“Governor Bala Muhammed needed no Oracle to tell him of his victory over his opponents. Their defeat was glaring from day one because of their incapacitation and inexperience in the game. They have since relocated out of Bauchi after humiliating defeat to their comfort zones to nurse their inflicted political wounds. In reality, they were tourists on opportunity seeking mission”…………Comrade Mouktar Gidado
It is not difficult to fathom why some politicians sympathetic to the other divide in Bauchi State and their allies including appendages and hangers-on felt jittery, developed cold and so uncomfortable with the public posture and indeed the personage of an erudite politician Governor Bala Muhammed, a 2023 PDP Bauchi State re-elected governor.
He is hewn in the mould that is radically different from those of the people that populate the other divide. He does not mince words. He does not prevaricate or equivocate on any issue he designs to comment and act upon. 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 intelligent eloquent speaker, humble and a straight talker, who suffers fools and blackmailers 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 of those on the other divide who see and take politics as duplicity, deception and guile; all packaged into one seamless take-away pack. For a divide that delights, in subterfuge and grand obfuscation, as means of careering off and on an irresponsible power route, the person and image of Governor Bala is unfathomable. Not for their members alone, but also outside their enclave where all is fair in battle. The other divide brook no such attributes as the erudite politician has come to personify. Here, one is not trying to revisit the juvenile and laughable gang-up of expired and rogue politicians that attempted to deny the people of Bauchi State the opportunity for continuation of good governance beyond 2023 as piloted by Bala Muhammed.
Bala’s opponents were all out for a dirty fight including against the electorates with opposing view. They used all tricks, intimidations and guns just to defeat the anointed but, God was on the side of the righteous majority.
Bala leaves no one in 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 the 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 as he did to one over ambitious and over confident Air Marshal Sadeeq Baba Abubakar (rtd) of the opposition All Progressives Congress, APC.
Sadeeq rated himself high. He thought with the combined efforts of his undertakers, he could snatch power from the experienced tiger who has mustered the terrain. Sadeeq had forgotten that Bauchi State is not Sambisa forest and the electorates were not Internally Displayed for any assistance from Sadiya.
Instead, Sadeeq was humiliated, defeated and chased out to where he rightly belongs along with his appendage, that Sadiya Umar Farouk who desperately wanted to be addressed as Bauchi State First Lady without working for the status.
The beauty in Bala is that he does not stalk on his assumed friends, opponents or foes and strikes the dagger when they least expect as a good fighter.
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, blackmail or witch hunt but knows how to publicly excoriate when he feels an issue is not going right as a stakeholder in the polity playing the game according to the rules on the political turf. When Sadiya allegedly diverted what rightly belongs to Nigerians and channeled same palliatives to the tall but imaginary dream of Sadeeq, Bala alerted the nation on the impending danger ahead.
Being a candidate and with his known penchant to shoot straight, Bauchi State constitutes a potent threat to the other divide’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 other divide 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, not hidden under the rug or decided by a self-appointed cabal that lacks legality and political clout. As a versed politician who has been paying his dues in the muddy waters of politics, he normally adopts orthodox and unorthodox style that gives him quick result. He has already unruffled many with his style, which has however endeared him to the hearts of the people, most especially the most wretched on planet earth even before the start of the game. Not for him is the culture of sitting idly in the waiting room of political bureaucracy in deceit while things could be done in quicker ways.
We all know that Governor Bala had to run an electrifying, modest, tough and rough contact for the 2023 contest against opponents and their political parties that spared nothing to beat the fast approaching tsunami, which he provoked with his ongoing systematic service delivery, contact and awareness to test the turbulent waters. A glimpse into how he started searing the living daylight out of the other divide was how determined his campaign team was to continue to rescue the state from those hands of undertakers ready to dig shallow graves to bury the people courtesy of violent and directionless politicking full of innuendoes and bogus promises lacking intelligence and sincerity in all ramifications.
From the other divide, a chieftain, who could not believe the expertise displayed and courage deployed to defeat their Air Marshal and his Minister wife at the gubernatorial election, shouted that indeed, Gov. Bala is about to retire them from politics to the extent that they are pushed to a second thought on how best to join his moving train to save their souls and what remains of their integrity and reputation. The claim jelled with the electorates who protested loudly and surely and massively voted for Gov. Bala to continue to enjoy a genuine change anchored on probity and justice not the displayed drama series of opponents, manipulation and deceit by the known mean and gluttonous inconsequential parasites that have been pauperizing the polity for long.
The history of his determined and roiling service to sustain the democracy is historical, as it is tasking. Every hell was levied against the struggle including spurious writings choked with sycophancy and praise singing as he fought the power soaked dullards for sustenance of the democracy within the rule of law.
So it is easy to understand why Bauchi State, and by extension those hangers-on and parasite feel that Kauran Bauchi 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 2023 for continuity of business as usual.
Apart from the few but expired ‘ponies’ on the race course from the other divide’s stable who waited anxiously for the whistle, some other known charlatans joined the race from other stables as moles or compromised or to rattle feathers of the already winning pony of the PDP. Kaura was laughing and watching the interesting drama entertainment within the polity as he prepared his winning strategy against the weak and inconsequential collection of propagandists, blackmailers, parasites and wailers surrounding their only gladiator with the wherewithal for the contest but lacking a formidable team for the fight.
At this juncture, it may be wise to remind Kaura who has what can be rightly called a formidable team that delivered him to victory. Some of those on his trust list were instrumental to the various ridicules and blackmails he had to contend while some connived with the opposition to rubbish all his displayed developmental strides in Bauchi State for peanuts.
Should he still trust those characters bent on causing him a temporal setback in his political journey to prominence? The better he listens, take a critical look on his campaign train and sieve the chaff from the grain at this critical point in time when he returns to the bit. There were several moles that cruised together with him. The earlier the better he acts before the gargantuan task ahead.
So it is easy to understand why the other divide and those stomach infrastructural supporters resorted to the kind of brash tactics they displayed when they fabricated and caused to be leaked a specious and outlandish cocktail of fairy tales, imaginations sourced from the bottom pit of hell with high puerility content and routed through the ubiquitous compromised social media outfits that excelled in deepening hatred and taking up the dirty fights of the other divide and its associates against every other responsible person that declared intent to re-contest.
I strained my eyes to see the contents of juvenile allegations laced with blackmail and hatred traded against Kaura who was referred to and targeted for future blackmail by masters of the game just to intimidate and disarm him from doing the needful in putting more foods on the table.
I need no soothsayer to know that the entire project of the other divide is a tissue of forgeries, intrigues and fables from the badly hurting gang of deceitful daylight merchants masquerading as politicians that constitute a nuisance in the polity and the gullible stomach infrastructural supporters 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 other divide and cohorts threw to this widely condemned attempt to sow tension and crisis where there was none, clearly demonstrated the asinine intent behind those tissues of lies and negative conjectures which the opinion of their candidate is at variance with.
Air Marshal Sadeeq was adjudged by the majority as a bully, a despot, power-drunk and egocentric with low intelligent quotient to be trusted with the leadership of complex state like Bauchi.
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 governing Bauchi State in 2023. It is in this maze that we locate the spurious allegations including intent to dent reputations with blackmail firmly anchored on fiction, satanic imaginations and laughable reasons from the heir to the discarded satanic empire. What we are seeing are mere fictional projections of how the other divide relegated in the scheme of things existing in the state feel they can connive and steal power in 2023 and consolidate their tenuous hold on power in Bauchi State.
Gov. Bala remains a potent threat to those dreams that intend to wreck almost everything in Bauchi State. So the plot was alleged non-performance, even when they were founded on baseless grounds to provoke hatred and create disharmony and loss of respect to the governor whose performance index has outshined those of his peers. This stems from a primitive and raw concept of blackmail and mischief, as the other divide and its associates founded so attractive employing to demoralize the governor and his teaming supporters across the political space with the active connivance of some of their claimed foot soldiers that had earlier deserted and ridiculed them. The feeling is writ large in the diarrhead power laboratory of the APC that once the recalcitrant Kaura is dented it would be easy to take on any other candidate in the state with little stress for bargain.
The tragedy was not that those who scripted the baloney believed so much in its practicability and potency, but was concocted for diabolical gain. The real tragedy however was that the present APC management invested so much faith in that infantile political jeremiad. But when we understood what passed for a State Government in the last years back was not more than a highly impressionable, shallow agglomeration of clueless mandarins that saw themselves more as divide wayfarers, we quickly understood why Bauchi State was tottering so aimlessly on the watch of those partisan enforcers. It was the same tragic mess that a national security that 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, lapdogs and rent seekers to widen the circle of violence and regional sentiment 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 Kaura aright as he braces to face the infantile fury of the other divide and cohorts, which will manifest in several ways as he has defeated the combination of vulture, hyenas and jesters. It was good his traducers showed their hands so early in the day, and in an embarrassingly puerile manner. It allowed him and his strategists enough time to plan containment strategies that left the other divide with a bloodier nose and psychological injuries.
Governor Bala has every right to continue to count himself lucky that his opponents within and without were 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 the state, as he is presently displaying uninterruptedly with dexterity and accolades. I come in Peace for the Good of the Polity and Bauchi State that was left crawling and malnourished until rescued by Sen. Bala Abdulkadir Muhammed! Kaura rebranded his campaign train and should strive to inject fresh blood in his coming new cabinet for good. The coming brand of administration is seriously yearning for brawns and brains better than the exiting team. The project ahead in 2027 is going to be herculean and tasking. There are remnants of Fifth Columnists within and still determined to derail his efforts!
Muhammad is a commentator on national issues
