Thunder Blowers
Political Analysis
(Saturday)
Before the recent visit by Muhammad Bello Matawalle the Minister of State Defense to Zamfara not many beliefs with the existing political hypothesis that all is not well within the Zamfara APC.
This position is purely established among those privilege politicians around the Minister who are banes on not telling him the bitter truth about the need for him to learn from the lessons of history especially after 2023 elections by working genuinely to unite his political forces within Zamfara APC.
Before the 2023 elections, plenty of people saw the defeat of APC and Bello Matawalle coming but may be because they underrate the powers of the political opposition led by Governor Dauda Lawal they continue to misguide the former Governor by encouraging him to dwell more on receiving political defectors as a way of probing his political strengths.
The fear of political opponents from within the APC such as Yari and Marafa also made the Minister to loss focus politically and eventually surrendered his political destiny in their hands. He neglected his own political warriors thinking these two political actors can deliver magic but eventually they lost control of the steering ship courtesy of public resistance.
Now the expectation of everyone within the APC is for Matawalle and his team to conduct a genuine political postmortem of the 2023 election defeat and begin to mend fences with those considered to be aggrieved so that the party APC can rise again to try to test its political strength in 2027.
How will that be done? It is by leveraging on the opportunity of political mighty of the APC at the center to begin to see how to strengthen forces and raises more political heavy weights that can come together to make a good political ground for the party in 2027 election.
With Matawalle as Minister of State Defense and Sen. Yari as one of the powerful Nigerian Senators it was the expectation that they would work things out for other political allies such as Sen. Marafa, Sani Wamban Shinkafi, Malam Wakkala the former Deputy Governor, Mukhtar Ahmad Anka, Sen. Hassan Nasiha and other middle cadre politicians to get key positions at the Federal level so that every one of them could strengthen his own side of the political divide and get prepared for the 2027 election.
But surprisingly however, the story is different and instead, these political heroes within the Zamfara APC were left to their personal frustration to the extent that most of them do not have availability of resources to continue to retain their political supporters.
And if the rumor making round the town is genuine, that the Minister has refused to allow things to work for these political allies of him simply as a strategy of weakening them financially and forcing them to surrender to his political interest of re-contesting the Governor’s seat in 2027 then his political permutation may likely suffer.
Why? Simply because wise men says, you can only take a donkey to the river, but you can’t force him to drink the water in that river.
The Minister should understand that these sets of politicians that worked things for him in 2023 are all grown up and matured politically and the majority of them held various elected positions even before him, and so they hold the powers to their right thinking decisions politically, and they can decide to act indifferently as a way of revenge politically.
Sen. Marafa has demonstrated that sense of political independence in 2019 elections against the powers of Yari this is a popular political scenario in Nigeria’s political history that requires no detail explanation.
In 2023 Yari’s politically camp has been accused of betraying what many political analysts define as “Marriage of inconvenience” between their political paymaster and Bello Matawalle which eventually resulted to APC losing substantial part of the 2023 election including that of the serving Governor as at the time.
Since after the 2023 defeat of the APC it seems to appear that Matawalle the Minister has not learned from the lessons of the defeat because there appears to be more to what continue to dis-unite the party than what bring its members together in Zamfara.
Some part of Sen. Yari political faction are seemed to be continually aggrieved with the Minister over his continued consideration of only those from his political side of the game in terms of considerayion for Federal appointments and other juicy financial support and also still hold the belief that if Matawalle had not forced himself on to the APC their political camp would have been controlling Zamfara by now because of the strong political fence they have rebuilt after the 2019 political crises.
Many of those from Yari’s camp do not also forget what they term as illegitimate transfer of their victory to Matawalle after the Supreme Court verdict of 2019 and believe they cannot pardon him for that unsolicited gesture awarded him by the apex court of the land.
Shifting from that political ground, Sen. Marafa faction is also aggrieved with the Minister Matawalle and indeed the Yari faction simply because of the experience of the 2023 election in Zamfara.
Majority of them believed that Yari’s faction was not too sincere with the political arrangement entered into after the defection of Bello Matawalle to the APC which resulted to their principal losing his senatorial election to the Ikira Bilbis of the PDP.
Again the political isolation of their principal after the Tinubu’s government came into force was another offense majority of them linked to the personal handiwork of Matawalle considering the role their principal has played in leading the presidential campaign of Tinubu in Zamfara State.
The Jaji group is also deeply aggrieved with the Minister, especially when their principal was accused of anti-party leading to inconclusive election in BIrnin Magaji during the Governorship polls in 2023.
The suspension of Aminu Jaji by the Tukur Danfulani led APC and continued isolation of his supporters at the Federal level triggered the anger of the group to establishing their parallel state APC Secretariat and announce the suspension of Tukur Danfulani as Chairman of the state APC.
And now the recent political crisis which seems to be coming more prominent between Matawalle the Minister of State Defense and renown APC chieftain Sani Abdullahi Wamban Shinkafi has become the popular talk of the town specially on the social media.
Wambai has been releasing some logical political bombshells that appeared to be more confusing than one can comprehend about what is exactly happening with their political relationship with the Minister who happenedto be one of his closset political ally.
Even though the political fight between the duo looks too abnormal, political analysts had since concluded that with the recent political posts by Wamban Shinkafi on his verified Facebook page all seems not to be well on his relationship with the Minister.
And many believe that if the Minister allows himself to get part away with people like Wamban Shinkafi added with the existing division within the Zamfara APC then Matawalle’s political journey toward reclaiming his mandate in 2027 may suffer again.
In general term, political observers believed that Matawalle has distances himself from the right politicians he required, and he has not taken the advantage of his position as Minister to begin to reposition things in earnest.
All those that suffered with him in 2019 and during his tenure as Governor were seemed to be abandoned and this is almost two years now and by end of this coming year 2025 party Congresses and elections of party leadership would hold and that may be the very beginning of another open crisis for the Zamfara APC.
This is couple with the internal hurricane of Zannan Bungudu which may likely constitute a serious political threat to the Minister’s chance of bouncing back to pick the 2027 gubernatorial ticket, especially if popular will of the APC stakeholders is allowed to take precedence.
What could be the cure of this political malaria for Minister Matawalle?
To be continued Monday…..
