Nigeria Content Online

The Independent
National Electoral Commission (INEC) disappointed residents of the
Federal Capital Territory when it failed to conduct the hitch-free area
council elections it promised. Although the polls produced winners,
stakeholders have judged them as flawed.

Public anger

The election was
scheduled to start at 8 am, but in some centres, especially in the
Municipal Area, it did not begin until a few minutes after midday.

Many voters who
trooped out in the morning to vote waited endlessly for the polling
officials, mainly members of the Nigerian Youth Service Corps (NYSC) to
arrive. Some left for their homes in anger and wondered why the
government could not get things right for once.

Onyeke Isiaka, an Abuja resident, blamed the electoral commission for failing to deliver on its promises.

“Despite all the
announcement and assurance they gave us, we are here and they are not
to be found anywhere. They will blame us for not coming to vote, saying
there is voter’s apathy, but that is not the situation, as you can
see,” he said.

An inefficient organisation

When polling
officers eventually showed up at the polling centre in Area 2, Garki,
they complained that the electoral commission had refused to pay them
their allowances and therefore, refused to work.

The corps members
told NEXT that they had slept on bare floors at the commission’s FCT
headquarters the night before, and were served bad food at 4:00 am.
They accused the commission of planning to cheat them. Some of the
corps members had to be given partial payment before they would agree
to go to the polling stations.

The commission
also did not provide the staff with polling desks. A corps member at
the Area 8, Garki, polling centre said they were given only a cubicle
and voting materials, but were not given desks or chairs.

“When we got here,
there was no place to sit down. They did not give us desks. It was just
the cubicle and the materials,” said the corps member, who requested
anonymity. “They told us that when you get there you will find some
seats, but when we got here, the people here weren’t friendly and
before we could get a place to sit down, it took some time.” The corps
members had to plead with nearby residents to provide them a chair and
a table, but the votes had to be poured on the ground to be counted as
the table they got was too small to contain the materials.

The commission had
also promised to provide food for the polling staff, and though the
contract to do this was awarded, the food was not delivered during the
elections. And some polling stations, such as the one located in Old
Secretariat in Area 1, Garki, did not have a single police officer
assigned to them.

The situation
worsened when, at about midday, commuters were busy plying the road as
if nothing serious was going in the city. There were no policemen on
hand to check their movement or provide safeguards against possible
election riggers.

Low participation

INEC’s poor
management may have been responsible for the low voter turnout at
Saturday’s elections. For instance, one polling centre at Section 1,
Area 2, Garki, had 1325 registered voters, but only 47 people voted;
while a second unit in the area had 565 voters with only 35
participating. Another unit in Section 2, Area 2, Garki, 235 out of the
350 registered voters came around, but in a Wuse polling centre,
located at Niger Insurance Staff Quarters, there were 891 registered
voters, but none of them came out at all to cast their votes. In Prince
and Princess and Gaduwa Estates in Duboyi, voting started at about 1:00
pm for an election that is expected to end at 3:00pm.

A polling staff in
Wuse, who declined to be named, hinted that some voters came out twice
in the morning, but when they did not see the any staff, they went home
and vowed never to return.

INEC blames NYSC

When contacted,
INEC FCT resident electoral commissioner, Stephen Manya, admitted that
the commission did not do its best in providing adequate logistics, but
blamed the corpers for the late commencement of voting exercise.

“Materials are
there, but corpers are complaining that unless they are paid, they will
not move. That is what is causing this delay within the metropolis. We
are addressing the issue. We have released money to pay them, the money
has been there. Some of them were paid around 4 pm on Friday, but I
wonder why all were not paid at the same time. I don’t know what
happened, they didn’t pay them and now the corpers are holding us to
ransom.”

Promises unfulfilled

INEC chairman,
Maurice Iwu, had stated at a stakeholders meeting organised for the
April 10 polls, that conducting a free and fair election in the FCT was
significant because the territory was one of the most cosmopolitan
centres in the country.

“Although the
election of April 10, 2010 is what many will see as ordinary council
polls, the election is of tremendous importance and should be of great
interest to all Nigerians. For one, the FCT election is the second
stride in our reassuring march to 2011 general elections,” he said.

Mr. Iwu said the
FCT has emerged as a signpost to the outside world on prevailing
tendencies within the urban elite, and that what happens in FCT
reverberates across the country.

However, this dream may not have been realised in the Saturday elections.

Former governor of
Ekiti State and governorship candidate of the Labour Party Ayodele
Fayose, at the weekend, said the Labour Party would stand firm against
any attempt by any party to impose unpopular candidates on the people
of the state during the 2011 General elections.

Mr. Fayose, who has
had a running battle with the incumbent governor, Segun Oni, said the
Labour Party is ready to take over the state through votes from the
masses.

“I want to warn
against rigging and violence in the next general elections holding in
2011, God will expose any party that is trying to cause trouble during
the election,” he said. “I urge you all supporters of Labour Party not
to engage in violence or thuggery in order not to bring the party to
disgrace. I will not resort to violence despite provocations from some
quarters.

“Despite the
burning of my water tanker and part of my office, my supporters and I
remain untroubled because they are aware that their political enemies
want to provoke them into violence in order to bring the party to
disrepute.”

Mr. Fayose, who
visited the tomb of the late founder of the Christ Apostolic Church,
Joseph Ayo Babalola, to pray for success in the 2011 election, said the
people of Ekiti are ready for a change.

Law against posters

The former
governor, who was well received by supporters of the party, trekked to
the church, where he called for prayer for the success of his ambition.

Mr. Fayose, who
conducted the prayer session, ensured that all the people who
accompanied him to the church, including party members, participated
actively in the session.

“There is nothing prayer cannot do, I am very sure that with prayer, LP will take over Ekiti State,” he said.

The former
governor’s campaign has pitched him against the PDP controlled state
government, mostly over what the government said was the indiscriminate
pasting of Labour Party posters.

Some of the party’s
supporters were recently arrested for pasting Mr. Fayose’s posters
around Ajilosun area of Ado-Ekiti, a decision which the candidate said
was carried out by government to destabilise and witch-hunt him.

Mr. Oni however denied the allegation levelled against by Mr. Fayose.

“There is a law against indiscriminate pasting of posters on public
property and anybody caught would be prosecuted for violating the law,”
Mr. Oni said.

No fewer than 13
persons have been killed by cerebrospinal meningitis in Kano during the
ongoing dry season, Kano State Commissioner of Health, Aishatu Kiru,
said at the weekend.

Mrs. Kiru, who
spoke in Kano during the ministerial briefing organised by ministry of
information, said over two hundred people have also been affected by
the illness in different local government areas of the state.

The state ministry of health has, however, embarked on massive vaccination to overcome the outbreak of meningitis in the state.

The commissioner
said the awareness created, and the drugs provided by the state
government, have helped in the reduction of the number of possible
deaths from the meningitis infection.

Mrs. Kiru cautioned the public not to sleep in places without adequate ventilation.

“Instead, we advise
people to stay in an open space where there is enough air ventilation,”
she said, adding that this would help in eradicating the spread of the
disease.

She explained that
the state ministry of health has achieved a lot in the area of ensuring
the safety of people’s health, provision of drugs, working materials,
and enough bed spaces in hospitals.

Strengthened manpower

Mrs. Kiru disclosed
that over 100 students from the state will undergo medical studies in
foreign countries, as part of a deliberate effort to add more medical
doctors to the state’s hospitals.

The state official
also explained that over 5,000 personnel have been employed in
different cadre of the health services in the state, while the
government has also provided them all with necessary equipment, to
enable them carry out their respective duties efficiently.

50 cases of meningitis had, last month, been reported across 18
local government areas in the state. The affected local government
areas were Nassarawa, Kano Municipal, Tarauni, Kura, Kumbotso, Fagge,
Wudil, Gezawa, Ajingi, Madobi and Dala. Others include Bichi, Doguwa,
Minjibir, Dawakin Tofa, Dawakin Kudu, Tofa and Bagwai.

Nigeria’s
leadership is the deadweight slowing down the pace of development in
the country said Raymond Dokpesi, the chairman of Daar Communication
Plc at a breakfast meeting organised by the School of Media and
Communication, Pan-African University.

He said Nigerians,
being naturally passionate about their ambitions have all it takes to
be the best in any endeavour, “only if we get rid of these deadwoods in
the leadership [position].”

Mr. Dokpesi who
spoke on “the pains and gains of establishing a world class media
enterprise,” recounted the ordeals he had to contend with in the hands
of Nigerian leadership before his African Independent television could
attain its current status.

Broadcast commission is ruining private media

Mr. Dokpesi said
the policies of the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission is not only weird
when compared to global best practices but are designed to “kill
private media houses before they even start.” For example, the license
fee in 1994 was N750,000 but it is now in excess of N100m.

“In the US, two or three networks can collaborate to share a license but not in Nigeria,” he said.

He passionately
condemned the means of funding private and government-owned media
houses, describing it as a death sentence for private media houses.

As he explained,
private media houses are funded through advert subscriptions while
public media houses are funded through government’s subventions.

In essence, public media houses should air no advert since they are funded with taxpayers’ money.

“But in Nigeria,
NTA receives between fifteen to twenty billion naira annually from the
government and still collect adverts,” he said.

Here lies the death
sentence: advert rates on public media houses are at rock bottom low
forcing their private counterparts to adopt economically nonviable
advert rates and “if you try to increase your rate, NBC will say ‘no,
you can’t go beyond this price’.

So after a media
house has paid the huge license fee and bought equipment, it can only
run for about three years before it stars having financial problems,”
he said.

Annual return to the NBC is another death blow in the form of policy.

“They said Section
14 [of the NBC act] empowers the commission to collect 2.5 percent of
revenue of media houses annually, a levy that no public media house is
forced to remit,” he said.

A bereft regulator

Mr. Dokpesi
described Nigerian broadcast technology as half a century behind
current technologies, even though the country started broadcasting well
ahead of many other African countries.

“These people spend
their estacodes in hotels when they travel abroad instead of exposing
themselves to technological developments in the industry,” he said
while narrating how the NBC “arrogantly” turned down his proposal for a
pilot digital transmission. They asked if he really thought Nigerians
are as freaky about technology as he was.

“Ben Bruce, while
at NTA spent more than N60 billion buying analog transmitters – new
equipment but obsolete technology. And today, those equipment are
useless,” he said.

Support the media houses

Mr. Dokpesi pleaded
with Nigerians to support ambitious and credible media houses so they
do not die. “What we need is accurate and timely information about
ourselves and the opportunities around us. But most Nigerians know next
to nothing about their country not to talk of other African countries,”
he said.

He also has kind
words for Nigerian journalists, describing them as having made
tremendous sacrifice towards Nigeria’s development. And there is good
news for AIT’s officials as the chairman promised to pay all salary
arrears; however, that promise is tied to the payment of AIT’s
services, rendered to the federal government during the 2009 U20 World
Cup event.

“The money I could
have used for salaries had to be drafted to provide an international
broadcast control centre for the event because NTA, even after getting
N8.6 billion from the government, will not provide it,” he said.

Because of the
quality of the broadcast for the event, the event’s Vice Chairman has
been appointed as a permanent member of FIFA and AIT will be supporting
the forthcoming World Cup in South Africa with some of its equipment.

“Though Nigeria keeps getting the glory, AIT doesn’t and N8.6 billion went down the drain.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” concluded Mr. Dokpesi who said he will
never contest an election in Nigeria, though he will forever be
interested in Nigerian politics, “it has been pains all along. I pray
that soon the gains will start coming in.”

Some 30 officers of
the Oyo State Police command were dismissed in the last one year after
being convicted for extortion, Baba Adisa Bolanta, the state
Commissioner of Police, disclosed at the weekend.

The police boss,
who said the dismissed cops were found guilty of extorting money from
commercial and private motorists, said an additional 16 policemen were
demoted for the same offence under the year in review.

Special attention

Mr. Bolanta, who
was speaking with journalists at his office in Ibadan to commemorate
his first year in office as the commissioner in charge of the state
command, said the affected individuals were sanctioned after the court
martial set up to examine their involvement in the allegations against
them found them culpable.

He informed that
the most of the affected cops were within the ranks of inspector to
corporal, reiterating the determination of the command to rid its
system of bad eggs.

The CP also told
the press that the federal government has recently decided to give
special attention to seven cities in the countries in a special
security scheme to ensure effective policing.

The cities, which,
he said, would enjoy special allocations in terms of equipment, include
Ibadan, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Abuja, Onitsha, Maiduguri and Kaduna.

Adding that the cities would be used as the pilot scheme for the
project which will cut across other cities if it becomes successful, he
noted that the beneficiaries would enjoy special consideration to allow
them combat crime effectively in their domains.

Airlines in Africa have complained against the blacklisting of carriers in the continent by the European Union (EU).

The carriers, under
the African Airlines Association, an umbrella body based in Nairobi,
Kenya, argued that the latest list of airlines banned from the European
airspace due to safety concerns will dent the confidence placed on
African carriers, as 13 of the 17 countries affected by the ban are
from Africa, with a total of 111 African airlines ‘blacklisted.’

“While the EU list
may be well-intended its main achievement has been to undermine
international confidence in the African airline industry,” said Nick
Fadugba, Secretary General AFRAA in a statement.

Admitting that
Africa needs to improve on its air safety record, Mr. Fadugba disclosed
that air safety is the “number one priority” of the association, adding
that the ultimate beneficiaries of the ban are European airlines which
dominate the African skies to the disadvantage of African carriers.

“If any list is to
be published, it should be done by the International Civil Aviation
Organization (ICAO), the global regulator of aviation safety, which has
a known track record of impartiality,” he said.

The association
further argued that last week’s list has the effect of damaging the
reputation of many scheduled African airlines whose safety records and
adherence to ICAO safety standards are comparable to the best airlines
anywhere in the world.

Outlining some of
the contradictions in the blacklist, the association’s secretary
disclosed that majority of the airlines in Africa on the list have
never operated scheduled flights to Europe, do not plan to do so, and
have no aircraft with a range to fly to any EU state.

Mr. Fadugba
disclosed that the list includes many airlines that only exist on paper
and are not operational, stressing that neither the operating license
nor the ICAO registration numbers of most of the banned airlines are
known.

The association,
however, called on the EU to emulate the United States of America,
which introduced the “Safer Skies for Africa” initiative aimed at
upgrading capacity, developing skills and providing infrastructure to
improve safety in the African continent, adding that the US did all
this when only a few of its carriers operate into Africa.

Also calling on the
International Civil Aviation Organization to venture into the matter,
the association in the statement disclosed that it is willing to have
talks with the European Union on the issue.

“We are ready to engage the EU and other stakeholders in
constructive dialogue to find an amicable solution to the air safety
challenges in Africa,” it said.

Police authorities in Ondo State have
launched an investigation into the death of a bus driver, Ismaila
Sanni, who was allegedly beaten at a filling station in Ikare-Akoko
area of the state. Mr. Sanni died after the fight at the station where
he had gone to re-fuel his minibus, otherwise known as “Agolo”.

NEXT gathered that a dispute ensued
when one of the attendants at the filling station claimed that Mr.
Sanni paid for the fuel he bought with a fake N500 note.

The attendant called the attention of
his colleagues to the fake money. However, the deceased driver denied
giving the attendant the note.

Mr. Sanni’s denial fell on the deaf
ears of the petrol attendants who allegedly beat him to a state of
coma. He was later taken to Ikare General Hospital where he died.

The driver’s death provoked a reappraisal attack from his colleagues who attacked the filling station.

The aggrieved drivers vandalised properties worth millions of naira while the attendants ran for cover.

Some of the workers in the filling stations were however unlucky as they sustained various degrees of injuries in the melee.

Rounds of destruction

The irate drivers also moved to another
filling station allegedly belonging to the same person who owns the one
where Mr. Sanni was attacked and carried out another round of
destruction.

It took the intervention of police in Ikare division to put the situation under control.

Confirming the incident, the
spokesperson of the Ondo State Police Command, Adeniran Aremu, said the
police are currently investigating the matter with a view to punishing
the perpetrators of the crime.

According to him, the situation has now
been brought under control, stressing that the people of the area are
going on with their normal business activities.

Human sleeping sickness, the age-long disease that has defied several interventions,

is closer to being checked as African researchers recently announced improved techniques to control the disease.

In a study recently
carried out in Burkina Faso and Cote d’Ivoire, African scientists show
that by mimicking odours in cows, pigs and humans and using them to
bait Tsetse flies (the vector harbouring the trypanosomes which causes
sleeping sickness), they can increase the number of flies attracted to
a trap and the number of kills.

The scientists figure that this is a sure way to break the transmission of the disease from fly to man.

An associate
professor of the Community and Primary Health Department of the
University of Lagos, College of Medicine, Bayo Onajole, says although
using odour baits to kill tsetse flies is not a new method, “ it can
help in preventing transmission.”

He adds that, “For
the control of vector-borne diseases, it is always advised to use an
integrated approach such as having a high index of suspicion of
patients, presenting with symptoms, treating with drugs and detecting
approaches targeted at the environment,” he said.

Human sleeping
sickness is caused by African trypanosomiasis and this is harboured in
Tsetse flies of various species. Tsetse flies (Diptera:

Glossinidae) infest
approximately 10 million km2 of sub-Saharan Africa where they transmit
trypanosomes, which cause sleeping sickness. The most dangerous species
(called Glossinidae Palpalis), which occur in West Africa, accounts for
97 per cent of total reported cases.

Age-long challenges

According to the
World Health Organisation, sleeping sickness threatens up to 60 million
people in 36 countries of sub-Saharan Africa and affects 50,000 to
70,000 people each year. Only a small fraction of these countries are
under surveillance with regular examination, or have access to a health
centre that can provide diagnostic facilities, or are protected by
vector control interventions. In Nigeria, the disease is common in the
northern parts of the country especially amongst cattle-rearers, in
savannah and riverine areas.

The researchers
also said that one of the major challenges of controlling the diseases
for over 80 years has been the cost and logistical difficulty of
managing fly control programmes.

“There are no
vaccines or prophylactic drugs available to prevent the disease, which,
once it has been contracted, is treated with curative drugs that often
prove ineffective because of emerging disease resistance in the
trypanosomes,” the authors said in the PLoS Journal of Neglected
Diseases where the research was published last month.

“These drugs can
often have unpleasant and sometimes fatal side effects. Prospects for
development of effective vaccines or prophylactic drugs are poor.”

Vaccine prospects

Another step that
could help control the disease is developing a vaccine. A Nigerian
scientist, Jonathan Nok, last year won the Nigeria Liquefied Natural
Gas (NLNG) Prize for his work in discovering the gene responsible for
the creation of Sialidase (SD),

an enzyme which
causes sleeping sickness (Trypanosomiasis). Mr. Nok, a professor of
Biochemistry and the Dean of the Faculty of Science, Ahmadu Bello
University, says the breakthrough is significant as it will form the
baseline for developing DNA-based vaccines against Trypanosoma, a
predominantly African problem.

Way forward

The researchers
find that this kind of vector control in the management of the disease
has done little over the past 80 years and to overcome this, they are
trying to develop cost-effective insecticide-treated targets by
identifying chemicals that will increase the number of flies that will
be lured to a target and killed.

Commenting on the viability, one of the co-authors of the study, Michael Lehane says,

“We are aiming to test the technology in the field in the near future,

and assessing the
impact in the epidemiology, as well as in the socio-economics of the
intervention areas. Until then, it is difficult to state the specific
value of this approach to the control of the disease. This opens the
way for further work to identify the attractants present in these
natural odours that can then be simply and cheaply incorporated into
targets to reduce the cost of control,” reads the study.

Business and
leisure activities are gradually picking up at the Tinapa Business and
Leisure Resort, Calabar, Cross River State following the approval and
gazetting of its operational guidelines by the federal government.

Several state
governments, including Imo and Rivers, recently held some of their
conferences and retreats at the Resort, while some foreign groups are
also taking advantage of the serenity and ambience of Tinapa to do
business.

The number of
visitors to the Resort has also increased appreciably, to the delight
of the people of Calabar who have for long wondered when commercial
activities would kick off at the multi-million naira centre. A greater
chunk of the visitors however patronise the T-Mart, a retail shopping
emporium which is about the size of two football fields.

So far, no fewer
than a million people from within and outside Nigeria have been to the
retail shop since last December when the shop, which is run by American
trade experts threw its doors open to the public.

“Over 100
containers have come into the Tinapa over the last three months,”
Managing Director of Tinapa, Bassey Ndem said. “These are goods that
are not in the absolute prohibition list, including general cargo,
electronics, textiles, building materials, home wares, consumables and
so on. Those are the ones coming in now. But we are talking to other
people that want to bring machineries.

Somebody has brought in papers, another person iron rods. Many goods are coming in now.”

Ready for business

Mr Ndem said prior
to the release of the gazette, a number of people had come in to make
enquiries about taking shops at the complex, but it was not possible to
seal the deals because the operational manual had not been released by
government.

“In fact, Tinapa
is getting out of the woods and there are about 53 different companies
operating at the Tinapa now. The Amber Tinapa (an hotel) is ready and
has been in use. The Water Park, the biggest in Africa is ready and in
use. So, why should you go and look at another water park at Orlando or
anywhere else when this one is available?” He said the facility was
ready to provide a year’s rent free to people who invest in the shops,
coupled with other mouth-watering attractions.

One of the investors, Charles Oku said the children’s arcade is a source of joy to kids.

“T-Mart, which is as good as any shopping mall in America or in Germany is ready and is selling,” he said.

“It is the first
and only duty-free market in Nigeria and I think the entire Tinapa has
offered very wonderful opportunity to Nigerians to transact business
and get those things that they would have travelled and paid so much to
get abroad.” There are however still several challenges ahead. About a
year ago, the only shipping line in Calabar withdrew its services,
while importers of goods into Calabar resorted to Onne and Port
Harcourt ports because of bad roads and the shallow level of the
Calabar water channels.

Mr Ndem said the
state government is pushing for the dredging of the Calabar River
Channel, dualization of the gateway roads to Calabar and improvement of
facilities at the Calabar airport.

He also said Tinapa
intends to acquire three more ships, as well as increase its freight
from 4,500 to 36,000 metric tonnes so as to serve the South-South,
South East and the North East Zones.

“The management even has the hope of floating a Tinapa Airline in future,” he said.

Abubakar Rimi’s life was marked by a certain restlessness.

In 1983 he decamped from Aminu Kano’s
People’s Redemption Party, of which he was a founding member, and on
whose platform he had been elected governor, to Nnamdi Azikiwe’s
Nigeria People’s Party. More than twenty years later he would make a
similar move, dumping the People’s Democratic Party, which he helped
found, for the Action Congress; and then months later make a
controversial return to the PDP.

For a man who early on earned a
formidable reputation as a ‘progressive’ politician (he was once quoted
as saying “I hate whatever the NPN stands for; it is a manifestation of
everything that is bad”), his affiliation with the PDP, the 4th
republic incarnation of the NPN, remains surprising. But then wasn’t
this also the man who publicly swore, after leaving the PDP, that he
would never return; but within a year was back, and remained a
prominent member until his death?

Roller coaster

Abubakar Rimi was one of the founding
members of the Peoples Redemption Party. In 1978 he was elected deputy
National Secretary of the party. In the run-up to the second republic
his ambition was to be a senator.

By a stroke of fate he ended up – a
dashing thirty-nine year old – as the first civilian governor of the
old Kano state. As governor, he demonstrated remarkable fidelity to his
party’s (PRP) ideals, making the economic and educational empowerment
of the talakawa (“common man”) the priority of his administration.
Following his decampment to the Nigeria People’s Party, he honourably
resigned his position as governor of Kano State on the 1st of May 1983,
making him the first – and only – Nigerian state governor to do so. He
would later contest for a second term on the NPP platform, losing to
Sabo Bakinzuwo, the candidate of his former party.

In 1984, he was one of the legion of
second republic politicians tried and jailed on corruption charges by
the Muhammadu Buhari regime, which brought to end the second republic.
Rimi would spend the next three years in at least two Nigerian prisons
(Benin and Kirikiri). That spell was his second; the first, a much
shorter one, occurred during the build-up to the 1964 Federal House of
Representatives elections (in which he was contesting on the platform
of the Northern Elements Progressive Union), when the rival Northern
People’s Congress engineered his arrest and detention.

Rimi was also one of the prominent
politicians initially banned from participating in the transition to
civilian rule by military dictator Ibrahim Babangida in 1991. In the
3rd Republic he was a prominent member of the Social Democratic Party
(SDP), and a leading supporter of Moshood Abiola’s presidential
campaign. But when Sani Abacha came to power, Rimi, alongside other SDP
members like Lateef Jakande, Iyorchia Ayu, Babagana Kingibe and
Ebenezer Babatope, accepted a ministerial position in the junta. They
were all later dropped from the cabinet.

In 1998 Rimi teamed up with a group of
eminent Nigerians to form the G34, a political pressure group that
stridently opposed Abacha’s plans to transform into a civilian
president. The sudden death of Abacha in June 1998 and the subsequent
opening up of the political space by the Abdulsalam Abubakar government
provided an opportunity for Rimi to once again achieve political
relevance. The G34 transformed into the People’s Democratic Party,
positioning Rimi to become an influential member of the political
platform that would soon become the nation’s ruling party.

The Aso Rock dream

His overriding ambition until his
death was to become the President of Nigeria. He sought to contest in
the PDP primaries in 1999 and 2003, in defiance of the party’s internal
arrangement that zoned the presidency to the South. In 1999 he bowed to
the party’s decision. But in 2002 he, alongside Barnabas Gemade, took
the PDP to court to challenge its zoning the presidency to the South.
“[T]his time around, the race is open to anybody, everybody; and it is
equally not true that the political mood favours any particular part of
the country. It is not true at all. The race is open to all parts of
the country. And so I am in the race,” he told a national daily in
November 2002.

The PDP would later reverse its zoning
decision (barely 48 hours to the national convention) and allow the two
men to contest the Presidential primaries. Those present at Eagle
Square, Abuja venue of the primaries, or who watched the live
broadcast, will recall Rimi’s name intermittently punctuating that of
the two main contenders, Mr Obasanjo and Mr Ekwueme, during the public
ballot counting that followed the voting, presided over by Tom Ikimi.

A controversial legacy

Politics dictated that Rimi would part
ways with some of his closest allies. As Kano state governor, Rimi’s
differences with his mentor Aminu Kano caused the PRP to be split into
two factions. Two decades later the struggle to control the PDP in Kano
and Jigawa (which was carved out of the old Kano state) states caused
Rimi to fall out with long time friend and political associate (and
fellow disciple of Aminu Kano), Sule Lamido.

Rimi was also an unrepentant critic of
Mr Obasanjo, despite his appointment as Chairman of the board of the
Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company. In 2006 his frustration
with the PDP (he publicly accused the party of having a hand in the
2006 murder of his wife) led him to switch to the Action Congress,
where he became a National Vice Chairman.

But he was not to stay long in the new party, returning to the PDP in October 2007.

Throughout his long political career
Rimi never failed to reveal flashes of the disdain for
establishment-style politics which defined his early years as a member
of the Northern Elements Progressive Union and the People’s Redemption
Party; both of which sought to be progressive bulwarks against the
conservatism of the powerful Northern aristocracy. As Kano State
governor he abolished age-old taxes, and famously queried the Emir of
Kano, a potentially politically suicidal move.

But at certain periods when it
mattered, and especially towards the end of his life it was hard to
find evidence that Rimi was not an establishment person. In the end, he
leaves a fascinating legacy – a colourful political career whose
unpredictability soon came to become very predictable, a history of
unguarded public statements, and an impressive list of
associates-turned- enemies.

But perhaps what will serve as the prevailing symbol of that legacy
will be the tens of thousands of mourners who attended his funeral on
Monday, evidence that while the Rimi political magic may have waned
over the years, it never quite vanished. In death, as in the beginning,
Rimi was a man of the people.