President-Elect Buhari, Be Wary of Yuguda

Yuguda who was one of the founding members of the PDP in Bauchi State backed the present National Chairman of the party, Ahmadu Mu’azu for governorship and struck an agreement with the governor that he will succeed him at the end of eight years. In the meantime, Yuguda became a minister in the Olusegun Obasanjo-led administration for six years.However, when it became time for Mu’azu to honour his own end of the agreement, he reneged on it and frustrated Yuguda’s ambitions, and instead making his Secretary to the State Government, Nadada Umar the candidate. Yuguda moved to ANPP and the combined force of the popularity of the ANPP presidential candidate then and now president-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari and the sympathy Bauchi people had for him over his treatment by Mu’azu, he coasted to victory.

But before you could say ‘Jack Robinson’, Yuguda had gone back into the PDP, even ingratiating himself with the family of late President Umaru Yar’adua to the point that he married the president’s daughter in what was clearly a political alliance being forged. At a point, he was named as one of those that the then First Lady, Turai Yar’adua wanted to succeed her husband when it seemed inevitable that he was going to pass away, the other person being another presidential son-in-law, the outgoing governor of Katsina State, Ibrahim Shema.

One would have thought that this alone would have put him in the bad books of then Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan when he became president, having been relegated by Turai Yar’adua and the cabal that held the late president hostage. But again, Yuguda showed his adroitness in the manner he became close to President Jonathan, first delivering the state to him during the PDP primaries and backing his decisions such as supporting the ‘election’ of Plateau State governor, Jonah Jang as the Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum.

Even though the PDP lost at the federal level and in Bauchi State with Yuguda missing in his attempt to ‘retire’ to the Senate, it will be foolhardy for anyone to write him off politically. It will not be surprising if he weaves his way into the good graces of the APC at the federal level; after all, rumours are rife that the governor-elect of Bauchi State, Mohammed Abubakar was propped up by him, despite the fact that he is in APC.

But why should the president-elect be wary of Yuguda?

For starters, despite the fact that he has been in government as minister and governor for a combined 14 years, one is hard-pressed to point to any tangible achievement of his. His eight years as the Bauchi State governor was a failure as he was unable to build on the foundations laid by his predecessor, especially in terms of infrastructural development. Instead, the citizens of the state were left poorer than when he came into office. simply put, Yuguda has nothing to offer and has been selling Nigerians a dummy for far too long, and Nigeria cannot afford this anymore.

Even worse, his tenure has been filled with allegations of financial impropriety – from inflated contracts such as the construction of the Bauchi International Airport to excessive withdrawals from state government accounts of up to N1billion daily at a time, so much that the state has been unable to pay salaries for a few months now.

Persons like Yuguda ought to be on the list of politically exposed persons to be investigated and tried for corruption, and knowing how serious the president-elect is about corruption, associating with Yuguda will tarnish his pristine image.

Lastly, as a man who values loyalty highly, president-elect Buhari should be very wary of Yuguda who has no idea what the word ‘loyalty’ means. There is no greater evidence of that more than how he shifts his allegiances from party to party, and from person to person – as long as it served his interests. A man with such shifting loyalty cannot be trusted.

We do hope that the President-elect is listening.

How Yuguda Cost Jonathan Bauchi State in the Presidential Elections

The 2015 General Elections have come and gone, and expectedly, it has produced winners and losers. The All Progressives’ Congress (APC) created an upset and won the presidential elections and four-time presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari finally emerged victorious at the polls. Since the elections, political pundits and analysts have been analyzing the results of the elections and what caused voters to sway either this way or that way. 

One state that is of interest is Bauchi State and the way in which APC won the state with 931,598 of the votes, leaving the PDP a paltry 8.5% of the votes to pick up. What is not surprising is not that the APC won; after all, the last time the PDP won the state in the presidential polls was in 1999. However, political watchers had predicted that President Goodluck Jonathan will be able to get at least 30% of the votes not only because the state has a PDP government, but also because it is also the state of the National Chairman of the PDP, Alhaji Ahmadu Mu’azu and the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Senator Bala Abdulkadir Mohammed who are political heavyweights and are very popular in the state. 

So what went wrong for the PDP and President Jonathan? 

First, the very dismal performance of Governor Isa Yuguda in his eight-year stint at the helm of the state turned the hearts of many in the state against the PDP. In his two terms, the only capital project of note executed by the governor has been the Bauchi International Airport, a N9bn project which sadly is a misplaced priority considering how few people will even be afford flights regularly. It is also not justifiable to spend such a sum on an airport that will only be used optimally for one month a year during Hajj pilgrimage when the Gombe International Airport and the Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport, Kano are within 5-hour radius and are available for airlifting of pilgrims to the Holy Land. 

Yuguda’s tenure as governor has not left the people of Bauchi State any better than when he came in. He had initially used his penchant for cash gifts and handouts as a ruse to cover his non-performance but gradually, the people became aware of the reality of his non-performance. Considering his efforts to cozy up to President Jonathan, the people of Bauchi State punished PDP by voting en masse for APC, which also cost Yuguda his Bauchi South senatorial ambition.

Not only that, Yuguda further incensed people by foisting an unknown and unpopular governorship candidate, Hon. Mohammed Auwal Jatau on the PDP. The people of the state were expecting that either Dr. Mahmud Yayale Ahmed, a respected bureaucrat who has been Head of the Civil Service of the Federation and Secretary of the Government of the Federation, or Dr. Mohammed Ali Pate, former Minister of State for Health and respected public health expert to become the candidate of the state. However, they were edged out in the primaries as Yuguda imposed Jatau, a little-known House of Representatives member from Zaki Federal Constituency and a last-minute entrant into the race on the party and against the wishes of the party. This even caused Dr. Pate to defect to the APC where he worked tirelessly to earn their victory.

This was a stark contrast to the primaries of the APC where the governor-elect, Barrister Mohammed Abubakar emerged through a free and fair primary, which wooed voters to their side. Interestingly, Abubakar is also said to have been sponsored by Yuguda. If this is true, it means that the governor was clearly engaged in anti-party activities. 

Another factor that should have contributed to the votes of President Jonathan was the voting pattern of Dass, Bogoro and Tafawa Balewa local government areas which are predominantly Christian and dominated by the Sayawa ethnic group. However, in September 2012, Governor Yuguda unilaterally moved the headquarters of Tafawa Balewa Local Government Area from Tafawa-Balewa, a predominatly Christian town to Bununu, which is predominantly Muslim. This action caused the member representing Tafawa Balewa in the Bauchi State House of Assembly, Mrs. Rifkatu Danna Samson to raise the motion on the floor of the House. However, all she earned for her troubles was Yuguda using his loyalists in the House to suspend her, which earned the House a lawsuit. 

Also, the member representing Dass/Bogoro/Tafawa-Balewa Federal Constituency at the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara threatened to defect from the PDP to the APC if the decision to reverse the change of local government headquarters was not made. Yuguda refused to budge, and Dogara made well his threat and defected. 

This also caused a mass switch in loyalty in the area to the APC as Dogara and Samson, both very popular worked tirelessly to ensure that the APC in that area. Dogara won his re-election and is now well-placed to be the next Speaker of the House of Representatives following the decision of the APC to zone the office to the North-East. 

It is quite ironic that for a governor who has been working tirelessly to be in the good books of President Jonathan and was even lobbying to have Vice-President Namadi Sambo replaced with him on the presidential ticket, all his actions worked counter to the objectives of the PDP and President Jonathan. 

However, Yuguda did not see that his actions were destructive because he had arrogated to himself absolute powers not only within the state but also within the PDP in Bauchi State. 

As the PDP continues with its post-election analysis of what went wrong, it needs not search too far to see the person that single-handedly caused their downfall in Bauchi State.