It is not difficult to fathom why the APC and its allies in the smaller parties feel so uncomfortable with the public posture and indeed the personage of Kauran Bauchi, Sen. Bala Muhammed, the serving governor of Bauchi state.
Loading ...He is hewn in the mould that is radically different from those of the people that populate the APC and other parties. He does not mince words. He does not prevaricate or equivocate on any issue he designs to comment on. He does not harbor any traits of Janus or a double faced personality that says the opposite of what is on his mind. He does not label the spade differently than its real name. He is an eloquent speaker and a straight talker, who suffers fools gladly. He sees diplomacy and such other arts, that mask the real intents of man’s heart in demeaning lights and takes none of it.
These attributes are alien to the rank and file in APC who take politics as duplicity, deception and guile; all packaged into one seamless take-away pack. For a party that delights in subterfuge and grand obfuscation as means of careering off and on an irresponsible power route, the person and image of Bala Muhammed is unfathomable. Not for their members alone, but also outside their enclave where all is fair in battle. The APC brooks no such attributes as Bala Muhammed has come to personify.
He leaves you in no doubt where he stands on any issue. He is not afraid or frightened to take on any issue or anybody so long as he feels the need to address an issue. He is not one that goes to a parley with a dagger hidden in his clothes but who before any meeting, brandishes his weapon and dares you to get yours and meet him in an open battle. He does not stalk on his assumed friends or foes and strike the dagger when they least expect.
He gives you sufficient warning of any impending attack and dares you to get prepared for it. He does not know how to back stab but knows how to publicly excoriate when he feels an issue is not going right.
Being a state governor and with his known penchant to shoot straight, Kaura constitutes a potent threat to the APC’s own maniacal desire for untrammeled power. His knack for provoking issues that so many people feel uncomfortable about marks him as a red hot threat to the suzerain empire the APC easily dreams of. His boisterous and bonhomie mien adds pep to his well expressed desire to ensure that every issue is brought on the table and not hidden under the rug. As governor, he adopts unorthodox style that gives him quick result. He has unruffled many with his style, which has however endeared him to the hearts of the people. Not for him is the culture of sitting idly on the waiting room of bureaucracy while things could be done in quicker ways.
We all know that Sen. Bala ran an electrifying, modest, tough and rough campaign in 2019 against an incumbent and his political party that spared nothing to beat the tsunami, which Kaura provoked with his campaign. A glimpse into how he seared the living daylight out of the APC was how determined the PDP was to rescue Bauchi state from the hands of undertakers.
An APC chieftain, who could not believe the expertise deployed to unseat them from power, shouted that indeed, Sen. Bala scared them to the extent that they honorably accepted the defeat hands down with numerical strength. The claim jelled with the electorates who pretested loudly that they massively voted for Bala Muhammed in anticipation for a genuine change anchored on probity and justice not the displayed drama series of service delivery experienced.
The history of his determined and roiling legal battle to retain his mandate was historical, as it was tasking. Every hell was levied against Kaura as he fought the power soaked vandals for his mandate.
So it is easy to understand why the Northeast, and by extension the national APC feels that Kaura is one hell of an object on its reckless way that must be put out of political circulation for them to enjoy their unimpeded way to unearned power in 2019. Apart from the experienced ‘ponies’ on the race course from the APC stable waiting anxiously for the whistle to a primary election race, a relatively unknown sacked air force officer, political novice lacking a political base, was hurriedly packaged and brought to the APC stable to rattle feathers of the already waiting ponies. Bala Muhammed is laughing and watching the interesting drama entertainment within the APC stable as he prepares his winning strategy against the weak collection.
So it is easy to understand why the APC and stomach infrastructural parties had to resort to the kind of brash tactics they went for when they fabricated and caused to be leaked a specious and outlandish cocktail of fairy tales, with high puerility content and routed through the ubiquitous compromised media outfits that have excelled in deepening hatred and taking up the dirty fights of the APC and associates against every other responsible Nigerian.
I strained my eyes to see the contents of juvenile allegations laced with hatred traded against Governor Bala Muhammed. I need no soothsayer to know that the entire thing was a tissue of forgeries, intrigues and fables from the badly hurting gang of rouges that constitute the APC and the stomach infrastructural parties employed to create confusion and tension in a sedate agrarian state that is far removed from the concocted picture the allegations painted.
The generous back up the APC and cohorts threw to this widely condemned attempt to sow tension and crisis where there is none, clearly demonstrated the asinine intent behind that tissue of lies and negative conjectures.
Heaven, they say, knows no greater fury than that of a woman scorned and I dare add that heavens knows no greater fury than that of the disgruntled, disoriented, dislodged political jobbers and free loaders that were rusticated from governance in Bauchi state in 2019. It is in this maze that we locate the spurious allegations that were firmly anchored on fiction and laughable reasons. What we saw were mere fictional projections of how APC and the smaller exiting parties feel they can connive and steal power in 2023 and consolidate their tenuous hold on power in Bauchi state.
Governor Bala is a potent threat to those dreams that wrecked almost everything in Bauchi state. So the plot is alleged unsteady payment of monthly salaries, favoritism in appointments and award of contracts, even when they are founded on baseless grounds, provoke hatred and create disharmony and loss of respect to the administration. This stems from a primitive and raw concept of power, as the APC and its associates have found so attractive employing these past four years in power. The feeling is writ large in the diarrhead power laboratory of the APC that once the recalcitrant Governor Bala is dented it would be easy to take on other dying parties in Bauchi state with little bargain.
The tragedy is not that those that scripted the baloney believe so much in its practicability and potency, but was concocted for diabolical gain. The real tragedy however is that the present federal government invests so much faith in this infantile political jeremiad. But when we understand that passes for a federal government in the last six years is not more than a highly impressionable, shallow agglomeration of clueless mandarins that see themselves more as APC wayfarers, we will understand why Nigeria is tottering so aimlessly on the watch of these partisan enforcers. It is the same tragic mess that a national security that has excelled in allowing Nigerians to be used as punching bags by so many fonts of state violence is the one being used by political layabouts and rent seekers to widen the circle of violence and religious war all in the name of offering services to an amoral political party and its bestial interests.
I believe, just as the majority, believe that this monumental misstep will work to steer Sen. Bala Muhammed aright as he braces to face the infantile fury of the APC and cohorts, which will manifest in several ways as his re-election battle approaches. It is good his traducers have shown their hands so early in the day, and in an embarrassingly puerile manner. It will allow him and his strategists enough time to plan containment strategies that will leave APC with a bloodier nose than he inflicted on it, in 2019. He should count himself lucky that his traducers are so inflicted with raw bile, frustration and the attendant fury that they let themselves out so cheaply. I believe that he will emerge much stronger and more fortified to deal with his opponents across the divide and continue on his laudable and commendable mission to leave indelible positive impressions on Bauchi state, as he is presently displaying uninterrupted with dexterity and accolades. I come in peace!
Muhammad is a commentator on national issues
