Kaduna South Senatorial Contest: Concerned Kachia/Kagarko Youths React
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| Senator Danjuma Laah |
The youths, in a statement issued on Sunday, 30th September 2018, noted that, as a group, "feels compelled to respond to some earlier insinuations against the Distinguished Senator from the Honourable Adams Jagaba's camp.
Below is the statement:
Now that Senator Danjuma Laah has pledged to remain with the party come rain come sunshine, we members of the aforementioned group feel compelled to respond to some earlier insinuations against the Distinguished Senator from the Jagaba camp. We didn't do this earlier because the onus of response was not on us. We responded anyway because the outcome of the PDP primaries is very instrumental in deciding the future of Southern Kaduna to which we all belong. Without much ado, let us get to the crux of the matter.
On 13th September 2018, a group known as Southern Kaduna Professors issued a statement. In that statement, the group alerted members of the Southern Kaduna public of a PDP exco conspiracy cum legislative gangup against the incumbent Senator Danjuma Laah. They warned that the success of such gangup against the incumbent Senator will only see the party descending from grace to grass, because the people will vote for Laah, even in another party.
On 14th of September 2018, A passionate Southern Kaduna son Barrister James Kanyip, took FOSKAP to the cleaners in what he described as unbecoming of intellectuals to threaten a healthy and long established democratic process the incumbent Senator was a beneficiary of, against Senator Nenadi Usman. Kanyip described the release as an expression of fear and desperation. He wondered why FOSKAP didn't care to find out why the PDP exco are rooting for Jagaba instead of Laah. He mocked the intellectual capacity of FOSKAP for making a sweeping statement about distortion of facts against Laah without listing such distortions. He wondered why other representatives will gang up against Laah and berated FOSKAP for insisting Laah was the lone voice who showed tremendous courage and determination at the height of the killings in Southern Kaduna and insinuated it was an unmerited glorification of one man above others who did equally well if not better. Kanyip was of the opinion that other candidates have the right to contest without exciting bad blood as that is democracy.
After going through Kanyip's take, we were irked by Senator Danjuma Laah's seeming lackadaisical attitude that got him easily outfoxed by the legislative gangup, such that FOSKAP had to come to his aid crying foul. But then, we knew these are no ordinary times for us as a people; and anybody following the turn of events in Kaduna State from May 2015 until date, will understand that issues got out of control.
Jagaba is our own, a very nice and generous man. He is so generous that people perceive him richer than he truly is. Again, he is a ferocious fighter, but our primary misgivings with him is premised on his support base which are other members of the lower chambers to deal with Laah. When El-Rufai was placing curses on the three senators for denying him 360 million dollars loan, he blessed the representatives for being there for him. Not only that, he went on to declare Laah a persona non grata who must be disgraced out of the Senate come 2019 for the role he played. Then here come the representatives pushing one of their own, Jagaba, to fulfill El-Rufai's curse against Laah. We are all not strangers to El-Rufai's hatred against Southern Kaduna. El-Rufai has trampled upon the soul of democracy in Kaduna State by making nonsense of the principles of checks and balance that guarantee separation of powers among the judiciary, executive and legislative. The executive governor was able to pocket the state legislators to the point of soundlessness. The state judiciary was muscled to complete submission. The federal law makers were intimidated to conformity with even Jagaba harrased in Kachia some years earlier. Only the senators were able to weather the El-Rufai totalitarian storm. Today, these same senators are to be casted for standing up against tyranny and the Jagaba camp are willing to harvest from this tyrannical sentiment of the APC government against Laah. Little wonder why Jagaba handed over his Kagarko local government area to APC without much fight when it was clear PDP won it. If Jagaba can not hold the fort for PDP in his native local government area of Kagarko, how can we trust him to hold the fort for PDP at the senatorial level? We are pained that our Kagarko is in the wrong hands and we hold Jagaba responsible. Jagaba put in his political kitty the upgrading of the Kafanchan general hospital to a Federal Medical Center while the Kachia General Hospital of the same status stares at us naked? If that is true, then Jagaba had shortchanged the good people of Kachia, being a Kachia/Kagarko federal representative - or was Jagaba representing Jama'a/Sanga? This is indeed fearful and apprehensive. It is on these apprehensive premises, and many others like these, that returning Laah back to the Senate is in agreement with our spirits and our conscience.
Righteous as Kanyip's position may appear to many rational thinkers out there, it is replete with a lot of faults. It refused to take cognizance of the perilous times we are in. If it had factored the perilous times we are in, it will appreciate the fears and apprehension expressed by FOSKAP as well as its seeming desperation. It is the same fear and apprehension that lead us to write. We can not gamble with our senatorial seat, especially at this time. Our safest bet now is consolidation. If Kanyip were conscious of the time, he would have known that FOSKAP knew why the PDP exco are rooting for Jagaba instead of Laah. He would not have mocked the intellectual capacity of FOSKAP when he alleged they made a sweeping statement about distortion of facts.
It is true that Kanyip and other independent persons were also speaking against the killings, but Laah was indeed the lone voice who showed tremendous courage and determination among other members of parliament from Southern Kaduna. Thus it was not out of place for FOSKAP to note that. That the good Barrister James Kanyip identified with the forces of darkness didn't come to us as a surprise after checking up with Kanyip's four years stint as local government chairman, and another two years as local government administrator under Yero. We have come to a sad conclusion that Kanyip only mount the moral high horse whenever he is out of government, but when in government, he adopts anti-people policies. It is a common knowledge, where he served, that when in government, Kanyip turns his back to the masses. It is no surprise then that he is a party to the self-serving political oligarchy that cares little about the people's fears and aspirations in their bid to upstage the people's senator. Between Barrister Kanyip and Jagaba Adams Jagaba, the fate of Kagarko Local Government PDP victory election was sold to the APC. Somehow Barrister Kanyip who was in charge of the case was not in court when the case was called and the Judge dismissed the petition and declared APC winner. Barrister Kanyip can not honestly tell us he didn't know his absence from court will mean victory for the APC. This development lend credence to an intelligence revealing that Kanyip is in secret romance with El-Rufai through the deputy governor Barnabas Bala Bantex, and that part of the money being used to get the delegates to vote out Laah at the PDP primaries, is coming from Kashim Ibrahim house in El-Rufai's bid to actualise the uprooting of the three senators and plant stooges. The allegation above was substantiated by the fact that the same Barrister Kanyip was a leading figure in organizing a controversial reconciliation meeting between APC and PDP youth of Southern Kaduna extraction under the auspices of El-Rufai's grazing reserve commissioner Dr. Manzo Maigari at Chop Complete in Barnawa on 20th July 2018.
Ironically, this same Barrister James Kanyip is taking a moral high ground to join those who want to decide who becomes the PDP flagbearer for the Senate when he is romancing the APC government that have shown so much disdain for the people of Southern Kaduna.
These formed part of our fears. With the Danjuma camp, we are at least assured of loyalty and faithfulness. On the Jagaba front, loyalty and faithfulness are a matter of personal convenience: now that our votes are needed, it is convenient for them to show loyalty and faithfulness in most unlikely quarters. Once our votes are bought, loyalty and faithfulness would be viewed from personal prisms: community will be the least of their worries. This is because our votes are merchandise for them to buy: they have no business with the seller thereafter until they need to buy these votes yet again after another four years.
While Kanyip tried to be more rational, the spin doctor of distorted facts was erratically irrational in his base response which was 95 percent vitriol and 5 percent low quality substance in the article 'PROF LAAH AND THE FALLACY OF JINX BREAKING IN SOUTHERN KADUNA'. Social doctors are supposed to be healers of society, but this doctor is repeatedly a sickness to the Southern Kaduna society. He fought to bring Nenadi Usman and regreted that he brought her. He fought to bring El-Rufai and regreted that he brought El-Rufai. He is now fighting to bring in Jagaba: perhaps to regret tomorrow. Why should we trust him this time around? What guarantee do we have he won't lead us to regret again? He brought Ishaku Shakarau in the last election that lost to Laah. Shakarau was not spared from his fangs that ran Shakarau aground, such that today Shakarau had to find solace in unusual spots. This spin doctor turns around to go nasty against most of his estrange principals especially when they stop oiling his palms. He has managed to lead the unsuspecting public into identifying his self-serving interest as Southern Kaduna interest. We do not want to be led astray again. On the day of the spin doctor's declaration in Kachia for Kachia/Kagarko federal house of representative, some of our youth sighted a vehicle filled with 'erujeje', a sort of local gin for the youth. Some youth in his entourage were dressed in red like some sort of cultists. How do we trust the spin doctor to lead the youth if all he has to offer them is 'erujeje' to drink and have their senses impaired. The spin doctor, whose stock in trade is to distort facts on sanctimonious alters, has alot up his sleeves. Some of his distorted facts are:
1. That exploited and oppressed workers of Laah's Wonderland and New World hotels staged a protest for lack of payments of their wages for 24 months.
Was it up to 24 months? Were the workers eventually paid all their outstanding or not? Who doesn't owe workers? Even the government does. Kaduna State government for example employed teachers since April this year, took them away from their comfort zone, refused to give them any allowance and owing them to this day. When asked, the governor blamed it on SUBEB yet the heavens didn't fall.
2. That while Sen. Gemade was firing from all cylinders, television cameras caught distinguished Laah (Shettiman Kagoro) sitting like a captured slave in a banana plantation in the New World.
Was this spin doctor expecting the senator to interrupt Senator Gemade? How many senators must be talking all at once? How many times has Laah spoken on behalf of other senators? How did Gemade get full details of the invasion if Laah didn't reveal it to members of the public? It is pure mischief to insinuate that the senator didn't make his case before the Senate. And it is most disrespectful of our political leader in Southern Kaduna to refer to him as a captured slave in a Banana plantation in the New World. It shows how the spin doctor throws decorum to the winds whenever he is making his vacuous cases against anybody.
3. That FOSKAP unconsciously played political harakiri by indirectly blaming the mandate givers (the people of Southern Kaduna) of refusal to renew mandates of their senators since 1999.
FOSKAP was alerting the southern Kaduna electorate of the gangup: where did the spin doctor got his own spin on this one? Some of us were already in the know of this gang up long before FOSKAP raised the alarm. FOSKAP simply increased the scope of awareness among members of the public. It is clear that the spin doctor was simply trying to manipulate the people against the senator in his usual stock in trade which is to distort facts.
4. Again he posited: between a HOSTEL and a HOTEL builder; who is contributing to the moral, spiritual and economic advancement of Southern Kaduna? Hotel is for the elites and hedonists while hostel is for those who desire to see a better tomorrow. That JAJ is a wiser and moral investor than Sen. Laah.
The above is the dumbest postulation of the spin doctor. Anybody who doesn't know that huge hotels of Laah's standard is necessary for the development of any community, anybody who pretends that hostels are more important than hotels in the economic life of a community, anybody who stands on sanctimonious grounds to extol the building of a hostel above the building of a hotel, anybody who uses morality to condemn indices of development, is either too dumb or a con man without scruples. It is clear that the spin doctor is banking on the people's ignorance, sense of morality and gullibility to sell retrogressive notion for lame political points.
5. Again the spin doctor went on to say JAJ is one of the highest employers of labour and the one of a few persons with a credible investment in Southern Kaduna. First, his farms of over 250,000 palm trees in Katari engages over 15,000 people, annually. Two, his rice and maize farm along Jere-Bwari way engages over 5,000 people, annually. These permanent and temporary workers get their pay as at when due. And they are picking their sundry bills with little or no tears.
This spin doctor in distorting facts was so charitable with insults against the duo of Senator Danjuma and Professor Gambo. He described Professor Gambo as a politically parochial and myopic geographer from Mabushi village in Zangon Kataf LGA. He called the professor a 'busy body', an 'irredentist', a 'nepotist', a 'tribalist' and etc. The spin doctor had to include the professor's local government as a tool of division, to sell the notion that the professor was guided by nepotism. Few concerned youth like us from Kachia and Kagarko are also behind Senator Danjuma Laah. Can the doctor call us nepotists now too?
The spin doctor likened Senator Laah to a 'MODERN SLAVE MASTER', 'primitive accumulator' and 'exploitater' of our vulnerable brothers and sisters. Now I ask, between a palm tree plantation that the doctor so boastfully wrote about for Jagaba and a huge Hotel like Wonderland of Laah, which vividly conjures real slaves and slave master in your minds' eyes? What kind of farm production will require 15 000 workers on a 250 000 palm trees plantation? Industrialists will tell you this is not feasible anywhere. How many youngsters will graduate only to seek employment in Jagaba's palm trees farm? How many will gladly work in Laah's huge hotels? The spin doctor is clearly full of crap and banking on public ignorance to twist facts and sell distorted stories about Senator Laah for pecuniary reasons.
We are worried. We are scared. We are down in apprehension and we are desperate that spin doctors like this and people who distort facts like these don't get their way to the helm of affairs in Southern Kaduna because that would be worse than the agents of darkness we daily fight, especially in these perilous times. Our fear is, many clean and noble people will be carried away by the sanctimonious stance of such sinful saints as this spin doctor and support them to our peril. Our cry now is to all southern Kaduna delegates and other conscientious stakeholders of Southern Kaduna to reject these seeming righteous people before they buy us from us and trade us all to people we are struggling to resist.
God bless Senator Danjuma Laah
God bless Kachia/Kagarko Concerned Youths
God bless Southern Kaduna
God bless Kaduna State
God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria
Jacob Clement - Chairman
BEN MUSA - Secretary
ISAAC DAVID - PRO
Onoma Gideon - Member
Onomza Livinus - Member
Isuwa Ibrahim Kutaho - Member
Agilo Livinus - Member
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