Weep not for Mama Taraba

THE administration of President Muhammadu Buhari brooks no dissension. Wild punches are thrown wherever grunts are noticed. If faces with disavowal show up, cudgels are reached for and malicious reaps are made. Until recently when the instruments of suppression are perceived to be getting more blunt by the passing day, nearly all dissenting voices were muffled, save for a couple, with Ayodele Fayose’s, ringing loudest, despite the gruffly handing of his oesophagus.

Enemies within were an inconceivable thought. Such conciliative dynamism of Jonathan era will read treason today. Morally, hunting with the dog and running with the hare should ordinarily reprehend, especially when there are benefits on both conflicting sides. Yes, politics is give and take as the bread and butter way-faring politicians love to define it. To them, only the AGIP (All Government In Power) know how to play the game well. Power, politics and positions are game to them. Unfortunately, they are realistically correct in their appraisal than the idealists who cling to “democracy is government of the people, by the people and for the people” utopian concept.

Goodluck Jonathan’s experiment with such enemy-within phenomenon should be an engaging study in conciliatory politics. An embittered ally, the week after he lost the 2015 presidential election, got enraged with Gibbers for sympathising over his man’s loss. The Niger-Deltan believed Jonathan got what he deserved for being too accommodating of known enemies, through whom he planned to get their beefing godfathers to do election business with him.

A sitting governor was also of the same opinion. In our private conversations, he always blames Jonathan for his own historic ouster. He kept wondering how the former president could have kept some companies he did, before the election, especially when the crisis which eventually consumed PDP, began to balloon. The governor is always bewildered that Adamu Mu’azu was kept as the national chairman of the party during the election, despite the revelation of his private, business and political relationship with Senator Bola Tinubu, the driving and controlling force behind the formation and automation of APC, which eventually swallowed Jonathan and his party.

If the said block-busting revelation could be contested due to its covert nature, what about the current APC’s megaphone, Bolaji Abdullahi, staying in Jonathan’s cabinet as minister for close to a year and participating in all matters dear to the then president, including his second-term project, while obviously participating as Bukola Saraki’s protege, in the burgeoning political platform that would eventually consume his then principal.

But Jonathan is Jonathan. Buhari is also Buhari and styles will forever differ for personalities. Having served the current administration for about two years, it should be taken that Minister of Women Affairs, Aisha Alhassan, knows enough of his current boss, Buhari. The soldier in the president, I assume, should have also ensured the president knowing enough of her before accepting her nomination as minister from her original political-father, Atiku Abubakar.

So, if the duo are assumed to know each other enough for their kinds of politics, why the hullabaloo over where Aisha stands on 2019? Maybe, because of the battle pattern already established by the Buhari’s corner. Well, there is a meat you eat and don’t get to spit out easily like others which stop bring the right aroma and taste.

The sycophancy of self-preservation and sustenance will definitely get the presidency’s courtiers to push for a bang on Aisha’s head. The general assumption is that the Daura General, with a history of poor forgiving spirit, will also in his hurricane style, volley out Aisha and other aides, representing the divergent but now disparate interests that made up the APC. The likes of Garba Shehu (who is now cruelly ridiculed as Mr. Rodent) and others who were latter-day Buharists, would take the boot for Aisha’s supposed gaffe. Well, it is difficult to assure the president will surprise the nay-sayers. But, who can tell?

However, Aisha is Aisha too. Big Sis as fondly call by her own, should perfectly fit the “too big to fail” corporate lingo. Her size, marital sojourns, pocket, influence, business, politics, ambition, contacts, capacity and courage, are extra-large. She is also a charmer, smooth and persuasive talker and a swashbuckling adventurer. I assure her sympathisers, she had been in a bigger mess than this and came out with a few bruises. She is also a battler who doesn’t bat an eye-lid when it is time to wink. She has always been influential. When judicial forces set out to take her out as the monstrously-powerful Chief Registrar of the Abuja High Court using alleged corruption probes, for almost 18 months that Aisha was on trial and had to step aside from official duties, no one dared to accept the CR’s appointment in acting capacity. The seat wasn’t only too hot for all her contemporaries, even her bosses, would not “eat soap” as Yoruba will say, “so they won’t foam in the mouth.”

In brief assessment, that is the newest adversary of Buhari’s corner and this time, an enemy within. For a woman who had been married to Ango Abdullahi, the powerful Northern power-broker who should have been Vice-President in 1999 before providence settled for Atiku; Justice Bage, now of the Supreme Court and the former powerful Executive Secretary of the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA), Alhassan, all parties should C-caution as arsenals are repaired and prepared for the new frontiers in political war.

Bis Sis loves to dare, unfortunately, some “too big to fail” failed and the recovery wasn’t comforting. For now, let’s toast to an uncommon loyalty.