Adamawa: Maimangoro and his battle with AC

Murtala NyakoThe usual intigues that politics in Adamawa State is noted for, again, played out between the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Action Congress (AC) in last Saturday’s re-run governorship election, writes Acting Group Politics Editor, Idowu Samuel.

Politics of Adamawa State has always evoked strong passion, given the manner the players attend to it. The state’s politics is played also with overwhelming intrigue, the kind of which has made the ordinary politician in the state the most alert and most informed. The people of Adamawa State demonstrated much of the political intrigues and wizardry with the governorship re-run election which held last Saturday in the state.

The state governor, Admiral Murtala Nyako, was more at the receiving end of the political intrigue woven by the opposition parties to clip his chances of winning the re-run election. It was evident that Nyako had followers, so also was the Action Congress (AC) which paraded Ibrahim Bapetel as its governorship candidate. However, Nyako’s supporters devised an ingenious means of widening his popularity. In fondness of him, they nicknamed him maimangoro. There was a reason for that.

Nyako tends the largest mango orchard in the entire West African sub region. So prosperous was the mango orchard that he found it easy exporting the fruits to neighbouring African countries. And record says that South Africa happens to be the largest importer of mango from Yola. Prior to his advent in politics, Nyako had been a very successful farmer, so much so that his admires felt that his joining politics had been an anathema to the zeal he has had for farming.

Nyako’s supporters, thus, decided to make mango the symbol of their support for him. At campaign grounds, each of them would clutch a mango fruit and then begin to shout sai maimangoro. Initially, doing that was a big fun for supporters of the governor until they suddenly discovered that the opposition group had all along planned to turn it into a misfortune for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

How? The use of mango as a symbol for Nyako’s support had hardly gained acceptability in the entire landscape of Adamawa State when those suspected to be AC die-hards began to move round and painstakingly educating voters that they should never forget to look for mango in the ballot papers and then thumb-print. They were doing so in disguise as PDP members. In the ballot papers designed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), there were many political parties which symbols looked like mango fruit. Incidentally, most voters in Adamawa State could easily get confused due to their low level of enlightenment. PDP members suddenly found out that intriguing weapon and had to abandon the main campaign for Nyako to counter the perceived misinformation being peddled by their opponents. They moved round enough to educate their own members never to bother about looking for mango in the ballot papers, but umbrella which is a symbol of the PDP.

Incidentally, the PDP was to fight back in a jiffy. Having mastered the terrain of Adamawa, members also devised their own deadly intrigue. This time, they went to the local government areas which they were sure haboured the greatest numbers of the uneducated AC loyalists. Few days to the election and even on the election day, the PDP members encouraged these voters to stamp their thumbs on the right hand side of the ballot papers and in the column third from the top to cast their votes. Doing that would mean that the voters would ignorantly be voting for MRDD. The party, which did not present a governorship candidate for the re-run election, occupied the right hand slot being the third party from the top on the right hand side of the ballot papers. Funny enough, the treachery by the PDP supporters worked. It was only on the election day that the AC knew that it had been most viciously short-circuited. Even then, the AC did not come to that reality until the whistle was blown for end of voting.

By the time counting of votes started, the AC realised that it had the largest number of invalid votes. Indeed, the number of votes certified as invalid by the INEC almost totaled 40 per cent of the overall votes cast. It was part of the reason both the AC and its governorship candidate, Bapetel, declared the results of the election as announced by INEC unacceptable. In rejecting the election results, the AC governorship candidate alluded to the design of the ballot paper as one of the reasons. He said “in the election held yesterday, the INEC presented voters with a ballot paper that was clearly designed to put the AC in jeopardy. The ballot paper was designed in such a way that many voters who thought they were voting for the AC ended up printing on the edge of the slot of the MRDD, a party that had no candidate in the election.

“Besides, many of the snatched ballot papers were thumb-printed for the MRDD to create the impression that the election was decided by voided votes. These explained the unprecedented high number of invalidated votes in the election. Never in the history of elections in Nigeria had we such a great number of ballot papers returned as invalid.” Interestingly, the AC is not bracing up to go to court to once again challenge the result; neither has it given up the game as meant only for the PDP. As far as the opposition party was concerned, the battle had just begun. Before the election, the keen interest of the former vice president, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, had variously been brought into the front burner. Atiku too did not take the issue of the election lying low. He fought hard to establish a strong foothold in the politics of Adamawa State if only to make a big political statement. Weeks before the election, Atiku had pitched a camp in Yola from where he directed the operations of the AC for winning the election.

On the election day, Atiku told journalists that the election was not about him and the PDP, but about the AC and the PDP. It was a statement meant to exonerate him from the possible loss of the election by the AC. Even then the manner the AC lost the election was a telltale of what had gone wrong with the party both at the federal and Adamawa State levels. Before the governorship election, it was an open talk in Adamawa that Atiku, through the former governor of the state, Boni Haruna, never gave a good account of himself. Haruna ruled the state for eight years uninterrupted and left the people of Adamawa State to wonder what he had made of it. To the electorate, therefore, the transgression of Haruna could only be visited on Atiku, the godfather. Even, members of the AC seemed to have shared the view as they began to recount the reasons behind the party’s loss at the poll.

However, no member of the AC would agree that the end has come for Atiku in the contemporary politics of Nigeria and Adamawa State. Their consolation seems to lie in the ability of Atiku to retreat and fashion out a new beginning in his world of politics. His new beginning could then mark the beginning of another era in the politics of the state, all things being equal.