The story in Kaduna today about Malam Nasir El-Rufai is not that he is facing charges of wrongdoing. It is that he has so wronged his men that he is alone. It is not the loneliness of being in jail. It is the torture and agony of alienation. There is no lonely man today in politics like the former chief executive of one of the north’s most pivotal states. He is like the person in the sociological treatise of David Reisman’s opus, The lonely Crowd. Malam El-Rufai has lost the intimacy of his political allies and associates. He cannot work arm in arm or hum heart to heart with his own followers. The irony is that he is believed to have brought it on himself. Like Ajax in Sophocles’ tragedy, he is falling on his own sword.
It all came to light in the recent party primaries of the African Democratic Congress in the state. He had 27 aspirants for various positions. They were a gubernatorial aspirant, gunners for state and federal legislatures, including the senate. The only person who won a nomination was his son Bello. All the rest went belly up. It was the corpse not only of a dream and a pride, but also of a structure.
El-Rufai had promised them that it was all well and good. They walked out of the primary, head downt, feet wobbly. The only man standing was his son. This implies that his only structure in the party consists of himself and his son. He does not have a state structure in the ADC, or in the state. He has a family structure. He is a political patriarch of one person. He was placed behind bars. So is his political fortune.
How come he was only able to save his son, but the rest 26 all fell flat? The most pitiable of them all was his governorship candidate, Jafaru Sani. He must be a sad man today. He expected a coronation at the primary. He had a decapitation. He was, just weeks before the primary, viewed in his circle as the man of the moment. El-Rufai foisted a delusion on him. He started holding court with the bouffant air of a political bigwig. He was supposed to be the heir apparent to the El-Rufai throne. He was expected to win and ride the momentum to the state house. El-Rufai would be the capo in the shadows.
But the winner turned out to be Isa Ashiru, an ally of David Mark and Atiku Abubakar. The chief orchestrator and architect of this electoral gun smoke was Salihu Lukman, a wily politician and former APC vice chairman of the northwest zone.
Lukman plotted it. And in a meeting allegedly with former Sokoto State Governor Aminu Tambuwal and David Mark with the nod and smile of Atiku Abubakar, it was agreed to encircle Malam. They succeeded and made a turn for Ashiru. What was their beef? They did not trust him. It is strange. Malam, who made a show of allegiance to Atiku in many photo ops. Who spoke with gusto about him. Perhaps he did that because he was shooed out of the SDP. Maybe he played a game of belonging but his peers in the ADC did not trust him. Maybe they saw him as a cheerful self-imagist, a strutting showboat. These were the same people who made a drama of not being allowed to see him in detention. El-Rufai must now believe they played con. They were actually coy about visiting him in detention.
They however believe that Malam’s biography did not help him. He had been with Obasanjo. That relationship went belly up. He was for Musa Yar’adua before he was not. He was for Atiku once and fled. And he was back again, and how could they believe his feet were not at the door to speed across the aisle?
Now, his associates and followers have now fled to the arms of the APC and Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani. Feelers say, Jafaru Sani is now with Uba Sani. His pirouette is because Malam left him high and dry.
Some of the 26 who failed at the primaries are asking? “How come he fought for his son, and he could not fight for the rest of us? Was it a father and son project?” He forgot, they assert, that he was their father in politics. He undermined that principle and made a matter of bloodline and genetics. It was not just that they lost, they assert, but because he did not fight for them.
It is an irony that in 2015, both Lukman and Ashiru were in the same APC primary to pick the ticket. Malam beat them and became governor. That may be the genesis of the fight and grudge. Ashiru is now his nemesis. And the architect is Lukman, a man who was a great APC matador until he discovered the president had seen through him. He has spent a great deal of his time and fury trying to malign the intentions of President Bola Tinubu.
He believes he has gotten his pound of flesh in one of the president’s men by pushing a candidate. But it is another story of solitude for him. The reason is the backer of Ashiru had been former governor of the state, the stalwart politician and PDP wheel horse, Ahmed Makarfi. He stood behind Ashiru in the last round of elections with resources and moral heft against then candidate Uba Sani. But Ashiru has looked the other way. Makarfi feels betrayed. He has now moved his structure behind Uba Sani. So also has former governor, vice president and Makarfi’s successor Namadi Sambo.
All of these are the consequences of Malam El-Rufai’s politics. It is another paradox that he was not demobilised by the forces within but outside. The outsiders may not believe they want to win the governorship race in the state. Victory over Malam may just be enough for them. They are quite too feeble to fight in a general election. They are bigwigs, like Atiku and Mark, but not in Kaduna. They are not sons of the soil. They own the party, the papas of the ADC household. They like to occupy parties like armies of occupation. The same way they took over the party from the owners because they could not form a party, name a party or organise one. The same way they have done with the party primaries in the state. It is a pity that Malam could misread the influence of Rauf Aregbesola, who he had thought could anoint Jafaru Sani. It was again part of the endless strings of miscalculations.
Jafaru Sani was his wingman. He never ran against him. He was always with him in court and out of court, in peace and pieces. He was with him in all his troubles. He even went to jail because of Malam. Malam had submitted Jafaru Sani’s name to President Bola Tinubu to replace him as minister. He was the head of the transition committee when he became governor and held three key portfolios as commissioner under Malam. Jafaru Sani believes Malam left him to drown halfway through a river. His son Bashir tweeted that political relevance is more important than loyalty. It seems Malam fought for himself by fighting for his son. This was the Malam, who came years ago to the Yoruba Tennis Club to barb a godfather. He wants to be one himself. He has gone back to his vomit but he is choking on it. The only godson he secured is from his loins.
This republic has not witnessed this sort of exodus as we are seeing in Malam’s ADC today. The question is, who will help El-Rufai? Obviously, he cannot help himself. A nightmare.
