrister Mohammed Abdullahi, Silas Agara, Sonny Agassi, Engr. Samari Modibbo and others.
The party was formed in the state by politicians who left the defunct ANPP in 2009, namely Senator Patrick Aga and Engr. Reuben Audu, who later aspired for governorship, but lost the ticket to Al-Makura, and Mohammed Lawyer El-Yaqoob, who emerged as the pioneer chairman.
Although the birthplace of the CPC is Nassarawa-Eggon, Wamba was soon to become the cradle of the movement that followed the defection of Al-Makura and other leaders into the party. Ta’al, which is the short for Tanko Al-Makura, was soon to become the slogan of the movement, with Wamba as its birthplace. 
Al-Makura’s aspiration to fly the PDP flag, earlier in 2010, was opposed by traditional rulers who either denied him access to their palaces for homage, or out-rightly told him that the council of chiefs had endorsed Doma’s re-election bid. But the Oriye Rindre, the paramount ruler of Wamba, Alhaji Musa Nagogo threw his palace doors open, and embraced Al-Makura with a blessing which led Doma to give the traditional ruler a query. 
Wamba was where Al-Makura flagged off a road project while campaigning in 2011, to demonstrate how if elected, his administration will mark a departure from the PDP which he accused of deepening the misery of the people. 
In the evening of that day the road project was flagged off, truckloads of armed policemen stormed Wamba and beat up Aliyu Yakubu Barde who was the Nasarawa-North zonal coordinator for Ta’al, and Mohammed Bisalla Turaki, who was the local government coordinator. The security operatives dragged the two in handcuffs and led them away for detention which lasted 21 days before they regained their freedom.
The arrest and detention of the Wamba campaigners of Ta’al set the stage for subsequent arrests. Days after he joined the CPC, which ticket he picked that same month, January of 2011, Al-Makura was to be arrested in Lafia and taken to Abuja where he was detained by the police on trumped up charges of inciting protests against President Goodluck Jonathan during the president’s campaign in Lafia on January 7. 
Al-Makura, alongside his Personal Assistant, Tanimu Sarki, and two campaigners – Adamu Umar and Abdullahi Uba Mairiga – were arrested on February 8. Musa Ilu Mohammed, the Director General of Ta’al campaign organisation, alongside Shuaibu Baba, another campaigner, were arrested on January 9 and detained for five days.
On February 12, 2011, few days after regaining his freedom and recovering from police detention in Abuja, Al-Makura was to hit the road with campaign shows, dragging large crowds with him in a style that turned his campaign into a road show. 
Al-Makura won the election later in April, defeating his old party and ending the PDP tenancy in government house. 
On May 29, 2011, he promised “a fresh start and a new deal,” saying: “Our government will be an accountable and corrective one. We will insist that those of us who are entrusted with power and public funds will be required to spend prudently; change bad habits, conduct affairs openly and be held to account, as only then can we hope to restore integrity, trust and faith to governance.”
Abdulhamid Kwarra, an aide to the governor told Daily Trust  that “the Wamba visit was home coming to where the Ta’al ideology started.”