As the announcement was made on that Sunday morning that Senator Aishatu Dahiru Binani has been elected the Governor of Adamawa State I was ready to crow that a woman has broken the glass ceiling. I am sure that many women groups, many equity-seeking groups were also happy for her, for APC and happy for Adamawa State.

Since independence in 1960 all the states of Nigeria and the Federal Government have been run by men. And see what the country looks like; it looks like a bus that has been smashed by a moving train. So the speculation has been that perhaps if a woman had the opportunity to run Nigeria or any of the states, things might be positively different. This speculation is based on the other speculation that women are less corrupt, less audacious, less greedy, less avaricious, less domineering than men and therefore would make better leaders. 

I have no evidence to support this speculation. It is just that: a speculation. Of course, there are some men and some women who could run Nigeria better than what we have had so far but where are they? They haven’t managed to get to the pinnacle of power, in the states or in the centre for some reasons, which include faulty leadership selection process. But that is a story for another day. Today is Adamawa’s day.

As we were saying, on that Sunday a man called Hudu Yunusa-Ari, he wasn’t hooded, walked into the collation centre with an officer of the law, a Commissioner of Police called Mr Mohammed Barde and an unnamed official of the Department of State Security (DSS). He swiftly announced without giving details that Aishatu Dahiru Binani had won the election as Governor-Elect of Adamawa State. After that he quickly disappeared knowing full well that collation had not been completed, knowing full well that it was not his responsibility as the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) to announce the result. It was the duty of the Returning Officer (RO), Professor Mohammed Mele. Binani took over from there and made an acceptance speech. After that Adamawa State was in confusion, as illegality had been compounded by illegality.

Let’s tell the story from the beginning. Binani, a senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria had contested the primaries of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the governorship ticket of her state, Adamawa. She defeated six men to clinch the ticket. These men included Mr Nuhu Ribadu, a former Chairman of the EFCC and 2011 presidential candidate of ACN as well as Senator Jibrilla Bindow, Governor of Adamawa State between 2015 and 2019. The main election was basically a two-horse race between Binani and the incumbent Governor and PDP candidate Mr Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri.

At the end of voting on March 18, Fintiri scored 421, 524 votes while Binani had 300, 275 votes. The Returning Officer had declared the election inconclusive as he cancelled the results in 69 polling units in Fufore Local Government Area, which affected some 37, 016 potential voters because the cancelled votes were more than the margin of victory recorded by the PDP candidate. The supplementary election was held on April 15. It is while collation of the votes cast at the supplementary election was going on that Mr Ari decided to make his illegal declaration of the result.

There was an uproar in the state. INEC decided to intervene. The collation was completed and the Returning Officer, Professor Mele appropriately announced the final result as follows: Fintiri 430, 861 and Binani 398, 788. So Fintiri was declared the winner. Binani rushed to the Federal High Court in Abuja, arguing that it was only the election tribunal that can constitutionally nullify her victory. At the court Justice Inyang Ekwo refused to hear Binani exparte motion application but adjourned the suit to April 26.

According to section 25 of the Electoral Act 2022, it is only the Returning Officer who has the power to announce the result and declare the winner of an election for a State Governorship election.

The Adamawa Governorship election was crucial for some heavyweights in the state. The former Vice President and presidential candidate of the PDP, Mr Atiku Abubakar, comes from Adamawa. The First Lady of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Mrs Aisha Buhari also hails from there. So the stakes were quite high as each of the big guns in the state wanted to ensure that the government was controlled by the party that they favour. As things are now, the glass ceiling remains unbroken in Adamawa or elsewhere. Of the 28 women that contested for governorship posts in 25 states Binani was the only person that ran on the platform of a major political party and posed a threat to the political survival of the incumbent. All the other 27 women contested on the platforms of anonymous parties, parties that were virtually unknown in their states or nationally and they were not expected to make any serious impact in the election. It appears that they were using those unknown platforms as a bargaining chip for whatever else they were looking for in the political space.

In every sense what Mr Ari did was wrong. He made the wrong decision because collation was still ongoing at the time. Even if collation had been completed he was the wrong person to announce the result. What he did was a failed heist, a bungled coup for which there must be consequences. Africans are used to coups despite the homily about democracy. But coups have consequences, palatable and unpalatable. Successful coups bring joy and comfort to the planners because they are able to take charge of their booty. Unsuccessful coups end in death or imprisonment for those who tried them. They also earn the scorn of the society for themselves and their families.

It is our hope that this failed coup will be investigated and all the plotters and co-conspirators can have their day in court. In particular, the man who made the illegal announcement and the security men who stood guard or looked the other way while the deed was done have a case to answer because what they did was not what they were assigned by the authorities to do. It is often said that it is the forbidden that is most desirable. Adam ate the forbidden fruit and we are all paying for it. If Mr Ari ate the forbidden fruit he should pay for it because he threw away the white garment of honour, which his office gave him. He is said to have served as a permanent secretary in his home state, Bauchi. He is also said to be a lawyer. With such knowledge and experience it is clear that what he did was not a mistake. It was a deliberate act of sabotage, which has affected the reputation of INEC as an election manager.

It is obvious that Binani had dreamt of being the Governor of her state. Without dreams life would be unbearable. Infact, dreams are necessary for our survival. Binani may have said to herself that if she wants the office badly enough she will get it. That is something close to desperation and desperation is capable of leading anyone to do something foolish. Her quick acceptance speech and her rush to the Federal High Court to file an exparte motion application seem to be part of the desperation of our politicians. We have had several instances of Returning Officers being asked at gunpoint by politicians or their agents to make certain announcements that are illegal. They have to obey if they love their lives. That is a big minus for our democracy. That is the equivalent of a coup.

A few weeks ago I wrote a column in which I named three sets of people who are responsible for election rigging in Nigeria. I repeat (a) politicians (b) security men (c) INEC officials. Of the three sets of people it is the politicians who induce the other two to do what they want done so that they may achieve success. This success costs a lot and success that costs too much is the equivalent of failure. Those who planned the Adamawa State coup must have felt an unsettling urgency for success at any cost. Now that the dam has broken they will have to drown themselves in a pool of reflection. Some desires are necessary to make life worth living but rigging an election to get into an office, any office, is not one of them.

The electoral coup plot was a bitter betrayal of INEC, Adamawa and democracy, and a crude combination of crookery, tomfoolery and hara-kiri. INEC has denied the allegation of partisanship in the Adamawa election but there was some kind of suspicion when it was revealed that INEC had allegedly awarded a N430 million contract for the printing of sensitive election materials to Binani Printing Press, a company allegedly founded by Ms Binani. This has not been either confirmed or denied by INEC.

The messy situation in Adamawa cannot end with just the declaration of the results and the announcement of the winner. There must be an investigation that will reveal the details of this coup so that INEC can clear its soiled name, and we can take appropriate steps to sustain our democracy. What played out in Adamawa is the stuff from which fiction is written and movies are made, some kind of mafia-style operation that the Italians would be happy to copy.

Some people are already saying that what a man can do a woman can also do or even do it better. My advice is that we do not use this single incident in Adamawa to pidgeon-hole women as unfit for leadership. Men have done far worse things in this country, which is why we are still very backward despite the huge human and material resources available in the country.

Binani had become a Senator in a state that harbours many political heavyweights and moneybags. That means that she has political muscle. Therefore the future was her oyster. This event is certainly an unnecessary distraction, which she didn’t need. I hope she will get her reputation back after this event because she is a woman of the future.

“Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher and cultural critic, was described as “the eloquent and menacing prophet of an impending catastrophe.” That characterization came after he warned of “an apocalyptic tenor spawning a mood of gloom and a good deal of anxiety, anger, and terror.” His warning was for the 20th century but the things he saw manifest more clearly around here this century. After witnessing the crude novelty in Adamawa which has, so far, attracted only the huff and puff of official reluctance suggesting complicity, can we still say that there is hope for sanity here? There can’t be regeneration wherever foul play is fair play. We have seen the audacious move to enthrone a governor before the election was concluded – and even without the votes. We have heard the state telling us the principal culprit is missing, and is beyond the long arm of the law. We have watched a public television station opening the legs of our democracy for the rapist’s address of larceny. We’ve seen how that station did it without the consequences usually suffered by its private-sector competitors. We are seeing how easy it is to commit the greatest of crimes and slip into the eternity of immunity. We should also see how hope for redemption is increasingly the devil’s water on the highway to optimism. But we are too ‘trusting’ to see everything we should see. “Sometimes”, wrote Ayi Kwei Armah, “a whole people need healing.” We are that people.” 

There are books and films on the life and times of Efunsetan Aniwura, the second Iyalode of Ibadan. She was rich, powerful and cold-hearted. Her success as a woman; her manly carriage and ruthlessness made her a perfect mark for envy and destruction. And she lost everything. But Iyalode did not say goodnight gently; she did what real men do. On one occasion, one of her favourite slaves, a female, laced her food with poison. That slave was stupid. She should have known that no one became Iyalode raw and untoughened in those pristine days. Efunsetan was not a fragile rodent to be killed with ordinary poison. Iyalode looked into the meal, saw death and fed it to the bearer. She challenged the culprit; the culprit confessed that she was merely a messenger. You were sent? And you didn’t tell ‘them’ that you were too small to deliver the message? That slave of Efunsetan ate the food, poison and all, and lost her life. She had to die, because, according to Efunsetan: “Àimo isé kò níí p’esin l’ógun (Not knowing how to say no to errant errands kills horses in battle).” She was right; in ancient times, men took equines to war to go and die. And millions perished, especially during the two World Wars. Throughout history, unfortunate horses died in wars they were drafted to fight. Indeed, Britain had a Horse Mobilisation Scheme under which thousands of horses were moved into the First World War (1914-1918), initially for cavalry, later for transport. History says on a single day during the Battle of Verdun in 1916, over 7,000 horses lost their lives. They had to die because their ladle did not know how to say no to hot, searing sauce.

There are many stupid horses in our government agencies; INEC has a large number of such. They are a herd always ready to deliver any message, no matter how bad, for anyone and to anyone, if the fodder is right and the legumes rich enough. If you were sent on a slave errand and you delivered it as a slave, then, you are a slave. If you were sent to deliver a message of evil and you did as asked, you are definitely evil. And there are consequences for delivering messages. When I read the statement by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, conveying President Muhammadu Buhari’s suspension of Hudu Yunusa-Ari, the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) for Adamawa State, I shook my head for the fallen man. The man won’t stop being in the news until another stupid stallion does worse than he did. The REC fed a big dose of poison to Nigeria’s democracy with his illegal declaration of the president’s candidate as the winner of the governorship election in that state. And he was audacious and bold about it. He didn’t do it at midnight or before dawn as soldiers of fortune do. He did it as a breakfast treat for Nigeria. The APC candidate was set to lose the election but Yunusa-Ari came out to raise the dead. He didn’t wait for the collation of results that would affirm the lady’s loss; he simply used his powers to decree her as the winner. What he did was novel in the history of electoral heists in Nigeria. Since then, he has not had peace; his employers say he is on the run; a news website insists he was flown to Abuja as a hero in a private jet. Whatever it is with him, the fact this moment is that he is a fugitive; the REC has become a wreck. But did he act alone? To his right were three very powerful security chiefs in the state. I would be stupid to assume that those ones too acted alone, unilaterally. No, but they have melted away, anonymous. Yunusa-Ari is the sole soil man carrying the shit can. He is the only enemy Nigerians know by name because he delivered the message with the rash of a slave.

If you serve power and the powerful, serve them with all your sense intact and alert. Your interest, and your name, must never suffer. There were at least four big men, including the REC, on that ingloriously high table in Yola. Governor Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri has vowed that he will punish all of them for endangering democracy. What can the governor do? He may be a raptor in power, but his falcon has neither the head nor the beak of the eagle behind those owls. If I were that governor, I would look beyond the messengers. Who had the power to direct those four chargers to be at that point that hour? We don’t know them; we can only guess and we are not guessing wild. They must be people who are not just in government but are in power. We know also that the flies of those who deployed Yunusa-Ari and others to do what they did are not following their corpses into the grave. If the unthinking tools have to go down, they have to go down alone as mere sacrifice ingredients. Messengers are expendable bullets; they are kept only for battle. When servants like those in INEC become burnt out, they are cast into Hades by the same persons who used them badly. An incredibly effective horse was nicknamed ‘Warrior’ during the first World War; his other name was “the horse the Germans couldn’t kill.” Warrior served and saved his lord and won many battles for him; he dared and overcame machine gun attacks and burning stables. He survived the war and returned to England by Christmas of 1918 only to be killed by his owner 23 years later – because of the cost of feeding him with “extra corn rations.”

Where I come from, our ancestors know it is impossible for people to escape being sent on errands. It happens. But they warned (and still warn) that if you are sent on a slave errand, deliver the message as a freeborn. That wisdom is alien to persons who have had the (mis)fortune to manage our elections since the beginning of Nigeria. We saw that in that man in Adamawa; he thought he could drop any ‘dirty bomb’ and get away with it. Now, they say he is on the run; his employers want the police to declare him wanted. There are possibly many like him – others may have been subtle (and therefore successful) in doing their own damage. Nigeria’s election chiefs work in a cut-throat, complex world of greed and temptation. The opportunity for mischief and misbehaviour is ever present where they work. Appropriating the thoughts of V, the mystery author of ‘The Mafia Manager’, because the INEC chiefs are allowed to stand with wolves, they think they should howl – but they are no wolves with the survival sense of the canid. Read their stories – they always come in as angels; they always exit injured and wrecked.

But they enjoy the work they do while it lasts. Wherever Yunusa-Ari is hiding (or not hiding) now, I can swear he is eating Tuwo with lamb limbs and thighs of rams. The reason Nigerian power-seekers will give anything to get right there in INEC – or at least tuck their agents in there. The job gives them the power to veto popular votes and be the elector of governments. The office kits them to compete with judges and the courts; the real super powers in our game of thrones. Occurrences like Adamawa’s are potent reminders that Nigeria and optimism must not cohere in the same sentence. But, there are people who would insist that the Nigerian leprosy is mere rashes; they say the blight will soon disappear with the right doctor in the ward. Some hold, in their trusting innocence, that no evil will be evil enough to shock Nigerians to positive action.

Machiavelli, teacher of painful truth, said “by the delusions of seeming good the people are often misled to desire their own ruin.” He added that the people “are frequently influenced by great hopes and brave promises.” Building castles of hope on Nigeria is futile but I get posts of hope and optimism every day from patriotic Nigerians who think, strongly, that Nigeria can still be saved. Two weeks ago, before Adamawa happened to us, I got one from one of my old professors in Ife. I got another from a reader, a fan, who strongly believes in Nigeria, its destiny and in the government that will come on May 29, 2023. My teacher wrote to me: “I’ve just read your piece on ‘The Terrorists Are Back.’ It’s as usual engaging in style. But it’s rather hyperbolic in its portrayal of what seems to be the hopelessness of the Nigerian condition. We still have cause to cheer…” The other message: “My name is Kayode Sufianu, a constant reader of your Monday Lines. I have read almost all the weekly articles since one of them was posted on my old school platform about a year ago – St Charles Grammar School, Osogbo, Class of 1974. That was the first time I got to know of your writings, regrettably. You are one of the best writers I have ever come across – the manner of expression, the almost unimaginable but apt references to writings of different authors, some of whom I never heard of nor read; deep knowledge of Yoruba culture and understanding of the Nigerian situation is legendary. You are also fearless. But permit me to say that yes, the Nigerian situation is bad, but is it hopeless? I don’t think so. However, my fear is this, if everyone, every Nigerian believes, intuits and concludes that NIgeria is irretrievable, there is a great risk that the volition will take on form and manifest. Therefore, we must nurse hope and promote it – that Nigeria will pull through and fulfill her potentials to become a great nation. Does that sort of mimic ‘renewed hope’ slogan? It’s just coincidental but perhaps against all odds, the president-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, may be the one to start the renewal process. Best.” Both messages posit seriously that Nigeria is not irredeemable. They may be right; I may be wrong. They are not alone on that rostrum of hope; millions, North and South, are with them, shoulder-to-shoulder.

Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher and cultural critic, was described as “the eloquent and menacing prophet of an impending catastrophe.” That characterization came after he warned of “an apocalyptic tenor spawning a mood of gloom and a good deal of anxiety, anger, and terror.” His warning was for the 20th century but the things he saw manifest more clearly around here this century. After witnessing the crude novelty in Adamawa which has, so far, attracted only the huff and puff of official reluctance suggesting complicity, can we still say that there is hope for sanity here? There can’t be regeneration wherever foul play is fair play. We have seen the audacious move to enthrone a governor before the election was concluded – and even without the votes. We have heard the state telling us the principal culprit is missing, and is beyond the long arm of the law. We have watched a public television station opening the legs of our democracy for the rapist’s address of larceny. We’ve seen how that station did it without the consequences usually suffered by its private-sector competitors. We are seeing how easy it is to commit the greatest of crimes and slip into the eternity of immunity. We should also see how hope for redemption is increasingly the devil’s water on the highway to optimism. But we are too ‘trusting’ to see everything we should see. “Sometimes”, wrote Ayi Kwei Armah, “a whole people need healing.” We are that people.