Farooq Kperogi: Kwankwaso-Yusuf rupture and echoes of Saraki

The public rupture between Gov. Abba Yusuf and his “godfather” and in-law, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, has the visible trappings of carefully orchestrated political theater.

Several people have suggested that Yusuf’s defection to the APC was artfully done at the instance of Kwankwaso and was calculated to stall the emergence of a formidable opponent from the APC.

But people close to Kwankwaso, whose integrity and credibility I have no reason to question, swear that the rift is real and that Kwankwaso is smarting from an inexpressibly profound sense of loss and betrayal.

Well, since those who claim that the Kwankwaso-Yusuf falling out is a Machiavellian political performance to checkmate the APC in Kano base their opinion only on intuition and not on cold, hard facts, I choose to err on the side of those who say Gov. Yusuf chose to sever his umbilical cord from Kwankwaso.

This is the second betrayal Kwankwaso has suffered, the first being his well-known acrimonious split with Abdullahi Ganduje, his formerly dutiful deputy.

I have read some Kwankwaso supporters suggest that since a previously loyal deputy betrayed him and an in-law did the same (Yusuf is said to be married to the daughter of Kwankwaso’s brother), maybe he should sponsor his son as the next governor.

I laughed when I read it because it reminded me of the late Olusola Saraki, who almost literally owned Kwara State. He made Adamu Atta the governor of the old Kwara State in 1979. Saraki and Atta dramatically fell apart before the end of Atta’s first term.

Saraki then shifted his enormous political capital to the opposition UPN and made its candidate, Cornelius Adebayo, the governor in 1983 while remaining in the NPN, at the expense of courting the wrath of the national NPN.

He fell out with Adebayo in short order, but the military intervened and spared us the drama of their political rupture.

In the truncated Third Republic in 1992, he supported Sha’aba Lafiagi as governor, but before Sani Abacha dislodged the republic in November 1993, visible cracks between Saraki and Lafiagi had already begun to appear.

So, when the Fourth Republic was inaugurated in 1999, Saraki decided to lend his political weight to an Ilorin native, since all the people he had previously supported from other parts of the state had disappointed him. He therefore worked to get Mohammed Lawal, an Ilorin man, elected governor in 1999.

Many people thought that would be the end of his political nightmare, but it actually got worse.

Against his own wish (I know this because he confided in me when he was alive, which I revealed in my November 24, 2012, column titled “My Last Encounter With Saraki”), he was compelled to support his conceited and culturally inept son, Bukola Saraki, for governor, which he did.

Although Bukola Saraki was his son, he fell out with him spectacularly. Then he wanted to sponsor his daughter, Gbemisola, as Bukola’s successor, which Bukola obstructed. Only his son was able stop him from “anointing” a governor and thus buried him politically. He died a sad man.

If a political godfather consistently falls out with every political godson, the common denominator is not the godsons’ flaws but the godfather himself.

Maybe Kwankwaso needs to look in the mirror and also study Saraki’s experience with political godfatherism.

More importantly, as I have pointed out in previous columns, power empowers. It emboldens and lionizes even the most abjectly diffident, previously slavish, bootlicking subordinates.

Power is particularly self-conscious in the presence of those who enabled it and who feel entitled to pull its strings. I think it is basic decency to steer clear of power once you bring it about. Meddling with power while out of its orbit never ends well.

But as Professor Toyin Falola recently observed in an interview with Edmund Obilo, for most politicians, politics is business. It is their primary source of income, which means they cannot afford to sponsor people into power and then sit back. They feel compelled to reap the returns on their investment. That, perhaps, is the heart of the problem.

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