The night of no bats

How does one begin to describe a night no bat has ever seen? That is what came to mind in the aftermath of the horror show from Adamawa.

Having caught an innocent glimpse of the breaking news while reading the news that lazy afternoon, and then glossing over it before it really sunk in, I absentmindedly yelled out a few expletives I had no idea I have picked up from my Kano adventures… and that greatly startled my wife. And after I got the chance to explain myself, I ended up in more wahala than where I started. She thought my stupefaction was an expression of instinctual male misogyny because women are simply not supposed to win governorship elections in Adamawa or anywhere else in this whole wide world!

I lived in Yola for about four years as a student and during that time, I had the privilege of being an elections observer in the off-cycle Adamawa governorship election of 2012 where Nyako emerged victorious. I was then the vice-president of the Society for Ethics & Leadership, known on the AUN campus as SEAL.

The name Binani was quite prominent in the political circles. She was quite influential and close to then Governor Nyako. I for one could never have guessed at the time that she had her eyes fixed on government house and not content with just being the force she was in the National Assembly. I could not have guessed that because I did not know her and was really not more than a stranger in her home state – but what I could not have guessed because I just could not have guessed it is that she would be willing to go as far as some commenters alleged she went. Because she had this charismatic energy about her person, and all my Adamawa friends liked her, I developed a very favourable opinion of her.

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Now, I do not know Hajiya Binani from Adam, and I have no way of knowing whether she had anything to do with the misadventures of Prof. Yunusa, the Resident Electoral Commissioner of INEC in Adamawa, but one might forgive the instinct of a Nigerian if by default it is assumed that she had everything to do with it.

A video clip making the rounds shows someone who is allegedly a DSS officer, apparently having been manhandled and being interrogated, making claims that he has information that the REC received a bribe of about N2 billion to pull that stunt and was on a mission to arrest the REC. It is not clear how he ended up being accused of colluding with the said REC. The question that begs the answer, under the hypothetical assumption that his claims are true, is who offered the bribe? That would probably then lead to the follow-up question of motive and who the likely beneficiary of the prospective outcome is.

Not that I am beholden to explain my opinions to anyone, but I was one of those who rooted for Binani if only for the novelty of such an outcome in these parts. It would make a grand political statement if Northern Nigeria were to beat the much more liberal South to the punch of producing the first female state governor. It was close with Mama Taraba, may God rest her soul, and if the deal could be sealed with Binani, that could change the social landscape in our part of the country for the better.

I did not follow the collation process during the supplementary because I frankly had given up hope. I knew that the incumbent PDP governor she was challenging was leading with about 30,000 votes and therefore believed that closing that gap and winning was going to be a snowball’s chance in hell. He was the incumbent, and Adamawa was the home state of the very powerful PDP presidential flagbearer, Atiku Abubakar (even though I have heard that he is really behind Binani)… and this has to be said – she was a woman. Now I might need the type of protection Prof. Yunusa needed before doing what he did to be able to go home!

But on a serious note, Binani is a woman. And Adamawa State is part of the Sokoto Caliphate, however dead that contraption is politically. There was already a bunch of influential Maraji’ or clerical authorities up in arms against the perversion of a woman ruling Muslim men. One I heard asked Nigerian Muslims to take a cue from the epic Clinton/Trump battle of 2016. In spite of how hated Trump was, in spite of how unqualified he was, in spite of the fact that she beat him fair and square and by a very discernible margin, “they” still gave it to him so they don’t end up with a woman as their leader. And those were infidels… just how terrible would it be if we do worse than they did? He reasoned.

That was why I was so shocked by the news. I was anticipating a biblical account of how she surmounted the insurmountable odds to win only to find out down the line that it was an Okrika declaration! I rooted for Binani, I wanted her to win – but not like this!

Ramadan is in its last mile… and while we tirelessly battle for the Holy Grail of laylatul-qadr, the night of destiny, we were treated to the night of no bats. Where I come from, you dread the type of night no bat has passed through. Because… well, the night is the high-ground of the forces of darkness. Bats are denizens of the night, and in folklore, ambassadors of darkness. Hence the type of darkness not even a bat would touch is a pestilential high-tide of evil.

One of the things we pride ourselves of as Nigerians is the fact that there are very few scary nights we have not endured. We have seen and ridden out all kinds of scary things, but April 16 was a night we have never seen. What was scary about this night was not the sheer folly of the misadventures that took place but the fact that someone actually thought that this will fly, that they might be able to get away with this and “legit” went to town with it. Because then, what comes next?

I find this very scary indeed. So much I will have to double the intensity of my nocturnal devotions in the hope I hit the laylatul-qadr jackpot this year. I shall be very mad if all I end up with is the night of no bats.