Opinion
“Islamization Agenda Started Over 200 Yeats Ago –
BY Mike Arnold
The Islamization of Nigeria Is Not a Theory. It’s a blueprint. Tinubu Isn’t Hiding It Anymore
By Mike Arnold
The Nigerian government is spending millions on lobbyists and PR firms in Washington and London. They’ve hired some of the best spin doctors money can buy. And I’ll give them this: they can muddy the waters about the terrorist massacres. They can repackage government failures as “security challenges.””” They can trot out ambassadors with talking points about “farmer-herder conflict” and “climate-driven migration.”
But there is one thing they can not hide: the historic, aggressive, and ongoing effort to fully Islamize Nigeria by any means necessary.
Not the violence. Not the body count. The structure. The laws. The Constitution. The courts. The schools. The appointments. The architecture of a 220-year conquest that is not winding down but accelerating—right now, in broad daylight, with receipts.
All the talk of a “secular democracy” is an elaborate masquerade to keep Nigeria in the good graces of the West. It is a fraud. The evidence is so overwhelming that no amount of lobbying can bury it.
I’ve made sixteen trips to Nigeria since 2010, multiple under Level 4 “Do Not Travel” warnings. I’ve spent time with children who watched their parents slaughtered for being Christian. I run three schools in displacement camps that the Nigerian government says don’t exist. I’ve sat across the table from two former Nigerian presidents. I carry protection now—even at my home in Texas—because of what I’ve uncovered.
So when I tell you the Islamization of Nigeria is not a conspiracy theory, not an exaggeration, and not Islam phobia—I’m telling you what I’ve spent fifteen years documenting with my own eyes, my own hands, and my own money. And every piece of it is on the record.
Let me show you.
This Didn’t Start Yesterday
People hear “Islamization of Nigeria” and think it’s a recent problem. It isn’t. It’s a 220-year project, and the blueprint has never changed.
In 1804, a Fulani scholar named Usman Dan Fodio launched a violent jihad across what is now Northern Nigeria. Historical records indicate as many as 250,000 died. He established the Sokoto Caliphate—an Islamic empire that swallowed dozens of ethnic groups and governed by Sharia. It was the largest state in Africa south of the Sahara.
When the British arrived, they didn’t dismantle it. They preserved it. Under “indirect rule,” they empowered the emirs, propped up the Islamic aristocracy, and suppressed the South. When they left in 1960, they handed the keys to the heirs of the caliphate.
On independence Day, the man holding those keys was Ahmadu Bello—the Sardauna of Sokoto, direct descendant of dan Fodio, Premier of Northern Nigeria. His vision was explicit. He founded Jama’atu Nasril Islam—the Society for the Victory of Islam—in 1962. He launched conversion campaigns across the North that converted more than 100,000 people in just two provinces. His stated goal: Nigeria as “an estate of our great-grandfather, Uthman dan Fodio.”
He was assassinated in the 1966 coup. But the project didn’t die with him.
When the Christian South tried to leave—when the Igbo people declared the Republic of Biafra in 1967—the Muslim-dominated North crushed them. Britain backed the North. Not for values. For oil. BP was extracting billions annually. The blockade starved one to three million people to death—mostly women and children. The message was clear: resistance will be annihilated.
After the war, the military government seized Christian missionary schools across the country. Schools that missionaries had built, funded, and operated since the 1840s—the backbone of education in Nigeria. Overnight, they were nationalized. In some Northern states, the names were changed to erase their Christian origins. St. John’s College became Rimi College. Queen of Apostles became Queen Amina College. The curricula were gutted. The moral foundations that had produced generations of Nigerian leaders were replaced with state-controlled content.
In 1986, military dictator Ibrahim Babangida secretly enrolled Nigeria as a full member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation—the 57-nation body that calls itself “the collective voice of the Muslim world.” He did it without consulting his cabinet. His own deputy—Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe, a Christian—said publicly that it was never discussed at the Supreme Military Council. Ukiwe was fired. In 2012, Nigeria’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs described Nigeria at an OIC meeting in Saudi Arabia as “an Islamic state with the largest Christian population.” The backlash was fierce. The minister backpedalled. But Nigeria remains a full member of the OIC to this day.
And then there’s the constitution itself—the document that supposedly guarantees Nigeria’s “secular” character. The 1999 Constitution mentions Sharia 73 times. It mentions Islam 28 times. It mentions Muslims 10 times. It mentions Christianity zero times. The Bible? Zero. Not once. It establishes a Sharia Court of Appeal as a federal institution. It provides for Grand Khadi appointments. It embeds Islamic law into the legal architecture of a nation that calls itself secular.
Structural gerrymandering goes deeper. Nigeria’s 36 states were drawn to guarantee a permanent Muslim majority in the federal system. The North has 19 states, the South 17. Senate seats, revenue allocation, and federal appointments—all flow from a map designed to ensure that the heirs of the caliphate never lose control of the centre, regardless of what happens at the ballot box.
When Babangida built Aso Rock—the presidential villa—in 1991, he included mosques. No chapel. No church. Nothing for the Christians who make up roughly half the country. It wasn’t until President Obasanjo, a Christian, took office in 1999 and noticed the imbalance that a chapel was finally built in 2000—nine years after the villa opened. Today, under Tinubu’s Muslim-Muslim administration, reports indicate that the chapel has been shut while the mosques continue to operate.
In 1999, twelve Northern states immediately implemented full criminal Sharia law. Amputation. Flogging. Stoning. Not in some distant past. In the lifetime of every adult Nigerian alive today.
This is the through-line. 1804 to 2026. It has never stopped.
What’s Happening Right Now
After banning the teaching of Nigerian history in public schools for more than fifteen years—removed from the curriculum in 2009, with multiple failed attempts to restore it—the Tinubu administration finally mandated that Nigerian History be made compulsory from primary through junior secondary, effective 2025.
That sounds good. Until you see who Tinubu put in charge.
In December 2024, he appointed Professor Salisu Shehu as Executive Secretary of NERDC—the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council. The man who controls what every child in Nigeria learns.
Shehu’s life’s work is something called “The Islamization of Knowledge.””” That’s not my phrase. It’s his. He wrote the book—literally. Islamization of Knowledge: Conceptual Background, Vision and Tasks, published in 1998. He served as National Coordinator of the International Institute of Islamic Thought in Nigeria. He was Deputy Secretary-General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs. In 2024, he was turbaned “Khadimul Qur’an”—Servant of the Quran—for promoting Islamic knowledge.
This is the man now designing the curriculum for 50 million Nigerian school children.
And the curriculum content? Hidden behind a paid NERDC membership wall. Nobody outside the system can read what children will be taught. Meanwhile, coordinated praise from regime-friendly influencers celebrates a curriculum they haven’t seen.
After fifteen years of erasing history from the classroom, Nigeria’s children will now learn their history—as written by the man whose career mission is the Islamization of Knowledge. Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the curriculum controls the nation.
The Tinubu Record
Here’s what Tinubu has done since taking office in May 2023. Not speeches. Actions.
He ran on a Muslim-Muslim ticket—the first in Nigeria’s history. He appointed a Sharia advocate to redesign the national curriculum. He issued $500 million in Sukuk bonds—Islamic financial instruments that channel public funds through Sharia-compliant structures. He left Sharia courts and Hisbah morality police operating with full impunity across twelve Northern states, enforcing Islamic law on Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
His National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, armed Miyetti Allah—the Fulani herders’ association—with AK-47s under the Terrorism Prevention Act The government confirmed it. At the same time, Christian community defenders had their weapons confiscated. Hunters who protected their villages were left outgunned. In July 2025, more than 70 vigilantes were killed in a single ambush in Plateau State—because the government took their weapons while arming the other side.
He transferred Nnamdi Kanu—convicted on charges an Enugu court had already nullified—to a prison in Sokoto. The seat of the Caliphate. Eight hundred kilometres from his lawyers and family. His crime? Words. Not violence. Words.
Meanwhile, Isa Pantami—communications minister under Tinubu’s predecessor—is on tape praising Osama bin Laden, celebrating the killing of unbelievers, and Taliban victory. He kept his cabinet position. Nobody touched him.
Praise jihad and you keep your job. Advocate for your people with words, and you die in the Caliphate’s backyard.
And last month? Tinubu flew to Ankara to sign a military cooperation protocol with Erdogan. Turkish Special Forces will now train Nigerian soldiers. Turkish satellites will share intelligence. And Erdogan’s Maarif Foundation—a network of Islamic schools that scholars describe as having “a more pronounced Islamic character” – than the schools they replaced—will expand its educational footprint in Nigeria
Tinubu isn’t breaking the pattern. He’s accelerating it.
The Sultan’s Silence—and His Southern Advance
In January 2025, the Sultan of Sokoto—Sa’ad Abubakar III, 19th hereditary successor to dan Fodio—expanded Sharia arbitration panels into Southern states. Ekiti. Oyo. Yoruba Heartland. States that were never part of the caliphate. Not criminal Sharia. Not yet. Arbitration panels. Soft entry. The camel’s nose.
The Sultan presides over 108 million Muslims and 19 emirs. He could issue a fatwa against the violence tomorrow. He did it once—in 2015, and his fatwa against Boko Haram is reported to have reduced their recruitment by 40 percent. He has the authority. He has the platform. He has the reach.
He hasn’t done it. His silence is policy.
His 2025 message to the faithful: “The ummah must unite to confront challenges facing the Muslim world.” Not Nigeria. Not peace. Not coexistence. The Muslim world.
The Justice System They Built
A girl named Deborah Samuel was stoned to death and burned alive for thanking Jesus on WhatsApp. Her killers were defended by a team of 34 devout Muslim volunteer lawyers who rallied to their cause. They were acquitted—prosecution lawyers who failed to appear. In response to the arrests, Muslim mobs attacked and looted three churches.
A Christian healthcare worker named Rhoda Jatau spent 19 months in prison for condemning that murder.
A 74-year-old pastor’s wife named Bridget Agbahime was beaten to death by a mob of more than 500 for asking a man to move his ablution water from her shop door. All five suspects were discharged in five months. The magistrate’s ruling: “No case to answer. All suspects are innocent.”
A young musician named Yahaya Sharif-Aminu has been in prison more than five years for sharing song lyrics on WhatsApp. His sentence: death by hanging. The Kano state government’s lawyer said publicly: “If the Supreme Court upholds the lower court’s decision, we will execute him publicly.”
Nigeria is one of only seven countries on earth with a blasphemy law carrying the death penalty. The European Parliament, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and the ECOWAS Court have all demanded Nigeria repeal these laws. Nigeria has not complied with any of them.
Meanwhile, captured jihadists get vocational training, cash payments, and startup equipment through Operation Safe Corridor. Nearly a thousand “repentant Boko Haram members” graduated in 2025 alone. Their victims—millions in displacement camps—have their camps bulldozed and are told to go home. To villages still controlled by the killers.
Kill a Christian for “blasphemy” and walk free. Defend a murdered Christian’s memory and go to prison. This is not a broken system. It’s working exactly as designed.
The Man Who Wants You to Look Away
After Trump’s Christmas Day strike on ISIS targets in Sokoto, a man named Sheikh Ahmad Gumi stepped to the microphone.
Gumi is the most influential Islamic cleric in Northern Nigeria. Son of the man critics called “the Ayatollah of Nigeria.” Preaches at the Sultan Bello Mosque in Kaduna. In 2021, he walked into forest camps to meet more than 600 armed bandits. He distributed Islamic books to them. He gave them medical treatment. He demanded the government give them amnesty and money. He said publicly—on the record—that “kidnapping children from school is a lesser evil.”
He’s also the man who exchanged emails with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab before the young Nigerian tried to blow up 289 people on a Christmas Day flight to Detroit in 2009. U.S. intelligence found the correspondence. Saudi Arabia arrested Gumi and held him for more than six months. The Nigerian government lobbied for his release.
In May 2025, Saudi Arabia banned him from entering the country, immediately deporting him upon arrival. Too radical for Saudi Arabia—the same Saudi Arabia that the United States has designated a Country of Particular Concern.
And after the Christmas strike? Gumi demanded Nigeria “halt all military cooperation with the United States” and pivot to “neutral countries”—China, Turkey, and Pakistan.
Those are not neutral countries. Turkey just signed a military cooperation protocol with Tinubu. Pakistan already has fighter jets in the Nigerian Air Force—co-developed with China. Iran has built a three-million-strong proxy movement in Northern Nigeria. When Gumi says “pivot,” he’s describing what’s already underway.
The Numbers
Ninety per cent of all Christians killed for their faith on earth are killed in Nigeria. More than 10,200 were killed by armed groups in just the first two years of Tinubu’s administration, according to Amnesty International. 725 villages under bandit control in Zamfara. All 23 local government areas of Benue State attacked. Boko Haram and ISWAP recruitment videos indicate that Nigeria is “phase one” of a worldwide caliphate revival—with $40 billion a year in oil and $700 billion in strategic minerals to finance it.
Former AFRICOM Commander General Michael Langley called the region anchored by Northern Nigeria “the of global terrorism.”
The Nigerian government’s official position stated in September 2025: “There is no religious persecution in Nigeria.”
Why I’m Telling You This
The lobbyists can spin the violence. They can reframe massacres as “community disputes.” They can buy op-eds and plant friendly stories.
But they can not rewrite the constitution that mentions Sharia, Islam, and the Quran more than 100 times and Christianity zero. They can not un-seize the missionary schools. They can not un-join the OIC. They can not erase the conversion campaigns or the caliphate or the curriculum czar whose life’s work is the Islamization of Knowledge. They can not explain away a presidential villa built with mosques and no chapel. They can not make Ahmadu Bello’s vision disappear or pretend that twelve states don’t enforce criminal Sharia in a “secular democracy.”
The masquerade is over. The record is clear. And the full picture—how this 220-year conquest machine works, who built it, who feeds it, and what it will take to stop it—is coming. Soon.
EarthShaker
By Celphas Iyorhen
Rotimi Amaechi made a sarcastic remark last week, suggesting that asking Nasir El-Rufai to produce his late parents’ bodies as bail surety would not have been entirely out of place. His political ally meant it as a complaint for excessive bail conditions. The rest of Nigeria should take it as a dark and fitting metaphor, because the man now crying foul behind courtroom walls is the same man who spent two decades making others weep at the ruins of their homes, the graves of their kings, and the unmarked holes where their missing loved ones vanished without trace.
Let us be precise about who Nasir El-Rufai is.
As FCT Minister under Obasanjo, El-Rufai earned the nickname “Mai Rusau,” meaning the demolisher, after presiding over one of the most brutal forced eviction campaigns in Nigerian urban history, displacing nearly one million Abuja residents between 2003 and 2007. When asked about it, he said he had “no apology.” That unapologetic arrogance was not a phase. It was a governing philosophy he carried everywhere he went.
A 2008 Senate Committee found that El-Rufai, as FCT Minister, had violated multiple court orders in demolishing properties in Abuja.
Among the casualties of Elrufai draconian rules was Gbagyi Villa, where 3,500 homes, 40 churches, and 16 schools were flattened in defiance of a court injunction, with eight people reportedly killed in a demolition exercise conducted 72 hours before his tenure ended. The Durbar Hotel was similarly bulldozed while litigation was still active in court. A Kaduna High Court later ruled that demolition illegal. The damage, as always with El-Rufai, was already done before justice could catch up.
In 2017, an Abuja High Court ordered his government to pay Audu Maikori, founder of Chocolate City, N40 million in damages for unlawful arrest and detention. El-Rufai refused. The Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment in 2020 and reduced the award to N10.5 million. El-Rufai refused again and pushed the matter to the Supreme Court, where it sits till today. This is the same man who now hopes on courts for protection.
The blood on his hands is not a figure of speech. In December 2015, hundreds of Shiite members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria were killed across three days in Zaria and reportedly buried in shallow graves at Mando, Kaduna, all under El-Rufai’s watch as governor. Charges were then filed against their imprisoned leader Sheikh El-Zakzaky even after three of his sons had already been killed in that same crackdown. Their leader spent years in detention. El-Rufai spent those same years governing freely.
Then there is the Agom Adara. In October 2018, the paramount ruler of the Adara people, HRH Dr. Maiwada Raphael Galadima, attended a government meeting in Kaduna and never returned home. His convoy was attacked on the way back. He was kidnapped and murdered despite a ransom payment. In the aftermath, El-Rufai ordered the arrest of nine Adara elders including traditional village heads, who were locked up for over 143 days without bail and without charge. The Attorney-General eventually confirmed there was no case against them. He destroyed their lives because he could.
There is also Abubakar Idris, known as Dadiyata, a lecturer and activist who was abducted from his Kaduna home on August 2, 2019. He has not been seen since. August 2026 will mark seven years of enforced disappearance. No arrest. No explanation. Just the silence that follows when a government decides a man must simply cease to exist.
Dr. Obadiah Mailafia, former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank and a fearless voice against the killing of Christians in southern Kaduna, was repeatedly summoned by the DSS with the complicity of governor Nasir El-Rufai, after he publicly alleged that a sitting northern governor was sponsoring terrorism. He cried openly that his life was in danger. He died in September 2021, in a detention’s hospital under the control of enemies. The circumstances of his death were never properly investigated.
As FCT Minister, El-Rufai also revoked the Abuja land of former Head of State General Yakubu Gowon, the man who held Nigeria together through civil war, a detail later confirmed by Bishop Kukah. A Christian elder statesman who bled for this country was treated like a squatter on his own property.
El-Rufai left Kaduna in May 2023 having decimated over 100 communities in Southern Kaduna, demolished thousands of homes, and stripped tens of thousands of workers of their livelihoods without due process, while journalists and activists fled into internal exile.
So no, the bail conditions are not excessive. They are a gentle introduction to accountability for a man who spent twenty years treating accountability as a burden meant for lesser people. The N100 million surety is the price of one demolished church. The court demanding proof that he will not flee is a small insult compared to every family he made flee their homes at gunpoint and at gunpoint alone.
Amaechi thinks he was joking. He was not. El-Rufai deserves every condition that court placed on him and more. The dead he left behind deserve that much company in this conversation.
Celphas Iyorhen
A Concerned Citizen from the Middle-Belt.
By Mohammed Bello Doka
Somewhere in a detention cell, Nasir El-Rufai must be smiling because the man who put him there—the once all-powerful National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu—has just been dumped, neutered, and reduced to an international errand boy. It is the sweetest revenge, served slowly and silently, by the very system Ribadu helped to build.
Robert Greene, in The 48 Laws of Power, warned that “the danger is long, the blow is sudden.” In Ribadu’s case, the blow came from a man he once called a friend, and it landed with the precision of a master strategist.
The story of El-Rufai and Ribadu is not merely a political feud; it is a Shakespearean tragedy of ambition, betrayal, and the brutal arithmetic of power in Nigeria. The two men were once bosom friends, climbing the greasy pole together, sharing confidences and strategies. But power, as Lord Acton famously observed, corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. When Ribadu began to harbour ambitions for the 2031 presidency, he reportedly saw El-Rufai as a threat to be eliminated. He not only abandoned the man who stood by him but, according to the former governor, set out to destroy him using the entire machinery of the state.
El-Rufai has repeatedly accused Ribadu of directing security operatives to arrest political opponents without proper investigation, interfering in judicial processes, and weaponising the Department of State Services (DSS), the Police, and the EFCC to “tame” him. In a devastating interview on Arise Television in February 2026, he declared that he was “ashamed” of their past friendship, leveling a public indictment that echoed far beyond the television screen.
The most dangerous accusation came when El-Rufai, in a now-infamous interview on Arise Television’s Prime Time programme, claimed that “someone wiretapped” Ribadu’s phone, allowing him to listen to a conversation in which the NSA purportedly gave the order for his arrest. For a man charged with the nation’s most sensitive security apparatus to be caught in such a compromising position was not only unprofessional; it was catastrophic. The state responded with force. The Department of State Services (DSS) filed criminal charges against El-Rufai, accusing him of unlawfully intercepting the NSA’s phone communications. But the damage was done. The perception of a compromised NSA, one who cannot even secure his own communications, stuck like a poisonous dart.
Yet El-Rufai did not stop there. In a letter dated January 30, 2026, he formally wrote to Ribadu demanding an explanation for why the Office of the NSA (ONSA) allegedly imported approximately 10 kilograms of thallium sulphate—an odourless, colourless, and extremely hazardous toxic chemical—from a supplier in Poland. Ribadu, in an attempt to deflect the blow, referred the allegation to the DSS for investigation and challenged El-Rufai to submit evidence. But the accusation of importing “dangerous toxic chemicals” into the country is not the kind of stain that easily washes off. The very suggestion that the NSA has access to such substances has irrevocably tarnished his reputation.
The charade reached its most absurd and tragic moment on March 29, 2026. Ribadu, who had allegedly orchestrated El-Rufai’s persecution, attended the funeral prayer of El-Rufai’s mother, Hajiya Umma El-Rufai, at the National Mosque in Abuja. Thousands of mourners, including President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and other top government officials, watched as the nation’s security chief, dripping with crocodile tears, paid tribute to a woman he claimed to have fond memories of. For the shrewd observer, it was not a moment of peace; it was the chilling silence before the storm. As Niccolò Machiavelli wrote, “Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.” Ribadu may have seen this as reconciliation; El-Rufai likely saw it as a confirmation of his enemy’s hubris.
By the time the French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) published its explosive report on February 23, 2026, claiming that Ribadu orchestrated a multimillion-dollar helicopter ransom payment to Boko Haram, the NSA’s reputation was already in ruins. The so-called “French Dagger” was not the killing blow; it was merely the alibi, the final piece of paper that gave Tinubu the excuse he needed to act. The newly created position of the Special Adviser on Homeland Security, awarded to a Yoruba kinsman of the President, was the executioner’s blade. It stripped Ribadu of his domestic security portfolio, leaving him with only the hollow title of NSA and the demeaning task of handling international liaison. As Baltasar Gracián wrote in The Art of Worldly Wisdom, “Never depend on the arms of others.” Ribadu had no political base, no governors, no party. He was a man of power only because Tinubu lent it to him, and when the wind changed, the power was taken back.
Ribadu, who was once the most powerful Northerner in the Villa, has been reduced to the same ghostly status as Vice President Kashim Shettima—visible in photographs but absent in influence. The man who used the security apparatus to fight his northern rivals has now been fought by the very same machine. El-Rufai sits in a detention cell, not because of Ribadu’s power, but because he dared to speak the truth. And yet, in a bitter twist of irony, Ribadu is the one who has been politically executed. The man who tried to destroy his friend has been destroyed by the very system he helped entrench. As Napoleon Bonaparte once noted, “He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.” Ribadu feared El-Rufais ambition and tried to crush it, but in doing so, he exposed his own fatal weakness. The wiretap, the poison gas, the ransom payments—whether true or false, these allegations have defined his legacy.
The new Homeland Security Adviser, Retired Major General Famadewa, now controls internal security coordination, intelligence fusion on domestic threats, and hostage negotiation protocols. Ribadu has been handed the impossible task of defending his legacy from a position of complete irrelevance. He will travel, attend meetings, and smile for the cameras. But the real power has departed. The chickens have finally come home to roost.
El-Rufai, for all his troubles, has achieved a monumental feat. He has not only destroyed the reputation of his once-friend but has also forced Tinubu to act, exposing the hollow core of the administration’s much-vaunted security architecture. The French dagger was just the delivery boy. The real knockout punch was thrown by a man who knew Ribadu better than anyone else—and who used that knowledge to bring him down.
Congratulations, Nuhu Ribadu. You are now officially dumped. And in that cell, believe it or not, Nasir El-Rufai is laughing.
As the ancient warrior-philosopher Sun Tzu wrote, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” El-Rufai did not need to fire a single shot. He simply told the truth, and the truth—no matter how inconvenient—had the power to destroy an empire. May this serve as a lesson to those who entrench dictatorships: you will always be its first victim.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via bellodoka82@gmail.com
By Iorliam Shija
The political dynamics ahead of the 2027 governorship election in Benue State are increasingly revealing the importance of internal cohesion within the various Tiv geopolitical blocs.
The incumbent governor, Rev Fr Dr Hyacinth Iormem Alia, comes from the Jechira bloc. Jechira is a major political bloc comprising two local governments of Vandeikya and Konshisha.
Within Vandeikya, the major components are Kunav, itself divided into Kyan and Tiev. Konshisha, on the other hand, is largely divided into Shangev-Tiev and Gaav. Traditionally, the cohesion of these components has been critical in delivering bloc votes during governorship contests.
However, the current political reality suggests a fragmentation of Jechira’s voting strength. While Governor Alia, from Mbadede Council Ward in Vandeikya of Kyan , seeks re-election on the platform of All Progressives Congress, APC, other prominent sons of the bloc are emerging on different political platforms.
Prof. Terhemba Shija from Mbaduku, Tiev in Vandeikya, is poised to emerge as the governorship candidate of the National Democratic Congress, NDC. In Konshisha, Dr. Mathias Ibyuan from Shangev-Tiev is expected to secure the ticket of the Labour Party, while Rt. Hon. Iorwase Hembe from Gaav is projected to fly the flag of the African Democratic Congress, ADC.
This multiplicity of candidates from the same geopolitical bloc has inevitably weakened Governor Alia’s quest for consolidated Jechira bloc votes. Instead of a united front, the bloc appears headed for political dispersion across party lines.
In contrast, the People’s Democratic Party, PDP appears to have managed the politics of balancing and inclusion more strategically within the Kwande bloc, made up of Kwande and Ushongo local government areas.
Within Kwande, which consists broadly of Ichongo, Turan and Ikyurav-Ya, the PDP allocated the senatorial slot to Hon. Thomas Tyolumun Unongo of Turan . In Ipusu comprising Nanev, Usar, and Shangev-Ya , the party ceded the House of Representatives position to Hon. Moses Mkeenem of Nanev.
To consolidate this balancing arrangement, the PDP gubernatorial ticket went to Chief Mike Kaase Aondoakaa from Ushongo.
The implication is politically significant which is while Jechira enters the contest divided among multiple parties and ambitions, the PDP is attempting to build a coalition anchored on cohesion, inclusiveness and strategic distribution of political opportunities within the Kwande bloc.
As the governorship race intensifies, the battle for bloc votes may ultimately depend not only on popularity, but on how effectively each political camp manages internal unity, elite consensus and regional balancing.
Shija, a former Senior Special Assistant to Gov. Ortom on Archives writes from Abuja
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