Typical of the PDP’s most familiar backdoor scheming, the charade called governorship election four years ago is about to rear its ugly head once again. The news emanating from the domain of Governor AminuTambuwal of Sokoto state on the just-concluded presidential and National Assembly elections is ” inconclusive”. Neither Tambuwal, who looked set to be defeated by a landslide nor the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, officials entrusted with the responsibility of conducting free and fair elections could explain in simple and clear terms why Sokoto’s just-concluded elections can be said to be inconclusive.
I smell a rat and the innocent voters of Sokoto seem up against a deliberate political strategy that is, at best, a smear on decorum and democratic principles as played out in the 2019 governorship election.
The clear and present danger seems to be a compromised INEC official team that is widely believed to be acting Tambuwal’s script by crying wolf where there is none. The current situation in Sokoto is that the voters feel let down by an unjustifiable claim to the inconclusiveness of an election in which they gave all their energy to that cause of changing an unperforming administration to a more promising future.
What is clear in the unfolding drama in Sokoto is that Tambuwal is trying, rather belatedly, to assert incumbency advantage in order to skew the election results in his favour. The signs of this self-righteous use of power and fixation on manipulation of elections started with the rumoured late night meetings between Tambuwal’s footsoldiers and well-known political thug leaders. Many were not surprised to hear that some thugs tried to scuttle elections at various polling units.
Reports had it that in Sokoto east, the wanton thuggery was worse as the PDP used bandits to intimidate the APC agents. Recent reports showed that some people were even locked up in their houses till after the election.
God so kind to the innocent voters of Sokoto, the elections held and PDP was lagging seriously behind. A disappointed PDP leadership, acting the script of Tambuwal, tried to change the narrative that APC was the one using thugs. When the narrative failed to sink, they resorted to plan ‘B’, declaring elections in carefully-targeted polling units as “inconclusive” and they have a compromised INEC election officials to joining that sing-song.
Significantly, this consistent refrain of inconclusive elections in Sokoto has become a trademark of electoral cheating. We had it in 2019 in the governorship election at that time. So, what we are having now is actually a replay of a familiar democratic gimmick, though the current experience stands as worse ever. Why? Elections in all the three senatorial zones have been declared inconclusive. In fact, all the 11 House of Representatives seats have also been declared inconclusive. Who is fooling who here? Is it that all the polling units in the state had experienced over voting or someone is playing a game having seen defeat nakedly?
As we speak, no single senator has emerged. Again, in the House of Representatives elections too no single candidate has scaled through. The questions begging for answers are: what game is Tambuwal playing? Must he win at all cost?
An unforgettable fact in Sokoto’ reflection. In 2019 he defeated the APC governorship candidate with a mere 342 votes margin after the second round, the first having been inconclusive. Now, he is losing and out of desperation, making electoral officers compromise in favour of his desire to win at all cost. Another question is what is he afraid of? Already, his political godfather, Atiku Abubakar, has failed and this may be his final attempt towards that presidential dream.
In the coming days and weeks, Tanbuwal’s shenanigans would be exposed because the claim to inconclusive elections has failed to sink and Sokoto voters have begun demanding convincing explanations on such claim. It all looks like the people of Sokoto and the Tambuwal administration are already poles apart, because of this brazen use of incumbency power to truncate simple democratic process of elections. It is a pity that this is the best Tambuwal has to offer even on exit from power, or an office that failed to improve even the basic economic living conditions of his millions of innocent followership.
As we await March 11 to reclaim the people’s mandate, all those involved in this electoral process should know that, “you can fool some people sometime but you can’t fool all the people all the time and think you can go free. The electorate are now penny wise and pound wise also not like 2019 when it was penny wise but pound foolish game.
The fall of Tambuwal is just a matter of days.
Mohammed writes from Sokoto
