BY ABEL DANIEL

MANY agree that the incumbent administration of Governor Umar Almakura may have positively impacted the social and physical infrastructure in Nasarawa State. However, nearly every one is also agreed that the administration’s failure to provide peace is a problem for the governor’s future political ambitions.

Yesterday, his deputy gave his indication to slug out the governorship with him in the next governorship election.

With the majority of members of the state legislature and a party structure rooted across the state, it is not difficult for the Nasarawa State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP feeling that the state is in its kitty.

Emblem of authority

But not for now as the emblem of authority in the state is flown by Alhaji Umar Almakura of the All Progressives Congress, APC who dusted the PDP’s Aliu Akwe Doma in the last gubernatorial election in 2011.
The PDP has understandably not for once sought to make the governor’s job easy since the 2011 drubbing. Where the governor should have consolidated his party’s minority in the legislature and other elected offices, he has pitiably made a mess of it and allowed the PDP to consolidate. It is no longer news that the drift in defection is from the party in power to the opposition PDP.

Remarkably that is despite the 12 years of locust of the PDP, first under former Governor Abdullahi Adamu and then the four years of Doma.

Even more, the modest efforts of the present administration in infrastructure development should have drawn love from the populace. But pitiably, little of that is seen on the ground as citizens of the state continue to express disappointment in the governor’s failure to unite the state and his condoning of the divide and rule ethnic politics that has festered over the years.

It is not surprising that under the Almmakura led administration, Nasarawa has witnessed the highest number of crises with thousands of innocent lives lost properties worth millions of naira lost to ethnic violence.
The claim in some quarters is that the governor has surrounded himself with commissioners, special advisers and political associates who themselves are either not feeding their principal with appropriate information about the grievances of the population or the governor is himself an adamant ruler who feels he could manipulate the electorate or convince them to vote him again.

Decamping with deputy governor

Significantly, more people have continued to decamp from APC to the PDP starting with the deputy governor, Luka Barau Damishi to Senator Solomon Ewuga, Haruna Kigbu, Onje Giwado, former deputy governor, Hon. Agyo Mesa, Nawani Aboki, Hon. Ishak Ahmed Kana. Ewuga who is generally counted as the man who made Almakura governor in 2011 and many of those who have decamped are men who dictate the pace of politics in the state.

Ewuga was able to help Almakura through his large sway over his fellow Eggons who constitute the majority tribe in the state.

Now he has left the governor’s side to rejoin the PDP after claims that the governor has reneged on an unwritten agreement to serve only one term and pass over the baton to Ewuga.

However, the PDP can hardly rejoice over the difficulties of the governor as its own house is hardly united.

The PDP men are divided over the choice of a candidate for the 2015 election with many of them aiming to seize the foibles of the APC administration.

Meanwhile, all is not totally lost for Almakura. If eventually an Eggon candidate emerges for the 2015 governorship election, there is the perception that another dominant tribe, the Alagos may not throw their support because of the conflicts that have stalled cordiality between the two tribes especially since 2011.
Ewuga, an Eggon was blamed by the Alagos of leading the campaign for Almakura that helped to remove Doma, an Alago man as governor.

Understandably, today the Alagos are not in very good terms with the Almakura administration as majority of their leaders are in the PDP.

Ironically it is this convergence of the two major ethnic groups in opposition to Almakura that is now giving the governor and his associate some measure of hope.

Their hope is built on the fact that neither of the two major tribes, Eggons and Alagos would yield the platform for the other to slug it out against Almakura.

That is despite the fact that the Alagos may not have any formidable candidate given the claim that the former governor, Doma may have settled for the Senate in 2015.

The other minority tribes, notably, the Tivs and the Magilis who have also been hit by the crises under the last four years would hardly be a sucour for Almakura. Till recently, the larger percentage of the Tiv communities in Nasarawa lived in exile and had cried out on several occasions of neglect.

Furthermore, the alignment of Senator Abdullahi Adamu, a former governor of the state with Governor Almakura is perceived by many people in the state as a poisoned chalice as it would do the incumbent governor really no good.

The state chairman of PDP Mr. Yunana Illiya while describing the exit of Abdullahi Adamu from the PDP said “his decampment was a welcome development that the party had to organize a celebration dinner because his exit was the best that could ever happen to the party in the state”.

One cause for cheer, though is the increasing brinkmanship between the deputy governor, Damshi and Almakura.

Yesterday, the deputy governor formally indicated his readiness to contest the 2015 governorship election on the platform of the PDP putting the disharmony between him and Almakura to the point of no return.