The outcome of the 2023 governorship election in Bauchi State sprung a surprise following the return to power of Governor Bala Mohammed who political pundits believed he was unlikely to achieve.
They hinged their prediction on the mounting opposition against the governor by many prominent gladiators in the politics of the state.
Among those who openly sided with the opposition candidate of the APC is a former minister during the Second Republic, Alhaji Muhammadu Bello Kirfi, who was recently sacked as the Wazirin Bauchi allegedly on the directive of the governor.
A few days before the election, Kirfi led a team of elders to a news conference where they declared support for Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar (Rtd) of the APC.
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Also, in the build up to the election, Mohammed faced opposition from former governors, Alhaji Ahmadu Adamu Mu’azu, Malam Isa Yuguda and Muhammed Abdullahi Abubakar (SAN), as well as the immediate past Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, and some former and present members of the National Assembly.
Daily Trust reports that all these gladiators were instrumental to his victory during the 2019 election when he defeated a sitting governor.
However, at the end of the 2023 race, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared him as the winner.
The Returning Officer, Professor Abdulkarim Sabo Muhammed, said Mohammed polled 525,280 to defeat Abubakar who scored 433,272 votes.
Political observers in the state who spoke with Daily Trust attributed the “surprise” victory to a number of factors.
Some believe that the governor worked tirelessly in the last four years to provide infrastructure across the state. These include several urban and rural roads, construction and rehabilitation of schools and healthcare centres and economic empowerment schemes where thousands of people across the 20 LGAs benefitted.
Other factors that contributed to the victory of Mohammed include alleged intervention of some traditional rulers and religious leaders who were said to have instructed their subjects and followers to vote for PDP during the election.
Some others attribute the success to the division within the opposition APC following the primary election which returned Abubakar as the party’s candidate.
They said many of those who lost out either left the party or simply did not help in the campaign for his election.
“The party lost six gubernatorial aspirants and other candidates to either the ruling PDP or the opposition New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP). This negatively affected the chances of APC in the election,’’ one of the analysts who preferred to remain anonymous told Daily Trust.
Daily Trust also reports that another factor that worked against the APC candidate is the age-long political rivalry between Bauchi North and Bauchi South which manifested in the outcome of the election. The APC came tops in only six LGAs, all from the Northern and Central Zones, and failed to win a single LGA in the Southern part of the state.
In a telephone interview, the spokesman of the APC gubernatorial candidate, Comrade Sabo Mohammed, said the outcome of the election was not the true reflection of what the people voted for.
He said, “The election was marred by violence, harassment and open inducement using government machinery, as well as obvious vote buying. In some LGAs, people were disenfranchised from voting while in some places the BVAS was not used to accredit voters.”
On his part, the Director, Media and Publicity of the Governor Bala Mohammed (PDP) Gubernatorial Campaign Council, Yayanuwa Zainabari, said the position of the APC about the outcome of the election showed that the opposition were fighting the will of Allah.
He said, “The election was conducted under the watchful eyes of security agencies. How and where would soldiers allow anyone to change the results of the election? Everyone witnessed a peaceful election and result tabulations were done in the presence of the people without any interruption. How will someone change the results?
A lecturer at the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU), Bauchi, Malam Sani Ali, said the victory of Mohammed was not unique because a similar scenario played out in some states.
He said, “There were similar situations for example in Kaduna State where major gladiators also teamed up against the incumbent government and despite the actions of those gladiators they were able to overcome the forces and win.
“Bala Mohammed won the election because he worked; he did what many other governors of the state did in eight years in less than four years. The governor has executed projects, especially development projects that have direct bearing on the ordinary people.
Ali further said the opposition failed to cash in on some issues that could have counted against the governor, such as raising the fear that he might slow down in his development projects if given a second and final term.
He added that what might have also counted against the APC candidate could have been the fear that he was unknown and with a military background who could rule the state in a military way.
While noting that the major gladiators who claimed to be supporting the opposition failed to use their positions and experience to turn them into victory. “I expected some political actions that would have been used to turn them into victory for the APC,’’ he said.
He further said the APC failed to use the victory of Bola Tinubu to drum up support for the party in the state.
He added that, “I didn’t see them in any way taking the advantage of winning that presidential election in their activities within the state. We didn’t see them taking advantage of the winning spirit of APC by telling the people that they were ready to take over power at the state level.
“They were silent about it and they never associated themselves politically with the victory of their party at the federal level and brought it down to the state level.
“I never saw them use that, to hold a simple rally in the state capital and inviting all their members from all parts of the state to come to Bauchi for a rally to celebrate the victory of Tinubu.”
“One begins to wonder how they have those gladiators and yet this political thinking didn’t come to play. Whether the gladiators are from the ruling party or not, if they were opposing the incumbency, they should have opposed it fully so that once they got to the other side they could associate with the winning team, but that didn’t come true.
“There might have been other factors which were not apparent which further analysis may reveal.’’
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