Ufot Benson
Against the backdrop of the call by phantom groups such as ‘The Coalition of Yobe East Progressive Youths’ led by one Dr Yarma Goni, begging the Senator of Yobe East Senatorial District and immediate past Senate President, published in many news platforms locally and internationally for Senator (Dr) Ahmed Lawan to heed the call of duty and offer himself as a candidate for Yobe Governor in 2027.
We, the Yobe in Southern Diaspora in our special congress in Abuja have rebuffed the mischievous attempt of the Dr Yarima Goni’s political jobbers as follows: While one may not be too sure of the news report as a clandestine and surreptitious move at the instance of the distinguished Senator Lawan; the senator does not need a soothsayer nor an Imam to enlighten him that the Governorship of Yobe in 2027 is a Yobe South affair.
Yobe Zone B, having lost the only governor from the zone in 2009, the late distinguished Senator Mamman Ali, could not complete Governor Mamman Ali’s first term owing to his untimely death. Two governors from other zones have ruled Yobe State, leaving Zone B in a somewhat perpetual waiting game!
The very mention of Yobe East person as the Governor of Yobe State in 2027 smacks brazen injustice, and lopsidedness as evidenced in the various federal employment slots alleged with the use of fake degrees, diplomas and certificates from degree mills traced to Benin Republic, Togo, Ghana and other fictitious places to fix Yobe East people at top places and positions at the federal level.
The same goes for federal projects “cornered from above” to the zone via the instrumentality of top politicians from the zone in Abuja. A case in point is the painful approval of a Federal University of Medical Sciences for the Gashua zone or Yobe East and a federal conventional university already operating in the area.
The jaundiced socio-political distribution of federal and state projects in Yobe State has seen the trio of state university in Damaturu, two federal universities at Gashua Area, Airport in Damaturu and other key projects, yet nothing for Yobe Zone B reputed for enlightened population and historical relevance.
Politicians who have served the federal legislature for more than two decades are hardly rewarded with the governorship of their states; as a few of them have done daylight robbery of political mandates of their kith and kin even when they never contested party primaries for a failed quest for white elephant national pole office of Mr President of Nigeria with an evidential failure.
The planned strangulation of the Governorship of Yobe in 2027 from Yobe Zone B would sow deep seeds of state discord if allowed. For God’s sake, Yobe East’s top politicians should look elsewhere and allow Yobe Zone B to breathe. Yobe East should rather hibernate from the self-inflicted wounds of rivalling President Bola Tinubu when northern governors had endorsed a southern candidate for the 2023 presidential elections.
The quest for Yobe East Governorship of Yobe State would be akin to the same strategy of their kith and kith who sought to succeed former President Muhammadu Buhari after a northern presidency of eight years with another strange eight years of northern presidency meant for southern Nigeria. If it had happened; Nigeria would have been torn into shreds of Banana Republics.
The coalition of Yobe East politicians appears as recent students of Nigerian history. Posterity has recorded in its annals that some of their kith and kin at key federal tiers of government misled the immediate past President Buhari into a regime of uncommon loan burden, ill-fated currency change regime prosecuted in grand corruption; in addition to the sleaze of the century in the oil and gas industry at the behest and heavy cooperation resulting in the current travails of Nigerians and the current government.
We are forced, therefore, to assume the affliction of dementia or hallucination on the part of the ‘Coalition of Yobe East Progressive Youths’ to dream Yobe Governorship in 2027 for their zone and clan’s man as this amounts to standing common sense on its very head which shall not stand!
Ufot Benson
Convener for: Yobe in Southern Diaspora