The Benani Denouement (Senator Aisha Dahir) And The Hudu Manoeuvre

Senator Aisha Dahiru, popularly known as Benani finally lost the gubernatorial election in Adamawa State. She shattered the myth that was being developed around her. Spectacularly. And the women in politics lost their innocence. The wind blew finally, and the rump of the chicken seen was not a pretty sight!

The pain of Benani’s loss and the accompanying ugly and illegal maneuver she tried to pull is reverberating across the land. Both her party the APC and her PDP opponents in the just concluded election are aghast that a woman could be more adept at the crude game they had thought was the forte of males only.

A governorship election horse race

The 2023 governorship election in Adamawa state was essentially a two-horse race between the PDP candidate and sitting Governor Mr. Ahmadu Fintiri and the APC flag bearer Senator Aisha Benani Dahiru. 

The third force had posed a threat with a heavyweight like the former Secretary to the Federal Government (Babachir Lawal) becoming a chieftain of the hurricane Obidient movement and rallying forces for the Labour Party.  Though the results of the March 18th election showed LP in a distant third position, a lot of folks believe Labour Party did better than the figures announced pending the rerun billed for April 15th, 2023.

Pundits had projected PDP to win the state for several reasons.  The factor of incumbency on the part of His Excellency Fintiri was expected to play a huge role.  The Presidential candidate of the PDP, a former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar rumored to have a huge war chest in dollars was expected to contribute to PDP’s success as he hails from Adamawa State. However, the loss of some states by the ruling party gave hope to Benani’s APC. So did the fact that the First Lady of Nigeria – Aisha Buhari – hails from the State. Admittedly she is also a force to reckon with. 

Aisha could easily have emerged as the first elected female governor of a state in Nigeria. She could have broken the glass ceiling especially in Northern Nigeria where the import of such a feat would have resounded through history. It would have also provided a new motivation and inspiration for girl child education and aspiration. It would have taught us men that gender is just a chromosomal happenstance and should not be a barrier to participation and achievement in any sphere of our national life. It would have provided the APC and the PMB era something else to crow endlessly about. But fate had a different plan since the pursuit was not genuine.

That plan played out last week.

In very ugly colors that reminded us that the old order is still very much alive and well while its protagonists are ready for the perpetual rewinding of our progress clock.  Shockingly enough, it was not the PDP who wanted to do the ‘jibiti’ in Adamawa, it was the same party hailed for the enactment of the impressive Electoral Act 2022 that deployed impunity in its most ugly, immoral, and illegal form.  What played out in Adamawa is the stuff of blockbuster movies in which the stars are Italian Mafiosi who care less about the law or morality.

The drama started when after the general election of 18th March 2023, Adamawa State gubernatorial election was inconclusive due to some Polling Units that had issues. At this time, the incumbent governor and candidate of PDP, Umaru Fintiri, had 421,524 votes while Hajia Benani of APC was trailing with 390,275 votes. 

The Returning Officer had declared the election inconclusive because the total cancelled votes were greater than the margin between the winner and the closest opponent.  Umaru cried foul, claiming that the margin of his lead could not be changed by votes from the outstanding units where a re-run was scheduled to take place on 15th April 2023. The Returning Officer had spoken and that had to be obeyed.   

On Sunday the 16th of April 2023, the collation of votes was suspended after midnight to restart by 11 am later same day. At this time results of ten of the twenty polling units had been collated leaving ten outstanding with Fintiri still having a very comfortable lead.  By 9 am, the devil entered the arena and weird events began. A Resident Electoral Commissioner decided to play Lucifer throwing the oath he swore to, the Electoral Act 2022 and the INEC Guidelines into a fiery furnace. 

The REC, Hubu Ari, went to the collation center and declared Benani the winner of the election! He had no collation documents; he did not read a result sheet signed by the agents of the two parties in the election. He did not care that what he was doing could set Adamawa ablaze and put the people’s lives in jeopardy. 

Obviously, he had neither respect for INEC as a body nor concern for the sensibility of Nigerians who were already aggrieved by the outcome of a flawed national election with litigations piled up at the tribunals. He just made an illegal pronouncement in the presence of officers of the law – a police commissioner and several policemen and perhaps, non-uniformed government security agents! The legally appointed Returning Officer was nowhere in sight!

INEC headquarters took a firm action

After cries of foul play and a national outcry, INEC headquarters took a firm action and reversed the ignoble pronouncement and after a final collation, pronounced Ahmadu Fintiri of the PDP, the winner by a large margin. Fintiri scored 430,861 while Benani had 398,788 votes. 

With such a clear difference, it beats the imagination that someone had the effrontery or foolhardiness to declare Benani a winner in such crude, devil-may-care, go-to-court, cavalier manner.  This new election rigging tactic, which I hereby name as the Hudu Maneuver, is the latest in the arsenal of electoral malfeasance and subversion of the people’s will that has kept Nigeria matching on the same spot.

It is a condemnable tactic which only a man of no values, who feels no shame and does not care for history and his children’s future can implement.  Apparently, Hudu fitted the bill, and it is not unlikely that, like Judas, he accepted “30 pieces of silver” to betray democracy and Adamawa people.  How many billions of our devalued naira did he collect that compensated for that crude address he read at the collation center in Yola? 

It was good Hudu has been suspended to save INEC’s face since adding this to INECs load of sins would make the albatross on Mahmood’s neck too unwieldy.  Nigerians need to see Hudu in prison soonest. And while there, he should, to save what is left of his honor, hang himself as Judas did in the holy book.

How did Aisha Benani end up in infamy by making an acceptance speech based on a crooked and illegal pronouncement by the wrong person?  Could it be she does not have the moral courage to say no to the men of vulture character who planned this subterfuge?  I am under no illusion that she planned this failed heist.  She must have been presented the blueprint by devilish men who have always used this route to get what they want and shortchange the people.  She could have left her integrity intact if she did not fall for the ill-thought-out plan.

Now we must compare her with the VC of Federal University of Technology, Owerri who, despite threats and entreaties, chose to do the right thing and stand for truth and democracy.  Today, she stands tall anywhere she goes.  You needed to see her triumphal return to her campus after delivering justice to Abia voters and make their votes count.  Should she decide to run for elective office in the future, you can be sure she will be considered worthy by right thinking electorate.  For Benani, that may be a forlorn hope now.

In the Hudu Maneuver

Lost in the Hudu Maneuver are the opportunities for Benani to demonstrate the acclaimed incorruptibility of women that was badly tarnished by a lady in the petroleum ministry.  She failed those Nigerians who, though of different political persuasion, had rooted for Benani to win so we can move forward in the match for women emancipation and empowerment. 

Now, her deserved loss has left that void unfilled while her rouge acceptance of a ‘stolen’ mandate has made people recoil in horror and conclude that the beautiful ones are not yet born.  Going to court to ask for INEC to be stopped from doing the right and legal thing has put a nail in her political coffin while the men who planned the heist with her are enjoying the balance they did not declare while allegedly “making a down payment for their roasted corn”.  

NTA should also be called out for their shameful role in this horrid saga that was going to set our democracy backward.  What if it was ChannelsTV that covered, and broadcast live this treacherous acceptance speech of a mandate that never was?  Would the fine not have long been pronounced by NBC that sound more like the wing of a political party these days?  It is no surprise that NTA viewers can be counted on the fingers today.  The majority only saw the broadcast through social media reports. That’s quite telling!

21st April 2023 – Austin Isikhuemen

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