Penultimate Friday, Alhaji Mohammed Sani Abacha, son of Nigeria’s former Head of State, late General Sani Abacha and a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) gubernatorial aspirant in Kano State simply walked away from the PDP, citing skewed party turf as his excuse. In that dramatic sway, he moved his material resources, including his support base in the 44 local councils of the state to the newly formed, but speedily growing Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), led by General Mohammed Buhari and chaired by Alhaji Haruna Danzago in the state.

Before his action, Abacha had penultimate Wednesday invited a sizable number of his key supporters, from each of the 44 councils of the state and hundreds of ward officials to his campaign secretariat in the state capital. There, he had briefed them of his intended departure and reminded them of both the necessity and the urgency of the proposed exit, while urging them to take the message down to the grass root.

Several other meetings and consultations followed thereafter across the length of the state. There was insinuations that he would at the end of the day falter and would not carry out his plan. But a scheduled meeting in Kaduna with General Mohammed Buhari finally sealed the deal and the young Abacha started a new chapter in his political sojourn.
Daily Sun gathered from those who attended the Kaduna meeting that Mohammed gave reasons for his decision to quit the PDP. According to him, he had envisaged a free and fair race under a peaceful atmosphere when he joined PDP but the recent manipulations in the party had proved him utterly wrong and left him with a bitter experience.

He told his loyalists that the PDP in the state was not a proper place for him to stay as it relates to its members on the basis of their allegiance to a personality, instead of ensuring a level playing field for all to prosper with unhindered freedom.
Another official who spoke at that gathering was Alhaji Sagir Mohammed. Sagir is the Secretary of the Mohammed Abacha Campaign Organization. He equally lamented their unsavoury experience in the hands of the leadership of the state’s PDP, especially as it relates to the relentless abuse of equity and fair play.
In response, General Buhari told his aggrieved guests that they took the right decision to ditch the PDP and noted that anybody who has the sympathy of Nigerians at heart has no business ever dwelling in the shelter of the PDP. He assured them of fair play, equity and justice, on their new platform, the CPC.

But Mohammed Abacha’s exit from PDP had been long predicted. Those who saw the handwriting on the wall knew that there was no way a scion of General Sani Abacha could sail in the same ship with Dr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso. To observers of internal subterfuge in Kano PDP, there had always been this subtle apprehension on the part of Kwankwaso that Mohammed was out to upstage him as the leader of the party in the state.
And Mohammed apparently did not help matters in this regard. He did not hide his dream to clinch the gubernatorial ticket of the party, even when party members knew that that was Kwankwaso’s presumed property.

This atmosphere was further aggravated by the young man’s initial romance with the late Mohammed Abubakar Rimi, an arch rival of Kwankwaso upon Abacha`s entrance into the party. As soon as Abacha pitched tents with Rimi’s group, Kwankwaso knew he was most probably the target and took definite steps to protect himself.

Party faithful in Kano have also noted the similarities in the politics of the duo and therefore concluded that there was no way they could work together. To this set of analysts, both Mohammed Abacha and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso are so conscious of their pride; hence none is ready to work under the other.
It was equally acknowledged that both of them possess efficient organizational skills, hence their relative ability to build successful structures behind their aspirations. The duo also prefer to talk less and act, politically from the shadows, mostly through the use of chains of proxies to get the job done. In their silence, they keep their opponents guessing, felling them with that lightning element of surprise.

That perhaps explains the surprise factor in the defection of Mohammed Abacha. Nobody really saw it coming until it was rather late and irreversible. He kept his calm until the recent retreat of the Kwankwassiya faction. The meeting, attended by about 400 loyalists of Dr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, took place last month in Kaduna.

Members of the party who spoke to the Daily Sun remarked that the meeting presented aspirants in the other factions, including the one led by Mohammed Abacha, with ample evidence that they were truly doomed as the state executive of the party, which ought to be a fair umpire, attended the retreat, and probably endorsed some of the decisions taken many of which may not have represented the broad position of all other factions.
A former Commissioner of Finance, under Kwankwaso’s administration, who is now in the opposition flank, cited some of the alleged absurdities arrived at that meeting and implemented thereafter, as sufficient excuse for anybody to think twice.

He claimed that out of the 3000 forms meant for the delegate congress in the state, the retreat held back 1500 delegate forms and even went ahead to partake in the share of the outstanding 1500 forms, which were purportedly made available to the entire party members. But his claim could not be confirmed as at press time.
Alhaji Sagir Mohammed, Abacha’s campaign secretary, said that a lot of ugly incidents dotted the sales of the delegate forms in the state. He revealed that nobody was found in three senatorial zones to sell the forms as at the closing date for the sales of the delegate forms in the state.

“We kept getting reports that the forms were not available, that nobody was there. When we asked some of the party officials as to why the forms were unavailable, the explanation we got was not palatable.
I think one of the responses was that the person to sell the form in one of the zones attended the Kaduna retreat and was on his way back to begin the sales of forms on that Sunday” he stressed.

Alhaji Sagir recalled that before the retreat, several petitions were presented to the national leadership of the PDP, including the Presidency bothering on the overbearing nature of the party executive and the manipulation of its activities in favor of one man, but nothing really came out of desperate cries of the petitioners.
He recalled that “When our faction went to see Nwodo, he promised to look into the matter. But rather than address the issues headlong, they ( meaning, Kwankwaso’s group) organized themselves and went to Abuja to counter our presentation. At another point, the national headquarters of the party called for meeting between us and them, but they did not show up in Abuja.”

“We did everything possible to show that all we wanted as party men was fairness, to be able to prove that we are more popular than any other group and has what it takes to win Kano for the PDP, but they were just after the exclusion of anybody who is not of their own.”
Sagir further said that they even took their protest to the president adding that Dr. Goodluck Jonathan was in the picture of their travails in the hands of leadership of Kano PDP. But he regretted that somehow, those who should stamp their feet and call the state chairman, Dr Farouk Iya, and his benefactor to order failed to do so until it was too late.

The movement of Alhaji Mohammed Abacha to the CPC has thrown up several issues and has raised several questions. One of such is the actual worth of members that dumped the PDP resulting from his defection. Alhaji Aminu Belli, an associate of Honourable Lawal Farouk regretted the loss of a personality like Mohammed Abacha from the PDP, but submitted that what was actually lost to the rival party was his financial strength and not followers.
“He simply left with the same people he came with” adding that the PDP may not suffer that much from his departure as is being projected in the imagination of some people.

Alhaji Gambo Dampass, who is a key member of the Kwakwanssiya faction of the PDP told the Daily Sun that Mohammed Abacha left the PDP with only a handful of persons. He insisted that evidence from a recent stock taking showed that only the faction loyal to Rimi - many of whom have no godfather since the death of Rimi moved with Abacha.

He winced, cynically at claims that the defection of Abacha was a huge loss, asking how many of the ordinary PDP members could even identify Mohammed Abacha, should they have a chance encounter with him on the streets of Kano. Dampass said PDP is even stronger, now that the party is spared of the membership of people who had their eyes elsewhere.

Despite these views, there is no doubt that Abacha’s recent masterstroke has reduced the seeming progression of the PDP to an unassailable height. For before now, it was becoming safe to assume that PDP may claim Kano in 2011.
The truth is that while the PDP in Kano State has suffered a basic loss, the CPC has suddenly jumped to the spot light as the party to watch . The calculation is that a combination of Mohammed resources and the popularity of General Buhari is an unmatched potential that can be deployed to advantage in the unique race for Kano Government House.

But that permutations, is based on the premise that Muhammed Abacha and his loyalists will be well received by the members of the CPC in the state. Till date, the CPC which prides itself as model of democracy is ironically a bastion of dictatorship in the sense that nothing that seems like democracy exists there.
`` Till date, no congresses have been held in the party in the state or at the national level. General Buhari is perceived as the law. He is like an idol, worshipped blindly by a huge followers, and he alone determines the shape of everything that happens in the party,``a CPC member told Daily Sun.


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