After months of dallying and countless speculations, Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf of Kano State lastly broke ranks with Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, his in-law, mentor and political godfather.
Yusuf had been in Kwankwaso’s shadow for almost two-and-a-half many years, serving in numerous roles, together with an govt portfolio as commissioner in Kano State, till 2023, when Kwankwaso nominated him as governor over extra distinguished and visual aspirants.
Yusuf adopted his godfather, Kwankwaso, from PDP to APC, then again to PDP, then to NNPP. It has been a tried-and-tested companionship – the sort that solely politicians can toss apart and nonetheless get well from the shock in little or no time.
The street to manhood
On Monday, January 26, Yusuf returned to the vomit each he and his godfather had skirted when the outgoing Governor Abdullahi Ganduje, one other long-term ally who had earlier dribbled Kwankwaso, and dumped the crimson cap.
Since successful his disputed election victory in a Supreme Court docket verdict in January 2024 – a verdict that overturned the tribunal and Attraction Court docket rulings – followers, admirers, and instigators started whispering to the governor to drop the feeding bottle and stand on his personal ft.
In hindsight, it will need to have been a make-or-break choice for Yusuf, popularly generally known as ‘Abba Gida-Gida.’ A Catch-22! However lastly, he crossed the Rubicon, breaking free from what many had thought of his in-law’s third time period within the Kano Authorities Home.
Echoes of Rome
In what sounded just like the echoes of historic Rome, Kwankwaso declared January 23, the day Yusuf defected, the World Day of Betrayal. If Kano have been Rome, would Yusuf be the brand new Julius Caesar and Kwankwaso its Pompey? Like Caesar, the governor has defied warnings to not cross the Rubicon River, which in historic Rome was the final word act of struggle.
But with the winds of energy in Yusuf’s sails and Kwankwaso, in his Pompey’s winter, the governor has chosen essentially the most weak second to strike.
Uneasy calm
Surprisingly, Kano is quiet – for now. The fanatical Kwankwasiyya Motion – a red-capped brigade for whom Kwankwaso is a cult determine and his crimson cap an emblem of loyalty, appears to have taken Yusuf’s treachery like they took Ganduje’s – biding time with uneasy calm.
Within the shark-infested world of politics, self-survival is the primary legislation. What’s in it for me? Is there a pathway to a second time period, particularly with rumours that Deputy Senate President Barau Jibrin is ? Or is secure passage assured for me? The elite settle themselves first, and solely afterwards are the followers’ pursuits negotiated.
What subsequent, Kano?
What subsequent? Kano usually defies gravity. Its politics is subtle, dangerously contrarian, but consequential. That explains why Aminu Kano’s NEPU defeated the pro-establishment NPC, and why PRP constantly beat NPN. In 2003, Ibrahim Shekarau’s ANPP defeated Kwankwaso’s nationally dominant PDP, just for Kano to start a red-cap motion that’s fanatical even with out a trigger, eight years later. Now, with the attainable realignment of Yusuf, Ganduje, and Shekerau on one facet in opposition to Kwankwaso on the opposite, the die is solid.
“Nonsense!” a Kwankwaso confidant mentioned. “Ought to Kano act to kind within the 2027 gubernatorial elections, then Yusuf’s defection would possibly properly nail his political coffin. The belief that being within the ruling celebration is a positive guess would possibly develop into fatalistic, not only for him however for a lot of governors who’ve defected.”
Learn my cap
Nearly immediate upon his defection, it’s being introduced that Yusuf has the automated APC governorship ticket to run in subsequent yr’s election. He had the correct of first refusal to the NNPP ticket earlier than he bolted. And he nonetheless has his crimson cap on.
Already, a mix of the crimson cap with the Tinubu trademark has emerged. Is Yusuf coming together with Kwankwaso to the APC? Nobody needs to be stunned if this occurs regardless of the hue and cry about betrayal. Politicians hardly imply what they are saying.
What lies forward guarantees to be each fascinating and intriguing.
Re: Russian Embassy’s Fuss Over Azu’s Article on Putin
Studying via the rejoinder of the Russian Embassy to the column of Azu Ishiekwene within the January 23 subject of LEADERSHIP, to borrow the phrase of inimitable Patrick Obahiagbon, the “Igodomigodo,” I used to be “maniacally bewildered.”
The Russian Embassy’s response seems to have missed the purpose by a large margin.
Azu, in his ordinary flowery and didactic prose, had sought to excoriate the modern-day Hitler within the particular person of Donald Trump, who, in my view, reveals traits of a mixture of a sociopath and psychopath.
In his try to attract a parallel between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, who hitherto had been severally lacerated for his expansionist proclivities in Crimea and Ukraine, Azu had painted Putin in a extra saintly gentle than the tyrant in Washington.
I used to be subsequently at a loss as to what the fuss of a rejoinder by the Russian Embassy was, in an article that appeared to deodorise Putin greater than the psychotic occupant of the White Home.
The article titled, “We Owe Putin an Unreserved Apology”, was not, regardless of its literal studying, a plea on behalf of President Vladimir Putin, nor an train in recycling “Western stereotypes” about Russia or its management. It was satire, exact, deliberate, and sharply aimed on the US President Donald J. Trump, whose harmful precedents, phrases, and actions may normalise bullying in world affairs.
Anybody who reads past the headline would see this virtually instantly. The column walks readers via an exaggerated, irony-laden comparability through which Trump’s expansionist fantasies, from annexing Canada to seizing Greenland “by any means,” to play-acting regime change in Venezuela, are used to show the collapse of restraint, logic, and ethical consistency in worldwide politics. Putin seems within the piece not as the article of assault, however as a rhetorical mirror, a counterpoint via which Trump’s excesses are laid naked.
Removed from excusing Russia’s actions in Ukraine, the article painstakingly restates them: the annexation of Crimea, the full-scale invasion, the staggering human price of the struggle, and the absence of any credible justification underneath worldwide legislation. These should not glossed over. They’re introduced plainly, even grimly. The satire lies within the uncomfortable query the article forces the reader to confront: if Trump can brazenly fantasise about territorial conquest, intimidate allies, ridicule multilateral establishments, and nonetheless be indulged, massaged, or excused, on what ethical floor does the world stand when it condemns others?
This isn’t an argument that Putin was “proper.” It’s an argument that the foundations are being shredded selectively, and that Trump’s behaviour accelerates that decay.
Invoking President Putin’s 2007 Munich Safety Convention speech doesn’t resolve this contradiction. That speech is well-known, broadly debated, and regularly cited. However acknowledging its existence doesn’t negate the truth that adopted: struggle, occupation, and immense human struggling. The column doesn’t deny Russia’s grievances; it questions the worldwide system’s rising incapability, or unwillingness, to use its rules constantly, particularly when energy and ego take centre stage in Washington.
Satire, by its nature, usually feels like reward when it’s doing the alternative. Azu’s piece belongs squarely in that custom. To learn it as an easy essay is to strip it of context, tone, and intent.
If something, the article is a warning: when essentially the most highly effective chief on this planet treats worldwide legislation as non-compulsory and conquest as transactional, he lowers the bar for everybody else. That’s neither an assault on Russia nor its defence. It’s an indictment of a world drifting again towards a Hobbesian free-for-all, the place would possibly more and more makes proper.
Disagreement with this argument is honest. Mischaracterising it’s not. A severe dialog about world order, double requirements, and the implications of reckless management deserves cautious studying, not headline-level reactions.
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