Bomba Dauda
The diatribe against Senator Danjuma Laah, representing Southern Kaduna district, by Ben Bako is unsubstantiated and unhinged. It is by all sane reasoning preemptive, though a wild-goose-chase. What Ben did was, he launched a smear campaign; aimed at pulling Laah into contentious political murky waters to taint his hard earned popularity and to pitch him against the party establishment and his hoard of followers in Southern Kaduna.
According to Ben, “let nobody and I repeat, let nobody ever threaten the survival of PDP in Southern Kaduna simply because he is HURT/OFFENDED…Senator Laah inclusive.” He went further to say, “Following a call by some Southern Kaduna youth leaders, threatening to work against the PDP in Kaduna State if Senator Danjuma Laah continues to get hurt.” Taking the former into context, Ben sounds more of a bogeyman than a lover of peace, more hawkish than a peace-broker; he is drumming the drum of war while peace is been talked about in PDP. What a contradiction! If I may ask, on what latitude is Ben talking with so much arrogance and whose authority is he sending the warning threats? Whose bidding is Ben doing?
If democracy gives room for opinion and exercise of rights, why then is Ben threatening people for what they say? He shouldn’t have since they didn’t trampled on anyone’s right or hurt any particular person with their statement?
Secondly, why would Laah be accountable for what any of his followers says? Ben vividly captured where the youths said they’ll work against the party if Laah continues to get hurt. Again, did the youths say Laah urged them to work against the party or they aired their personal opinion? Ben deliberately chose to chase the shadow and let the substance (he took on “their” target head-on), this is the game plan. This is the hatchet man’s way of fighting a proxy war. However, in rational thinking, it doesn’t sink well for a politician to be held accountable for what his supporters say as long as they don’t reference him.
If the allegation by Ben was fact-based and not what he purported to be series of figments that are standing on fragile ground, Bako would have being bold, mustered courage, stated the obvious and made reference or ascribed his claims to specific source or sources and not be making wild and empty allegations that has no footing. He should have, since he threw every iota of moral respect into the thin air and defamed the character of Laah in his calumnious campaign.
For Ben to include Laah in his cooked-up list of those threatening the survival of PDP in Southern Kaduna is disrespectful. Laah is PDP, PDP is Laah – they are intertwined. How can Laah be such a Trojan-horse to an institution that he has invested his resources, energy and time to nurture and sustain? Laah has helped galvanized PDP in Southern Kaduna since joining the political train. Accept reality.
The dirty man’s job carried out by Ben is akin to an artisan that brags about craftsmanship of an edifice while the foundation crumbles. He has tinkered at the edge by papering a cracked wall; he needs to be more practical and factual to make his argument concrete. Putting other previous malicious campaign against Laah under the shaft of light, instead of them to make him unpopular, dramatically, they added a silver lining to his political image. The more character assassins try to malign Laah politically, they make him popular instead. Ben should have known that, Laah have faced avalanche of vicious propaganda and came out unscathed, this one –too, is a figment which has already attracted sympathy to him.
The buzz surrounding the 2023 Senatorial seat in Southern Kaduna has never had such an upbeat. If the information emanating from the rumour mill is anything to place a quid on, 2023 race will be tighter than 2019, not only in-terms of the number of aspirants that’ll future in the race but, in-terms of their pedigree and persona.
Ben need to concentrate on the effective marketing of his candidate than using a bizarre and outdated style to destroy Laah. Using slur campaign to malign Laah is morally repugnant and unacceptable.
When Ben compared situations and used Isaiah Balat, Charlse Ali Madaki, Ibrahim Yakowa and others to coast home his argument, I realized he hasn’t come face-to-face with the reality that, two situations can never be the same and no two situations have the same dynamic. General thinking and political events goes in consonance with changing times and prevailing realities and not speculation. What was morally justifiable 10 years ago may be morally impermissible today. Southern Kaduna and politics in general has transited from one level to another, so, the thinking of politicians of yesterday can’t be the same with those of today because of how societies and human thinking have evolved over years.
What Ben hasn’t also come to term with is the current political mobility. Politics has gone scientific where ideas are requisite and not the old fashioned style where mudslinging and backstabbing were dominant. It is most important that Ben should scramble for a viable way out of the woods of politics. Politicians in Ben’s mold are still languishing in the past where hangmen, the hearse and the morgue men were major tools.
For his assimilation, no amount of mudslinging will dwarf Laah’s political height. I urge Ben to seldom rise above petty mudslinging and come clean.
To PDP in Kaduna State, the party must dissociate itself from Ben’s name-calling. With the inauguration of the “Repositioning Committee,” and “Re-conciliatory Committee” it shows that PDP in the state want to prop up its fractious polity and forge ahead as a family and for Ben to stir the hornet’s-nest and attempt to sabotage the optimism that trails the inauguration of the committees, he must be on a dangerous mission.
