Gone the way of his ancestors, Magaji Abdulahi, a colourful and lively politician who bestrode the Kano political terrain like a colossus, left an enduring legacy. ABDULAZIZ ABDULAZIZ narrates
For a Kano boy of my generation, the mention of the name Engineer Magaji Abdullahi, who died in the early hours of today, will strike those memories of the 1991/1992 gubernatorial campaigns.
The likely image that would come to mind is that of the colourful posters of a well fed, fair-skinned politician with a tribal mark laying askance over his ebullient right cheek. The blue stallion logo of the SDP added to the colour of the Engineer’s posters.
Magaji gave glamour to the contest. He and his equally flamboyant rival, Arc. Kabiru Gaya gave each other a tough run in all respects.
I remember his campaign vehicles racing through the streets in my Fagge area, dispensing the candidate’s posters as they head to Ammani Inuwa’s office at Dandalin Fagge. It was here that I had my first few glimpse at the man whose yellow face radiates like a ripe tangerine under the sun.
Magaji ran a well oiled campaign machinery with many of Kano’s political gladiators on his side, it was by the whiskers that he lost the contest to NRC’s Gaya.
It was little of a surprise. Abdullahi went into the contest with fair financial muscles. He pioneered the Water Resources and Engineering Corporation Agency (WRECA). And SDP was in no short supply of moneybags eager to push gubernatorial candidates of the party to clear the pitch for a smooth sail in the presidential race.
By the next round of political activities, the man had shot to the national limelight. In the run off to Abacha’s botched transition programme, Magaji rose to become the national chairman of the National Centre Party of Nigeria (NCPN), one of the strongest of the five registered parties of the time.
During the 1999 transitional election, Magaji’s political clouta were so strong that he had an easy sail in picking the gubernatorial ticket of the All Peoples Party (APP). His opponent was a less sophisticated Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso who had worked under Magaji at WRECA. But of course with the support of the masters of the game such as Alhaji Musa Gwadabe, Lili Gabari, Abubakar Rimi, Aminu Baba Danbappa, Engr. Hamisu Musa, among others, the latter candidate trumped Engr. Magaji. It was a soar loss for him.
But Magaji remained in his party and by the next election in 2003 he threw his hat in the ring, again. However, by that time a younger version Magaji had emerged in Ibrahim Al-amin Little who, as the chairman of the party in the state and with backing from the Abacha family manoeuvred to clinch the ANPP ticket.
However, with some internal scheming that Magaji as a master politician helped to plot, Little lost the ticket to Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau who polled second at the primaries. Shekarau immediately picked Magaji as his running mate. Helped by the wave of the Sharia agitations, Shekarau and Magaji routed Kwankwaso out of the Government House.
But not long after taking over the government, a cracked developed between Magaji and his boss. This could be attributed to many factors. Foremost is the fact that the deputy governor shoe seemed too discomforting for Magaji going by his credentials. He was is in many respects ahead of his principal, the governor. Contempt was therefore bound to grow. Secondly, he was the politician. Having spent over a decade in politics, he knew more politicians and had better network than Shekarau who only gate-crashed by mere circumstances.
With time the disagreements grew such that the deputy governor, in a very rare move before and since then, vied for the governor’s seat in an election the governor was also an aspirant. This was the height of disloyalty.
Shekarau moved on without Magaji Abdullahi and the estranged deputy governor slipped into political oblivion from which he never recovered.
At some point he wanted to relaunch himself. Sometime in 2009 I was invited as a reporter to join Magaji on a visit to the then General Muhammadu Buhari at his Daura residence. I joined him in his car on the afternoon journey. He was a man of few words and for most of the journey no much conversation took place outside his reiteration of how Shekarau had refused to give him his entitlements years after leaving office.
We arrived at Daura at sundown and we joined our host to perform the magrib prayer. The import of the visit was to declare support for Buhari who was then writhing in the pains of betrayal he suffered from Shekarau.
It was a very short meeting that I doubt if it had served any genuine outcome.
Eventually, Magaji’s political profile waned some more and his public appearance declined due to irrelevance.
It was a pity and a lesson in changing patterns of worldly affairs that the late deputy governor turned out to become a hanger-on around the Kwankwaso political aristocracy.
May his soul rest in peace.
