Al-Amin Sahabo
Yesterday someone sent me a clip of Dr. Umar Ardo on Trust TV talking about his chances at the polls come 2023. At first I was enjoying his hallucinations. I marvelled at the depths of his self deceptions. Dr. Ardo is undoubtedly a right wing intellectual who found his way into politics and decided to play several ignominious roles as either a spoiler or a rubble rouser. He often mistook his grandstanding for popularity hence he goes on a voyage of deception by serially contesting and losing elections.
However, it was when he decided to speak about the chances of the APC candidate Distinguished Senator Aishatu Dahiru Ahmed Binani that he flipped and sounded like a stand-up comedian whose jokes had dried up. He didn’t have what to say and couldn’t stand the humiliation of saying nothing. So he made a bogus and comical statement that insinuated that she will not win even her Local Government Area. Even as a clown in a circus show, that joke would have elicited a lot of boos from the audience. How can a perennial contestant and a serial loser speak such to someone who stood elections and won on more than one occasion? If this is his strategy as a contestant, then it does not require deep thinking to realize why he is a serial failure in the political space. Self deception is the worst form of deception.
This writer may not be inclined to believe that all the contests that Dr. Umar Ardo indulges in are to simply provide him avenues for garnering contributions from people who are either as gullible as he is or as ignorant of Adamawa political space as his self deception portrayed. Whichever, it is interesting to note that the likes of Dr. Ardo are indeed needed as providers of some comic relief within the usually tense political atmosphere.
Following the trajectory of Dr. Umar Ardo’s current political foray indicates that his attempt to cause confusion in his party the PDP failed woefully. He even formed a splinter group within the party with a motley of loyalists hoping to be invited to the negotiating table. I believe the party called off his bluff and left him high and dry. He wandered in Political wilderness for some time before finally finding a dead horse in the political desert of Adamawa state. Claiming to ride on such an already dead horse, he thinks he can participate in a race that involves veterans who had contested and won elections in the past. Unfortunately, for him he had forgotten the lessons learned from history. Making a success of the political process requires more than a brief foray during an election circle and a lull in between. A man who vacates the political space as soon as the election circle is over cannot hope to deceive the electorates during the time of elections.
Senator Binani stays with the electorates whether she is elected or not. She has never vacated the political space nor abandoned the voters after elections. She has been visible, helpful and humble at all times. For her politics is not a vocation. It is a calling much like priesthood. Her connection with the people is based on trust. She takes the mandate and delivers the dividends. That’s why it is very certain that if the gubernatorial election were to be held today, Binani will roundly defeat Umar Ardo in his polling unit. Let him have his way in the free space provided by the Media. But we know that when it comes to voting he will be roundly defeated as he has always been. But we like his comic relief. It provides good entertainment in an otherwise tense atmosphere.