Abdullahi Bayero Hammawa
The political history and development of Adamawa State will not be completed without names of Murtala A. H. Nyako and Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri – and most often than not, they must be mentioned in the same breath. While Nyako held forte for seven years as the governor of the state, Fintiri was both speaker and acting governor. What started out as a political romance between the duo quickly turned out into a war of attrition. Nyako was impeached by a House of Assembly led by Fintiri and since then, Nyako loyalists and hangars-on finds it difficult to stomach the just desserts handed to their principal. This has led some of them to lose any sense of decorum or professionalism. This is clearly demonstrated by Ismai’l Mohammed, Leadership correspondent in Adamawa State, in a feature article he wrote for the paper on Friday 8th July 2016. The feature sounded more like a PR job for Admiral Nyako rather than an objective analysis by a disinterested journalist covering his beat.
It was very clear right from the onset that the writer was out to lampoon and belittle Fintitri rather than doing a surgical expose on the rot and the depth of it that Adamawa state was sunk to in the past eight years. Tying Fintiri’s political fortunes to Nyako’s ouster is a great disservice to the young man if the writer can claim that Fintitri went into political hibernation since when he was removed by Justice Ademola of the Federal High Court, Abuja. He did not tell us how visible Nyako has been on the political landscape since 2014 when he was removed by a legislature vested with the power to remove a governor by a constitution that is still subsisting. By the way, has it ever occurred to our commercial journalist that the hibernation might have been for tactical reasons?
The oft-repeated story of how Nyako ensured that Fintiri was nominated as the PDP candidate for Madagali State Constituency is becoming boring and predictable. The point being repeatedly made by these neo-Nyakoist is that Fintiri bit the hand that fed him. This is fine by me. But has it ever occurred to those storytellers to interrogate why Nyako gave his unqualified support to Fintiri over and above others? What was it that Fintiri had to offer that the others couldn’t? Or was it because he liked his face? We shouldn’t be regurgitating such balderdash, particularly our journalists, without asking critical questions. Mohammed should have done well to inform us what was Fintitri’s role in Nyako’s re-election success in 2012.
The writer also accused Fintiri of being “ambitious”. Please my people show me a politician who is not ambitious and I will show you a virgin in a maternity ward. If Fintiri betrayed Nyako, have we forgotten so soon how Professor Jibrin Aminu, emasculated ten other aspirants in order for Nyako to emerge as gubernatorial candidate of the PDP in 2007? How was Professor Aminu treated by Nyako thereafter? He was almost made a persona non grata in Adamawa. What is the difference between the two scenarios if I may ask? Why is it that Nyako’s supporters feel pained by Fintiri’s ouster of Nyako but forgot so easily how Professor Aminu was treated by them? A case of what is sauce for the goose…..
In the writer’s haste to crucify Fintiri for ‘derobing’ his hero he failed to cross check his facts. He wrote that Fintiri accused Nyako of stealing N10billion. I can’t remember coming across such jejune accusation during Fintiri’s tenure. What I remember Fintiri telling the people of Adamawa State was that Nyako left an overdraft of N12.8billion and stole hundreds of millions of dollars. This was confirmed by the late Justice Bobbo Umar Judicial Panel of Inquiry and the two have been vindicated by the EFCC’s prosecution of Nyako for stealing N29billion.
Yeah, Nyako “caused” Goodluck Jonathan “international embarrassment” by his letter to the nineteen northern governors on the security situation in the northeast. So has the likes of Kwankwaso and Ameachi. They were constant pains in the neck of Jonathan. Why was it not possible for Jonathan to ‘suborn’ the Kano or Rivers States legislatures to impeach the two seeing how they have serially “embarrassed” the then president without let for well over a year? Any leader who can be in the saddle of leadership for a period of seven years and couldn’t muster the support of at least eight people in a legislature of twenty-four, is not worth sitting on the exalted seat of a governor. For whatever it is worth, we should remember that, it was Nyako who sold Jonathan to the people of Adamawa as ‘Mainasara’. Many people are yet to forgive him for that. It was also the same Jonathan who saved Nyako’s neck from the impeachment guillotine in 2008, when the then House of Assembly wanted to impeach him. Jonathan was then Vice President to the late ‘Yar Adu’a.
Mohammed was also trying to be clever by half by condemning the late Justice Bobbo Umar for accepting to serve as Chairman of a Judicial Panel to inquire on how the state’s lean resources were been squandered while giving kudos to two other brother Judges. Was it because the judgments given by the duo were favorable to his hero. Whey was Bobbo excoriated while the two are singled-out for praise? Assuming that Abdulazeez Nyako was acquitted on the charges leveled against him is tantamount to putting the cart before the horse. We should not forget in a haste that there are still about nine charges on him before another court and about thirty eight charges against his father. Both were detained before Fintiri on allegations of corrupt enrichment. I cannot for the life of me understand why Mohammed dismissed the charges against the father and son as allegations and those preferred against Fintiri are celebrated. What is journalism coming to?
The article by Isma’il Mohammed appears to me like an image laundry paid for by some people for another person. Instead of making the villains account for their crimes, they are painted as heroes and victims. This is a very dangerous signal to our youth and current crop of politicians who may think thieving is good going by what Mohammed wrote. Retributive justice? How about mafia-type justice where armed robbers are the heroes while pickpockets are villains.
Abdullahi Bayero Hammawa
