From Usman Ibrahim, Bauchi
In Bauchi State, it will be a significant challenge for All Progressives Congress (APC) stakeholders to campaign for the party’s presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. This difficulty stems from the imposition of former Governor Mohammed Abdullahi Abubakar as the party’s gubernatorial candidate.
Major stakeholders – including former Speaker of the House of Representatives Yakubu Dogara; former Governor Isa Yuguda, former Minister of Education Adamu Adamu, former Minister of Foreign Affairs Ambassador Yusuf Maitama Tuggar and others – previously led the charge against Abubakar’s administration. They had accused him of bad governance and misappropriation of public funds. Their previous campaign was instrumental in his electoral defeat in 2019.
The Guardian newspaper of August 20, 2016 reported that Yakubu Dogara, led members of the Bauchi State APC caucus in the National Assembly to register their grievances against Governor Mohammed Abubakar over the utilisation of N8.609 billion bailout funds. According to the report, the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, alongside the lawmakers and several other stakeholders of the All Progressive Congress (APC), were at the national secretariat of the party, where they met behind closed doors with the then National Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun. The report added that Dogara and Adamu decried non-payment of workers’ salaries by Abubakar despite receiving N8.609 billion bailout funds – monies provided by the late President Muhammadu Buhari government to assist the State in clearing the backlog of workers’ salaries.
Similarly, the Vanguard newspaper of February 10, 2019, weeks to the gubernatorial election in Bauchi State, reported that Yakubu Dogara, speaking during a campaign rally in Dass, headquarters of Dass Local Government Area, alleged that Governor Mohammed Abubakar has “defrauded Bauchi State of N400 billion in the last 3 and half years,” presenting documented evidence to prove the allegations, and challenged Governor Abubakar to seek redress if the claims were false.
The Vanguard newspaper report also quoted a statement from the former Speaker’s media aide, Turaki Hassan, that “thousands of non-existent people were said to have been employed in 2015 shortly after the governor came into office… The ghost workers numbered 1,200 with salaries ranging between N39, 000 and N86,000 and above.
“A perusal of one of the documents indicates that not fewer than 1,200 people were said to have been employed and added into the State’s payroll beginning from July 2015.”
However, one of the ghost employees by name, Bappale Adamu, was said to have been born in 1899, which is 120 years ago and started work with the Bauchi state government on July 24, 2015, and will retire from the service in 2023.,,” Hassan added.
Another startling revelation according to the former Speaker, showed that “all the 1,200 workers, though have different names and dates of birth, have the same Bank Verification Number (BVN), meaning that their entire salary was being paid into one and same bank account under different names.” The former Speaker then wondered how “Bauchi State monthly salary skyrocketed from N2.6 billion per month in May 2015 to N7 billion without recruitment of additional workers, especially as the governor had early in his administration, fired thousands of political appointees engaged by former governor Isa Yuguda, which should have reduced the state’s wage bill drastically.”
Dogara alleged further that, “It would be recalled that the Bauchi State Government had owed workers more than one year salaries following series of verifications allegedly to remove ghost workers from the State’s payroll by the present administration at its inception in 2015, but sadly, shortly after that, the monthly salary bill increased from N2.6 billion to about N7 billion.”
The former Speaker also recalled how the governor chased away contractors renovating Dass Central Mosque but failed to renovate it after repeated promises and revealed how he personally paid for the renovation of the mosque.
The former Governor Abubakar, instead of accepting Dogara’s challenge and sue him to court, only dismissed the allegations as “laughable and puerile…., merely to deceive Bauchi citizens to score cheap political points.”
Former Bauchi Governor Isah Yuguda, in a Guardian newspaper report published on March 6, 2023, accused Governor Abubakar and his successor of “destroying” the infrastructure he left behind in 2015 when he completed his eight years term.
“I left behind 22 hospitals, fully operational and equipped, with both local and foreign doctors – about 31 Egyptian doctors. I trained over 150 medical students; they all returned, but I cannot see any today. I left about 72 Nigerian doctors, but today there are only 18 doctors. I left all the hospitals with 24-hour power supply.
“I left the best specialist hospital in Nigeria behind. The last time I visited, maybe because my days were not up, I would have had a heart attack. This is what Nigeria and Bauchi is all about. The government that took over from me should have maintained that hospital, instead of saying ‘I want to build this and that,” Yuguda echoed.
The members of the APC Caucus in Bauchi State, who are expected to run Governor Abubakar’s campaign in the upcoming 2027 election, were nearly all at loggerheads with the Governor at that time. The then national chairman of the APC, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun had to inaugurate a fact-finding and reconciliation committee, with Senator Chris Ngige as chairman, in order to resolve the internal party strife that engulfed the APC in Bauchi State, as reported by Daily Trust newspaper of April 13, 2017.
On December 17, 2022, The Nation newspaper reported that Governor Abubakar was suspended by the leadership of the All Progressive Congress (APC) in his ward for alleged anti-party activities. The newspaper reported that, “In the letter of suspension jointly signed by Sa’idu Laminu Baban Karatu and Abdullahi, chairman and secretary respectively, APC Makama/Sarkin Bakl Ward of Bauchi Local Government Area announced that the suspension of Abubakar was in line with Article 21.2 () of the APC constitution.”
Although the suspension was later voided by the State Chapter of the party, it was a significant event in the former Governor’s controversial relationship with the party.
Given the foregoing, with what credibility will these stakeholders now return to the electorate and ask them to vote for Abubakar again? Since the APC utilises a “top-to-bottom” campaign strategy, it is unclear how these leaders can promote a candidate they once labelled as corrupt.
No doubt, the APC stakeholders in Bauchi are in a deep mess. The 2027 Tinubu presidential campaign in the State would certainly be affected by the imposition of Abubakar as the APC gubernatorial candidate against the will of loyal party members and the general public.
However, even as some suggest that Abubakar has sought for forgiveness of his past mistakes, critics argue that true repentance requires restitution. They question whether he has returned the public funds or the properties he allegedly acquired in Kano and Abuja.
As a matter of fact, given Governor Abubakar’s record of alleged human rights violations and the lack of accountability, the President should meet with these stakeholders to understand the serious challenges they face in ensuring APC’s victory at the polls.
Ibrahim, a public affairs commentator, wrote from Bauchi.
