Dear Kwankwasiya youths, I write to inform you how prosperous your movement will be if you use modern political strategy to build the movement. Politics is a strategic and gradual process. The term ‘strategic’ contains many things and if you do not use them accordingly you might ruin your political movement and the career of your leader, Dr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso. Remember that your movement is still an infant that needs to be modeled, guided, cherished, and built on the basis of societal norms.
Your leader, Dr. Rabiu Kwankwaso, is a man of integrity who is sometimes compared to the late Aminu Kano. This shows that he has a high prospect to become not only a leader in Kano state or the North-west geo-political zone but also in the entire country like former Vice-president Atiku Abubakar, the immediate-past President Muhammadu Buhari and many other great Arewa leaders past and present. But this can only happen if you, the Kwankwasiya youths, maintain the stature and integrity of your leader by avoiding reacting to people who have different minds towards the movement as this is wrong.
You also need to understand that an election cannot always be in your favour. Sometimes your candidate may lose, sometimes your candidate wins, and sometimes it might seem to you that your candidate is the one who won the election but it will be turned down because of some irregularities before or during the election like what happened in Zamfara state in 2019, and the recent one in Kano state.
Politics, as Mao Zedong says, “is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed”. If you are not careful about how you drive this movement, you might end up destroying the career of your great leader – Kwankwaso.
Abba Kabir Yusuf has been performing well as the governor of Kano state within this short period, especially in the education sector by giving out scholarships and reducing school fees and many other things. Believe me, all these efforts will not go unrewarded as he is still the governor of Kano state and has the chance to appeal the ruling of the tribunal.
My advice to you is that, it is always easier to convince neutral people to vote for your candidate than to convince a die-hard supporter of a particular political party. Also, let me remind you of this saying, “The first requirement of politics is not intellect or stamina but patience”. Politics is a very long-run game and the tortoise will usually beat the hare.
As Walter Lippmann also said, “Before you can begin to think about politics at all, you have to abandon the notion that there is a war between good men and bad men”. You need to be patient and understand how to retaliate when people go against your will. It is not rocket science to understand people in the opposition.
I wish you the best!
Mustapha Yajiwa,
Maiduguri, Borno state
