Politics
Broom Movement: True or rogue democrats?
in the social media, the harangue signed by the Convener of a group called Broom United Movement (BUM), Mr. Fuad Oki, some weeks back, I got strung-up with the level of hypocrisy and shenanigans in our politics and in our polity. The speech, an inadequate lecture note on POL 301, exhibited stupendous expertise in fictional creativity. The lecturer, a serial political manipulator, engaged himself in rhetorical and polemic narrative on the fundamentals of political science without establishing any theoretical foundation for his epistolary politics. From its convocation to its deliberations, it was obvious that the movement was a political misadventure packaged by a troubled hireling echoing the whisperings and murmurings of his frightened masters “refuging” in the tunnel of perfidy. In short, the entire grandstanding was a whispering campaign by a drowning collective aimed at Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Hear the Convener: “Today we want to commence the process of building Our Party (APC) by demanding genuine reconciliation of our members that their voices will be heard and that their votes will count whenever such need arises… Our Party in Lagos State has never been this divided and dis-United. The current graveyard silence that permeate (sic) our political landscape with a siddon look, a o mu erin joba syndrome, is very dangerous…”
I cannot but laugh listening to my good friend, Oki talking about “the process of building our Party (APC) by demanding genuine reconciliation…” Agreed that every political party draws its membership from the citizenry that identifies with its ideology and political philosophy, this does not in any way suggest that every member of the party is a founder. There are founding fathers, there are founding members and there are ordinary joiners. When a joiner begins to claim the status of a founder with this kind of statement” …building our party (APC)…”, one should wonder where this whimsical usurpation is coming from. As an insider, I have sufficient understanding of the trajectory of APC from its original derivative, Alliance for Democracy (AD). I am aware of the fact that a Political Party is a formal association which should be funded by members through levies and dues; in some cases, through donations from influential members of the Party, from interested corporate organisations and institutional affiliates. However, knowing the massive expenditure that politics and elections require in Nigeria, some of the founding fathers of the party who are moneybags have always taken it upon themselves to fund the Party single-handedly. This was the case with Asiwaju Tinubu who individually shouldered most of the financial commitments of the transiting parties AD, ACN and APC. Without sounding somehow hyperbolic, Tinubu was the major financier of these parties at a time that success or victory at the national level looked very bleak and hopelessly impossible. During these trying times, where was Fuad Oki? Where was Biodun Oki, his brother? Where were his masters that are teleguiding everything today from their hideouts? It is sheer opportunism for Oki and his treacherous band to be ascribing to themselves a status they know they do not deserve. Most of Oki’s allies are mere joiners as they were nowhere around when the birth of APC’s progenitors took place. Those who founded AD, those who funded AD from the scratch and those who pioneered AD from the beginning are the real founders and under no guise should they be denied the fruits of their labour. Personally, I feel fate and people have not been fair to Asiwaju Bola Tinubu with the way and manner they have been trying to rubbish his historic contributions and efforts in the making of the APC and by extension, his role in the consolidation of our nascent democracy.
When Oki was talking of “genuine reconciliation of our members”, “voices of our members will be heard and votes will count”, “Our Party in Lagos State has never been this divided and dis-united”, “a o mu erin joba syndrome”, who was he referring to? Tinubu of course. These vituperations are laced with mischief because Oki was aware of Tinubu’s appointment by President Muhammadu Buhari as APC Chief National Reconciliator. The intention was to discredit and cast aspersion on Tinubu peace credential. What Oki was saying in essence was that the choice of Tinubu by Buhari was not in consonance with extant political realities since Tinubu’s base, Lagos State, was in “total turmoil”.
But what Oki failed to state in his statement was that whatever imaginary trouble that exists in Lagos APC today was a creation of his sponsors. As far as I know, Lagos APC is not witnessing any graveyard silence. Every member of the party in the state is committed to the Ambode second term project. All members of the State House of Assembly, all House of Representatives members from the state and the three Senators from the state have all stated categorically that they will go all the way with the governor. Those who are expressing the only dissenting voice are Oki and his cohorts whose defeat during the 2015 primaries was Tinubu’s cardinal sin against Oki’s principal. Those who are advertising a non-existent crisis are the people whose inordinate ambition for the gubernatorial throne has crashed as a result of the sterling performance of the governor of the state. I am still baffled that while the opposition in the state is obviously and reasonably reluctant to contest with the governor, Oki and his sponsors are calling for party primaries. Is leadership no longer about performance? Why must any responsible individuals and group think of changing a wining and performing team. Was Oki’s principal not deservedly compensated with another term by the same Tinubu when it was generally acknowledged that his performance was outstanding? Why advocate for another primary when there is a general acclamation that the present governor of the state has been more than outstanding?
Justifying the birth of BUM, the convener explained that “our party suffers from low organisational capacity and lack of internal democracy… This apparent weakness underscores the need for reform and institutionalisation of a process whereby professionals become more central to the running of our Party”.
It is hypocritical of Oki to pretend not to know how or what was responsible for what he called “low organisational capacity and lack of internal democracy”. Since he came on board the party leadership at the state level, what efforts did he make personally to check the perfidious activities of his sponsors? Rather than do this, Oki conveniently oscillated between the two groups because he found in treachery a rewarding treasury. Those who hawked and escalated party division; those who destroyed the mechanics of party system, those who planted the seeds of discord in the party; those who indulged in intrigues for prebendal enterprise have lost the moral authority to pontificate on political morality. Who is Oki to berate the party leadership for dysfunctional internal democracy within the Party? I submit again that he does not possess the moral credential to theorize on internal democracy. Two personal examples would suffice. In 2006, when a campaign organisation was being set up for Babatunde Fashola gubernatorial activities, this writer was chosen as the Director-General of the campaign organisation during a caucus meeting. In attendance at the meeting where the decision was taken were: Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Tunde Fashola, Gbenga Asafa, Mutiu Are and Kunle Odufuwa. The meeting lasted for almost six hours. But before the decision could be communicated to me officially, Oki was able to persuade Babatunde Fashola to convince Asiwaju Tinubu to replace this writer with himself. In his usual placatory gesture, Asiwaju Tinubu concurred, promising to compensate this writer with a top political position in the new government. The rest is history because nothing was done afterwards. Yet, one has remained loyal to the party and to its leadership. The same scenario was replayed in 2015 when again, Oki was imposed on Akinwunmi Ambode by Tunde Fashola who did not want Ologunde as the D-G of Ambode Campaign Organisation (AMBO). Since Tinubu and the party leadership were looking for a way to carry him along in the whole project, it was easy for Fashola to have his way.
Secondly, this writer, as a close Personal Aide to Asiwaju Tinubu, was present in all the meetings that Asiwaju Tinubu had with the so-called “Aggrieved “12” who protested in 2006 the selection, imposition and eventual investiture of Fashola as the gubernatorial candidate of the then Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), in most of these meetings, Tinubu continued to justify the selection and enjoined the “Aggrieved 12” to accept his decision in the interest of the party. His reason was that the number of candidates was unwieldy and that any attempt to organise primaries was capable of inflaming tension among members and thus escalating the crisis beyond what the party could manage. He begged. He pleaded. He cajoled. He mesmerized. Eventually, the deal was sealed but it was not easy. All the while, Fashola was anxious and panicky because he did not want Tinubu to succumb to the demands of the “Aggrieved 12”. It was obvious that he did not want primaries because at that time, he was unknown, unpopular, apolitical; he was hated by the politicians and even with Tinubu’s support, he was still not confident that he would win the primaries because he knew how unpopular he was with the politicians. It was the same Fuad Oki as the D-G of the Campaign Organisation that was frustrating intra-party efforts to conduct party primaries.
Now hear the so-called BUM convener on Party Primaries in 2018:“Competitive Party and electoral politics is imperative in order to facilitate internal democracy within our Party, through requirements like Party nomination primaries…” Though this is the ideal thing to do in a normal democratic setting, manipulation of Party constitutional provisions in a society like Nigeria, where aberrations and impunities reign supreme, cannot be considered alien. Irrespective of this, it becomes frightening and disturbing when past beneficiaries of illegalities and impositions condemn with hypocritical passion, the very methods through which they were lifted to power.
Anyone who reads the Convener’s speech without knowing his antecedents will applaud his esoteric preachment. But a profound understanding of his past political antics and jingoism will reveal the vacuity of his delicious sophistry. The kind of idealism being marketed by the Movement cannot be facilitated through political treachery nor can it be canvassed by past beneficiaries of systemic anomalies. Those who lack the integrity and dignity of sainthood should not be the ones to promote Utopianism as they lack the moral credibility to undertake such political advocacy.
Those who are preaching Party cohesion are the same people desecrating the sanctity of democracy by snubbing the internal redress mechanisms and going to the extreme to seek “justice” through party dismemberment. Genuine democrats who believe in the sanctification of democratic tenets will not indulge in sanctimonious cyber carnival of party internal matters. Political rascality and theatrical democratic pretensions are the professional tools of rogue democrats. The Convener, the apostles and the faceless sponsors of Broom United Movement are nothing but rogue democrats seeking recognition through democratic deception.
Politics
Political Earthquake in Kano: How, Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, Nasiru Gawuna’s Move to ADC Reshapes North-West Politics
Political Earthquake in Kano: How, Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, Nasiru Gawuna’s Move to ADC Reshapes North-West Politics
The political atmosphere of Nigeria’s North-West was fundamentally altered on a sweltering afternoon in 2026 after Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso former Governor of Kano State and Former Minister for Defence who is also the “Grand Commander” of the Red-Cap revolution, finalized a move that many viewed as the ultimate masterstroke of his political career. By transitioning from the NNPP to the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Kwankwaso did more than change platforms; he effectively reset the coordinates of the nation’s largest voting bloc.
Senator Kwankwaso’s pedigree is defined by a singular devotion to human capital development and an almost mythical grassroots loyalty preceded him. He turned a local movement, the Kwankwasiyya, into a disciplined, ideological army that transcends traditional party structures. His entry into the ADC instantly transformed a secondary party into a formidable fortress, signaling to the ruling elite that the North-West is no longer a monolith under their control.
The gravity of this shift is most profound in Kano, the heartbeat of Northern commerce. For years, the state was a polarized battlefield between the Kwankwasiyya and established conservative wings. However, the entry of Nasiru Yusuf Gawuna into the same ADC orbit has created a “Kano Super-Alliance” that was previously unthinkable. Kwankwaso, the visionary architect who sent thousands of Kano’s children to global universities, now finds his populist ideology merging with Gawuna’s administrative steadiness and deep-rooted institutional connections.
This synergy is a seismic departure from the politics of “zero-sum” rivalry; it is a calculated fusion of mass appeal and the strategic machinery required to protect and deliver votes.
This move reshuffles the entire North-West deck. As Kwankwaso plants the ADC flag across the region, he is attracting a wave of heavyweights from Kaduna to Sokoto who feel marginalized by the status quo. His political pedigree allows him to speak with a regional authority that others lack, positioning himself as a protector during a time of economic uncertainty. By bringing Gawuna into this fold, the dynamics of Kano politics have shifted from a war of attrition to a coalition of necessity. This alliance creates a “Third Way” that bypasses the failures of the old guard, promising a return to the rapid growth that defined the Kwankwaso years, but with a broader, more inclusive base that could dictate the occupant of Aso Rock in 2027.
Kwankwaso’s career has always been defined by a uniquely personal brand of power. From 1999 to 2015, he served two terms as Governor of Kano State, in addition to roles as Minister of Defence and Senator. While many were surprised by his recent maneuvers; especially following closed-door meetings with President Bola Tinubu, he chose the emerging ADC over the ruling APC.
In the high-stakes theater of Nigerian politics, few events have jolted the region quite like the defection of Nasiru Yusuf Gawuna from the APC to the ADC on March 31, 2026. Coming just twenty-four hours after Kwankwaso’s move, Gawuna’s transition fundamentally has also altered the political calculus in Kano. What makes this moment remarkable is the sheer drama of the reversal. Gawuna’s political journey has been a steady, calculated ascent through Kano’s establishment. He first shot to prominence as Commissioner of Agriculture under Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, earning a reputation for hands-on management in a state where farming is the economic backbone. He eventually rose to Deputy Governor, serving for nearly six years and gaining invaluable executive experience. Beyond partisan politics, Gawuna distinguished himself as Chairman of the Governing Council of Bayero University and, most recently, as Chairman of the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN). He resigned from the FMBN on March 27, 2026, citing compliance with presidential directives regarding political appointees.
A look back at the 2023 gubernatorial election reveals just how significant Gawuna is. Running under the APC, he polled over 890,000 votes against the formidable Kwankwasiyya machine. This proved that he is one of the few politicians in Kano who can genuinely compete with Kwankwaso’s electoral machinery. His strength is threefold: he appeals to the youth, the religious establishment (Ulama), and the business community; he has the capacity to split the APC vote; and he has demonstrated he can deliver votes independently of a larger party wave. To understand the magnitude of this defection, one must appreciate the complete inversion of alliances since 2023. Back then, Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf ran on the NNPP ticket with Kwankwaso’s backing, while Gawuna carried the APC banner with Ganduje’s support. By 2027, the roles will likely reverse: Governor Yusuf is positioned to run under the APC with Ganduje’s blessing, while Gawuna is poised to run under the ADC with Kwankwaso’s endorsement.
From the perspective of the Kwankwasiyya movement, Gawuna’s arrival is a “return” rather than a “recruitment,” as he was part of the movement’s pioneer cohort. This narrative neutralizes accusations of opportunism. For his part, Gawuna framed his move in terms of service and divine guidance, with sources indicating he felt marginalized within the APC after his 2023 defeat.
The reaction from within the APC has been one of worry and regret. President Tinubu, recognizing the stakes, reportedly directed party leaders to prevent Gawuna’s move, even offering him an automatic Senatorial ticket for 2027. The failure of this pressure campaign, Gawuna reportedly placed his phone on “Do Not Disturb” and traveled abroad to avoid lobbyists represents a significant defeat for the presidency’s political management. This crisis prompted emergency meetings between President Tinubu, Dr. Ganduje, and Badaru Abubakar at the Presidential Villa to reorganize their strategy.
The long-term implication is the potential break of the APC-PDP duopoly. The ADC is now positioning itself as a genuine “third force” in the North-West. The defection of high-profile figures like Senator Ahmed Babba-Kaita, Senator Aishatu “Binani” Ahmed, and former Justice Minister Abubakar Malami suggests a coordinated realignment. This competition could force more substantive policy debates and reduce the “zero-sum” intensity of regional elections.
The projected 2027 gubernatorial rematch between Gawuna (ADC) and Governor Yusuf (APC) will be a battle between two men with established records. Voters will have a genuine choice between performance and platform rather than just shifting loyalties. As Gawuna put it: “Allah gives power to whom He wants and when He wants.” While the 2027 elections will reveal where that power flows, it is already clear that the political landscape of the North-West will never look the same again.
Governor Dauda Lawal Approves Gratuity Payment
The Zamfara State Government, under the visionary leadership of Governor Dauda Lawal, has approved the release of funds for the payment of Gratuity Batch 3 for the 2024/25 period. This decisive action underscores the administration’s unwavering commitment to the welfare of retired civil servants who dedicated years of service to the state’s development.
The Accountant General of the State is already working diligently to ensure that all eligible retirees receive their payments promptly and efficiently, reflecting the government’s resolve to uphold transparency and accountability in the disbursement process.
This timely gratuity payment is a testament to Governor Dauda Lawal’s people-centered leadership, which recognizes the sacrifices and contributions of retirees to the progress and stability of Zamfara State. It also reaffirms the government’s pledge to honor its financial obligations without unnecessary delays.
The Zamfara State Government calls on all retirees in the affected batch to exercise patience as the necessary administrative and financial processes are finalized. Every effort is being made to ensure smooth and uninterrupted payments.
This initiative is part of Governor Dauda Lawal’s broader vision to empower citizens and retirees, strengthen confidence in public service, and sustain the morale of those who have committed their lives to the growth of Zamfara State.
Politics
APC Group Endorses Fubara for 2027, Calls on Tinubu and APC to Prioritise Performance Over Politics in Backing Governor’s Second Term Ambition
*APC Group Endorses Fubara for 2027, Calls on Tinubu and APC to Prioritise Performance Over Politics in Backing Governor’s Second Term Ambition*
The APC National Vanguard has appealed to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to support a second term in office for Siminalayi Fubara, citing what it described as “impressive and verifiable developmental strides” across Rivers State.
In a statement issued on Thursday by its National President, Dr Gbenga Salam (JP), the group said its position followed an extensive assessment tour of key infrastructure and public service projects executed under the Fubara administration.
The APC National Vanguard said the appeal was based strictly on performance, arguing that governance outcomes should outweigh partisan considerations, particularly in a state as economically significant as Rivers.
“We respectfully urge President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the leadership of the All Progressives Congress to support the continuity of Governor Siminalayi Fubara beyond his current tenure, in recognition of his commitment to development, prudent resource management, and people-focused governance,” the statement read.
According to the group, its delegation visited multiple project sites across the state, observing ongoing and completed works spanning road construction, urban renewal, and public infrastructure upgrades.
It noted that the scale and distribution of these projects reflect a deliberate effort by the state government to extend development beyond traditional urban centres and into underserved communities.
“Our findings from the tour reveal a government that is not only active but intentional in its development agenda. The execution of capital projects across various parts of Rivers State demonstrates a clear understanding of the needs of the people and a commitment to addressing them,” Dr Salam said.
The group particularly commended what it described as prudent financial management by the administration, noting that the projects reviewed showed evidence of careful planning and efficient allocation of resources.
“At a time when economic pressures are evident across the country, it is commendable that the Rivers State government has managed its resources in a way that delivers visible and impactful development without signs of fiscal recklessness,” the statement added.
The APC National Vanguard further observed that despite political tensions in the state, the Fubara administration has maintained focus on governance, ensuring continuity in project execution and service delivery.
The group argued that such stability is critical for sustained development and should be encouraged rather than disrupted.
“Leadership must ultimately be judged by results. In Rivers State, there is clear evidence of progress—projects that are not only announced but executed, and policies that translate into real benefits for citizens,” Dr Salam noted.
The group warned that discontinuity in leadership could stall ongoing projects and reverse gains already recorded, stressing the importance of allowing a performing administration to consolidate its achievements.
“Rivers State is at a pivotal stage where continuity will allow for the completion of ongoing initiatives and the deepening of development gains. Supporting Governor Fubara for a second term is, therefore, a decision in the best interest of the people,” the statement said.
In addition to its call on the APC leadership, the group reaffirmed its support for President Tinubu, expressing confidence in his administration’s broader economic and governance reforms.
The APC group urged Nigerians to remain supportive of efforts aimed at stabilising the economy and strengthening public institutions.
“We reiterate our endorsement of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for a second term in office, in recognition of his leadership and commitment to national development. With sustained support, the administration can consolidate its reform agenda for the benefit of all Nigerians,” Dr Salam added.
The APC National Vanguard concluded by calling on political actors to prioritise development and public interest over partisan divides, insisting that governance should always be guided by performance and accountability.
“Where leadership demonstrates prudence, delivers development, and remains focused on the welfare of the people, it deserves continuity. This is the position we have reached after a careful and independent assessment of Rivers State,” the statement added.
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