Yar’adua: The end of a dynasty?

One of the legacies of the larger Yar’adua family which will be mostly affected by the death of the President is its political dynasty built over the years by late Musa Yar’adua, the late President’s father and later, his late elder brother, General Shehu Musa Yar’adua.

The family is an aristocratic Fulani family in Katsina State that has a domineering influence, not only in politics but also in business, as well as in public service.  

The late Mallam Musa Yar’adua was a man of great strength and character who held the royal title of Mutawalli (custodian of the treasury), of the Katsina Emirate, a title which Umaru Yar’adua also inherited.

An astute politician, Mallam Musa Yar’adua was acknowledged as one of the leading lights of the Nigerian political development and a pillar of political wisdom.

He was a member of the House of Representatives and also served as Federal Minister for Establishment, Nigerianisation and Training and later as Minister for Lagos Affairs during the First Republic.

The late General Shehu Yar’adua, like his father, was an accomplished politician and had guided the political dynasty of the family after the death of Mutawallin.

He was said to have been greatly influenced by his father’s own strength of character and capacity for leadership.

At 36 years of age, he was the Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters and was promoted to a Major General in the General Olusegun Obasanjo administration, which started in 1979, the youngest officer on record to hold that rank on the entire African continent at the period.

As a colonel, the late tactician also served as federal commissioner of transport in 1976. As commissioner, he was credited with the establishment of a blueprint for the development of Nigeria’s transport sector, as well as the re-organisation and decongestion of the nation’s ports.

Upon the assassination of the revered Head of State, Murtala Mohammed, in 1976, Shehu Yar’adua was named Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters and promoted to the rank of a Major General in the Obasanjo administration at the age of 36.

As the first military government to voluntarily hand over power in Africa, Generals Obasanjo and Shehu Yar’adua are said to have recognised that the enthronement of democracy was the only way to ensure stability and social harmony in the country.

Shehu Yar’adua was said to be a gifted politician devoid of ethnic bias and religious or regional sentiments. He was said to have aspired to contest the presidency under the platform of the Social Development Party (SDP) in 1992. The older Yar’adua as a grassroot mobiliser who was said to have broken old barriers, beating formidable home-based opponents and winning elections across the nation to become his party’s presidential nominee. The election that would have produced him was annulled and he was banned from politic all together.

He was sentenced to life in prison by a military tribunal in 1995 after calling on the then military government of Gen. Sani Abacha and his Provisional Ruling Council to reestablish civilian rule. He died in captivity on December 8, 1997.

However, his political platforms especially the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM) had weathered the political storm long after his demise to become the rallying point of the nation’s top politicians.

The older Yar`adua’s political machinery eventually catapulted Olusegun Obasanjo to power for the second time as president and Umaru as governor of Katsina State in 1999.

Perhaps in a show of gratitude to the late Shehu, Obasanjo made his younger brother, Umaru, president in 2007. So the late President Yar’adua emerged as the PDP presidential candidate for the 2007 elections out of his elder brother’s political empire.

As an undergraduate student at the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, late President Yar’adua was believed to be a self-confessed Marxist, who was said to have criticised his elder brother’s “capitalist” leanings. His maxist ideology continued even as a lecturer in the Department of Chemistry at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, between 1976 and 1983. But he was later to learn the practical politics of the dynasty which took him to national limelight.  

The late president was also one of the founding members of the People’s Front, a political association under the leadership of his elder brother, late Shehu Yar’adua during the transition programme of the then president, Ibrahim Babangida. That association later fused to form the Social Democratic Party (SDP). He was a member of the 1988 Constituent Assembly and a member of the party’s national caucus and the SDP state secretary in Katsina and contested the 1991 governorship election, but lost to the candidate of the National Republican Convention (NRC).

At the inception of General Abdulsalami Abubakar’s transition in 1998, Yar’adua was said to be among those fronting the political associations, which later became the core of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He contested and won election as Katsina state governor in 1999 and was re-elected in 2003.

Yar’adua was said to be at first, reluctant to take the PDP presidential ticket because it was believed that  Obasanjo wanted to use the late Umaru to spite Abubakar Atiku, his vice, who is also a product of General Shehu’s political dynasty, and the leader of the late General’s wing of the PDP.

 At the PDP presidential primaries in 2003, Atiku and his PDM supporters almost humiliated Obasanjo. In retaliation, he was said to have vowed to divide and demolish the PDM in 2007, by handing over power to the junior brother of its founder. The late president, as a governor of Katsina State, built his own political structure around personalities like Abba Ruma, Tanimu Kurfi, Engineer Muttaqa Rabe Darma and a host of others.

 Ruma was a Secretary to the Katsina State Government when Yar`adua was governor. He was made the Minister of State in the Ministry of Education. He later became the Minister of Education. He was later assigned the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources. He was said to be scheming to replace Ibrahim Shema as Katsina State governor in 2011 but many believe that the president’s demise may likely affect that ambition.

Kurfi was Yar`adua`s Commissioner for Finance in Katsina State and the treasurer of his campaign organisation in 2007. He came in as Deputy Chief of Staff in the early days of Yar’adua’s presidency and was to take over from Abdullahi Muhammed, a retired General who served under Obasanjo as Chief of Staff eventually. He never made to that position due to a crisis involving the Vaswani brothers. He later became Yar’adua’s Economic Adviser. Kurfi was also a former member of the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria, FMGN.  He schooled in Russia when Russia operated a closed economy and is seen by financial experts as a curious choice as economic adviser in a Nigeria operating the western economic model, with its emphasis on free market economy.

The Yar’adua boys have lost out in the power equation at the centre as it were, because of their alleged role during Yar’adua’s protracted illness which eventually ended in his death on May 5.

Obasanjo who was instrumental to Yar’adua’s emergence ditched him during his long absence from the country owing to ill-health when he asked him to tread the path of honour and resign in the interest of his failing health.

“If you take up an assignment, a job, elected, appointed; whatever it is and then your health starts to fail and you will not be able to deliver to satisfy yourself and to satisfy the people you are supposed to serve, then there is a path of honour and the path of morality,” Obasanjo had said at a forum in Abuja.

Obasanjo went instead for the late President’s nephew, Alhaji Murtala Yar’adua, Shehu Musa’s son who is now a junior minister in the Ministry of Defence.

Murtala’s surprise emergence was said to be part of an orchestrated plan by the former President to pull some members of the larger Yar’adua family further away from the first lady, Turai, in order to weaken her base.

There is no love lost between Turai and the entire Yar’adua family because of her domineering and controlling personality which caused friction between the late Shehu Yar’adua and the president. The larger family had kept their distance from President Yar’adua and Turai.

Obasanjo, who was military head of state when the late Shehu Yar’adua was Chief of Staff and understands the politics in the Yar’adua clan, pulled the high wire maneuvers to push Murtala through.

Murtala Yar’adua attended Southeastern University, London, England, from 1994-1997 and holds a B.Sc. Degree in Business Management and an MBA Degree in Financial Management. Presently he is the only member of the family in government.

Before his ministerial appointment, he served as director of Intel Services Ltd, Port Harcourt; Hamada Holdings Nigeria Ltd, Kaduna; Nation House Press, Kaduna. He also served as a member of the Board of Directors of Platinum Habib Nigeria Bank, Plc. and was turbaned Tafidan Katsina in 2002, a traditional title he inherited from his late father.

Observers believe he is yet to understand the complexity of the nation’s politics but whether he can learn fast and keep up the family’s dynasty is another matter.  However, others are of the opinion that the family’s political structure is well entrenched within the nation political firmament and will see the young Murtala through.