Alhaji Yahaya Bello: Governor by Divine Ordination

By Jude Salawu

On August 29, 2015 Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir El–Rufai, who served as returning officer at the All Progressives Congress governorship primary election in Kogi State surprised many people at the Confluence Stadium in the state capital Lokoja by casting lots to determine contestants’ identities using numbers rather than names because, as he reasoned, the low level of literacy among party delegates would occasion confusion if aspirants’ names were used by voters to select their choice while voting.

The late Abubakar Audu was given the first choice on account of his being an elder in the party. Audu picked number seven. About ten other contestants picked in turns before Governor-elect, Alhaji Yahaya Adoza Bello, was given the chance to make his pick. And he picked Number One!

Thereafter the election went on smoothly and a winner declared in the early hours of Sunday the 30th of November. Abubakar Audu had won and Yahaya Bello came second. Shortly after Audu’s victory was announced and after the winner congratulated Bello for his dogged and spirited fight, the Governor-elect told a huge crowd of his supporters that “the battle has shifted to the intellectual sphere”, appealing to them to remain calm and law-abiding and promising that he would eventually triumph.

Many of his supporters looked askance, not knowing the basis of Bello’s Dutch courage and unusual confidence. They wondered openly what miracle this loser was to going to conjure up to reverse the victory of his electoral adversary.

But Bello knew what he was talking about. Prior to, and during the APC primary, Audu was a member of the party’s Board of Trustees (BoT) and went into the fray without first resigning from the board as required by the constitution of the party. The evidence for that was his voting at the election as a statutory delegate. Bello therefore held the four aces, but unknown to the cursory observer.

Most of the plebeians now debating the legitimacy of Bello’s victory have been unaware of Audu’s technical disability to stand election when he went into the primary at the Confluence Stadium on that fateful day. In the eyes of the law, Audu was never an aspirant for the office of governor on the platform of APC because he had not satisfied the mandatory requirements of the law—the party’s constitution. Yes, the constitution. Every social club or private organization that is guided by a constitution is ultimately governed by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which recognizes the right of all Nigerians to belong to any group or organization of their choice.

A political party is like any other social club or non-governmental organization governed by its constitution. And a constitution is like a contract that governs transactions between individuals or groups. A breach of such contracts is actionable in law.

Therefore, when, in violation of APC’s contract with its members Audu went into the governorship contest without first resigning his membership of the Board of Trustees, it was clear to all that the late leader of the party in Kogi State was gambling away his destiny.

Bello knew where he was going. He left the Ogbonicha politician to continue his journey to nowhere, convinced beyond even unreasonable doubt that it was just a matter of time before his stolen mandate would be restored to him judicially.

It is curious that the array of senior lawyers now falling over themselves to “protect” Audu’s interests posthumously could not come to his aid with sound legal counsel to first resign his BoT membership before venturing into the contest that has now resulted in the so-called constitutional conundrum.

In the eyes of the law Audu was never a contestant in the APC primary. In the eyes of the law Audu never won any primary. In the eyes of the law Audu was never APC’s candidate in the November 21st election. In the eyes of the law no APC candidate died during the November election. However, an APC leader named Abubakar Audu, died during the election of November 2015. In the eyes of the law, Alhaji Yahaya Adoza Bello remained the AUTHENTIC candidate of the APC right from the August 29 primary that held at the Confluence Stadium. Yes, we agree that the late Audu succeeded in diverting to waste the votes of about 1,109 delegates that purported to have voted for him at the primary election. This is so because the late leader was not qualified in law to stand election as he did.

Alhaji Yahaya Bello, the intelligent and thoroughly enlightened man he is, headed for the courts to declare him the authentic candidate of the party. The matter is still in court. This is the only choice open to every civilized person. Those who think and canvass the view that Bello is reaping where he did not sew do not know what they are talking about. For one, Bello took his solid case to the party, but manipulation swung in and the report of the panel that investigated Bello’s claim arrived at the inexorable conclusion that Audu violated the party’s constitution by remaining on the BoT while he went into the election.

The damming report of the Appeal Panel set up by the party to look into Bello’s petition was swept under the carpet by the party leaders who were determined to enthrone autocracy over the rule of law. Bello, having exhausted all administrative avenues for redress was compelled to file a writ in court that his stolen governorship ticket should be returned to him.     

While mortal men played god, a deux ex machina stepped in and removed the controversy.

Audu died a hero. God alone knows why he saved him with death. Nigeria has begun to thread the path of the rule of law and so it would have been a very humiliating defeat for Audu to be ordered by a court of law to relinquish the unearned mandate to the one who truly deserves it. But such are the mysterious ways of God that He does what man cannot comprehend in his finite wisdom and understanding.
 
If anybody ever was destiny’s child, Kogi State Governor-Elect is a veritable one.

That is why Senator Dino Melaye reminds us every so often: “you would be fighting God if you stand against His choice, Alhaji Yahaya Bello.”