From Desmond Mgboh, Kano
Several years ago, House of Reps member, Abdulmumini Jibrin Kofa grabbed the headlines for urging President Muhammadu Buhari to step down on health grounds. Although he apologized a week after and went ahead to organize a special prayer for his recovery, that singular act of tactlessness against Buhari costs him his seat in 2019.
Ahead of 2023 polls, he was wiser and a bit smarter, having learnt the hard way from his fall. He, therefore, rooted for Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the open, but held meetings with Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso at nights. That balance, or what some have described as political duplicity, helped him regain his seat in 2023.
In the last few days, however, Reps Kofa’s brilliance has been shaded, his mid- life smile has been tainted with dark inks following a strip-it- all political fight with another political gladiator from the state and former Majority Leader of the House, Ado Alhassan Doguwa,
The titanic clash, which has entertained the audience of Kano politics, is about pride, ego and power. But beyond these lines, it is also about unreasoning loyalty to political sycophancy and god-fatherism in which the protagonists are pushed by the desires to demonstrate loyalty to their party’s leaders.
According to a narrative, it also started after a viral video where the leader and former presidential candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso had attacked the APC and its leaders.
According to this narrative, Kwankwaso in the video had disparaged the leaderships of the APC as “Banzaye”, (A Hausa word for stupid people).
According to Doguwa, “Kwankwaso must also be advised to shun or desist from his present attitude of abusing or embarrassing our national leaders of APC, sometimes even making negative insinuations against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and making wrongful indictment against the APC Government.”
Doguwa’s remarks earned him a swift reply from his colleague. Speaking to his constituents two weeks ago, Kofa took time out to rubbish Doguwa and his political antecedents, cautioning him to stop abusing Kwankwaso especially as Kwankwaso was not his mate.
“So, let me warn him for the last time to desist from that, otherwise, we won’t hesitate to take appropriate action on him” Kofa declared.
The debate of whether Kwankwaso was Doguwa’s political mate or not has its root in history. In 1992, both Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and Doguwa were elected to the House of Representatives and were co-parliamentarians until the military take-over.
Doguwa is fond of recalling this history and will often remind those who have elected to worship the person of Kwankwaso that their revered leader was his political mate.
Did this go down well with them?
No! But was he correct? Yes!
But in a counter narrative offered by the angry Kofa, this story is a half –told tale, structured with incomplete claims.
Kofa argued that although Kwankwaso and Doguwa went to the House at about the same time, Kwankwaso had since progressed and has attained greater callings than Doguwa. He also reminded the House Committee Chairman on petroleum (downstream) that as at 1992, Kwankwaso was already 17 years as a civil servant and a PhD holder, whereas Doguwa was a fresh University graduate, who had accidentally found his way to the House.
He also listed the positions held by Kwankwaso over the years to include a former Deputy Speaker of the House, member of the constitutional conference, a two term Governor of Kano State, a former Minister of Defence, an Envoy to Sudan and Darfur, a board member of NDDC, a Senator, a presidential aspirant, a presidential candidate and currently the National Leader of NNPP.
At this point, many had thought the fight had ended and the curtains closed. But like a phoenix, it refused to die. In their subsequent engagements, the fight shifted to their alleged misconducts during elections in their respective constituencies.
Kofa declared that Doguwa did not win a free and fair election in 2023 polls but rather emerged victorious by rigging and electoral violence which left behind “sorrows, tears and blood in his constituency”.
His allegation subtly hinted at the widely reported violence and arson that greeted the polls in Tudun Wada/Doguwa constituency during the last elections.
But Doguwa did not let this go. He described Kofa’s accusations as “tissue of lies, fabrication, ranting, stupidity and balderdash”, adding that the said crisis was a naked political plot and baseless machinations designed to thwart the wishes of the electorate of his constituency, who had always overwhelmingly voted for him.
He noted under the nation’s legal system, “an accused person within the Nigerian context of the administration of criminal justice remains innocent until he is proven guilty by a competent court of law.
He added, “Three courts of competent jurisdiction declared me innocent of the alleged mischievous allegations against my innocent self.
“A Federal High Court in Abuja delivered the recent and most exemplary judgement on enforcing my fundamental human rights as a free Nigerian citizen. It may interest Jibrin and his cohorts to know that, that judgement even ordered the Kano State government and the governor to pay me a cost of N25m as damages for unnecessarily harassing me and defaming my innocent character.
“ Of course, there was a crisis instigated by perpetual political losers in my area, but I was not behind such a crisis. Instead, I was only made a victim. The police investigators arrested some of the hoodlums who have made personal confessions- they mainly were NNPP members.
“Some of them were even hired from Kano city to go to Tudun Wada to stop the unstoppable election of my humble self to the House of Representatives for the 7th time. These indicted NNPP criminals were prosecuted by appropriate courts of law in Kano and were served different sentences”, he stated.
“Let me also say categorically that as of today, I, Hon. Alhassan Ado Doguwa, I am not standing before any court of law in Nigeria for alleged murder, culpable homicide or any politically instigated violence being speculated by my detractors or political enemies.
“I went through virtually all criminal investigations and judicial considerations at various levels and came out clean and victoriously innocent. Copies of such rigorous police investigations conducted by the highest police investigations authority in the land (the Force Criminal Investigation Department – FCID, Abuja) that cleared me are available for public scrutiny.
“I, therefore, wish to state on my honour and on Islamic moral conviction that the so-called crisis in my constituency was merely cooked and fabricated to throw a spanner in the works of what was perceived to be my life ambition in politics (to be the Speaker of the House of Representatives”.
Taking the matter further, he challenged Kofa to account for the political incident that occurred in his own constituency in 2019 for which he was arrested and detained alongside seventy other suspects.
He explained that the violence erupted as the duo of Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and Abba Kabir Yusuf (Abba Gida Gida) were passing to Bebeji through Kofa town, noting that the incident allegedly left about seven PDP supporters dead, several others injured, and 25 cars belonging to Kwankwaso’s supporters burnt down.
“My erstwhile friend, Kwankwaso and the entire people of Kano State are my living witnesses to this unfortunate acts of Jibrin Kofa in his bid to win a 2 LGA election, and still could not win.
“In fact, he was arrested alongside 70 of his partners in crime by the police…And till today, this case of the gruesome murder and arson has not been conclusively investigated”, he declared.
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