By Shamsuddeen Lukman Abubakar
It is quite surprising that politicians in the Nigerian system tend not be grateful or appreciative of those who assisted or facilitated their rise to fame, fortune and influence. Unlike their peers in more advanced climes, they tend to turn against and even bite the very fingers that fed them thus forgetting their lowly or humble positions before they were assisted to climb the rungs of political power or reckoning.
In Nigeria, specifically Bauchi State, the opposite is the case as all manner of political and public office holders who rode on the crest of President Muhammadu Buhari’s overwhelming popularity in the 2015 general elections started singing a different tune once they started tasting the juicy and tantalizing lucre of officialdom.
And apart from distancing themselves from the electoral fortunes of the President, they have even gone as far as opposing and attacking the numerous people-oriented policies and programmes of the APC-led Federal Government much to the chagrin of their constituents and party supporters.
For instance, it is an open secret that majority, if not all of the National Assembly members, both Senators and House of Representative members from Bauchi State were virtual neophytes who had no chance of even delivering their own local government not to talk of their federal constituency or senatorial zone if not that they rode on President Buhari’s coattails to power.
However many of them have turned around to claim that they got to the National Assembly by virtue of their own popularity and widespread acceptance, a laughable assertion that is both tendentious as it is egregious in all its negative ramifications.
Senator Wakil, despite his posturing is really aware that he is a political lightweight that has no influence or widespread acceptance in his senatorial zone or the state for the matter. If he had not joined the APC, thus benefitting from President Buhari’s popularity, he would have been nowhere near the Senate.
Even visitors to the Senator usually meet a hostile reception from his staff who normally proclaim that Senator Wakil has given strict orders that ‘he does not want to see anyone’ much to the bewilderment and consternation of the hapless constituents. His visits to his constituency are few and far between and even during such visits, Senator Ali Wakil is surrounded by a retinue of stern looking bodyguards who manage to keep most of the people at bay, not minding what pressing issue bothers them.
It continues to confound many a political observer, activist or Senator Wakil’s teeming Constituents as to the ulterior motives or reasoning behind the Senator’s outright hostility to Mr President and his political desideration. Why would the Senator go to such untoward lengths to antagonize his political benefactor while engaging the incumbent Bauchi State governor in unnecessary and diversionary political slugfests of no positive gain or consequences? Together with some other National Assembly members, Senator Wakil has dubiously posited that they were the ones that elevated Governor Mohammed Abubakar to political office, a spurious claim that has been derided both within Bauchi State and the nation at large.
It is necessary to remind Senator Ali Wakil and his pathetic coterie of fellow travellers, turncoats, political contractors and sell-outs that 2019 is just around the corner and the politically conscious and socially aware Bauchi citizenry are waiting to exact their pound of flesh on them and decisively show them the way out of political reckoning and political recognition in the Pearl of Tourism State, no more, no less. He who has ears let him hear.
– Abubakar wrote in from Bauchi