The anticipated defection of Zamfara State Governor, Dauda Lawal Dare, is currently impacting calculations for the 2027 presidential election in the North West Zone. The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) believes that getting Zamfara into the ‘Broom’ corner would seal the zone for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s re-election, LEO SOBECHI writes.

Governor Dauda Lawal of Zamfara State could be rightly described as an accidental politician. On a visit to Gusau last year, many residents recounted how the governor came into the governance of the state with a reform mindset.
  
It was gathered that tired by the retrogressive trajectory of socio-political development in the well-endowed state, young people went to plead with the former banker to come and change the narrative.
 
But just as Lawal joined the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to confront the incumbent Governor Bello Matawalle of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the unrelenting insecurity exacerbated by banditry, which propelled Matawalle’s defection from PDP to APC, continued.

It would be recalled that towards the second term run of former President Muhammadu Buhari, influential APC leaders convinced Matawalle, who is now the Minister of State, Defence, to join the ruling the party so that the full weight of the federal might could be brought to bear on tackling the security menace. Unwittingly, the former governor was lured into APC ostensibly for the party to get back from PDP what it lost at the Supreme Court.
  
Ruling on the pre-election disputation between PDP and APC after the 2019 governorship poll in Zamfara State, the apex court held that the ruling party contravened APC Constitution by organising a controversial primary and in flagrant breach of interlocutory order of a court of competent jurisdiction.
 
It was an election in which the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) under Prof. Mahmood Yakubu demonstrated an uncharacteristic impartiality and insistence on doing the right things by the electoral guidelines. INEC had failed to upload the names of APC candidates from Zamfara and Rivers State for the election on the grounds that the party did not hold straw polls in the two states.
  
However, barely two days to the election, the Federal High Court ordered the commission to insert APC on the ballot. But sustaining the pre-election matter, the Zamfara State chapter of PDP litigated further in an appeal at the Supreme Court, Nigeria’s court of last instance.
  
On Friday, May 24, 2019, the gavel sounded at the apex court in a judgment that nullified the electoral triumph of all APC candidates in the 36 positions, including National Assembly, Governorship and State Assembly elections. While ordering INEC to present Certificates of Return to the first runners-up in the elections, that is, PDP, the court noted that APC did not conduct valid primaries in the state and therefore, could not field candidates for the general election.
 
But despite that electoral windfall, Zamfara State PDP grieved to no end when Bello Muhammad (Matawalle) decided to join his former principal, Sani Yerima, and Abdullaziz Yari, whose candidates, including Alhaji Mukhtar Idris and other winners were displaced by the Supreme Court, in APC.

Repeat Of History
Shortly after the Rammadan, history will repeat itself in Gusau, when Governor Lawal is expected to toe the same path that led Matawalle to the ruling party. But just like his coming into politics, Lawal’s odyssey into APC is also accidental and circumstantially enforced.
  
With April deadline for political parties to commence their candidate nomination processes for the revised 2027 general election timetable fast approaching, Lawal saw that staying back on the imperiled platform of PDP could jeopardise his second term aspiration and decided to settle for a lesser evil.
  
The odds are no doubt stacked against him in the coalition opposition platform of African Democratic Congress (ADC), where Alhaji Atiku Abubakar’s core-loyalist, Mahdi Shehu, seems to be calling the shots. Contrary to the pattern in other PDP states where gubernatorial standard bearers were custodians of campaign funds and logistics, Shehu, instead of Lawal, was preferred by the vice president.
  
In the course of consulting widely before settling for an alternative platform, Lawal’s supporters pleaded with him to shun ADC for many reasons, but specifically for the obvious reason that his second term ticket cannot be guaranteed in the party. It should be noted that as a former banker, Lawal has high-heeled friends across the major political parties.
  
For instance, at a time when the pressure was mounting on him to shift allegiance from PDP, while former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who was treated to a gala night, was leaving the Zamfara State Government House, former Senate Chief Whip, Senator Orji Uzo Kalu, was coming in to commission some projects.
 
In his characteristic obtrusive fashion, the former Abia State governor, Kalu, advised Lawal to play political harlotry if he insists on remaining in PDP by supporting President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Kalu disclosed that it was such an approach that helped him navigate his politics while in office as Abia State chief executive, stressing that while in PDP under Obasanjo’s leadership, he was cavorting Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the leader of opposition Action Congress (AC) and the progressives.
  
However, as the centre refused to hold for PDP, the Zamfara change-maker has decided to overrule Kalu’s strategy by joining APC, which presents as a lesser hazard than ADC.

Under the power sharing arrangement being worked out between Governor Lawal’s camp and the Yari/Matawalle home team, the new entrants would reserve 40 per cent elective positions in the party while the Lion share goes to the Yari/Matawalle corner.
  
Checks by The Guardian revealed that Governor Lawal’s decision to concede the greater stakeholding of 60 per cent to Yari/Matawalle came as a balancing act to guarantee him (the governor) an automatic second term ticket, which ADC could not endorse. Further, the unequal parity was worked out as clever way to avoid leaving the incoming party leader at the mercy of direct mode of governorship primary, which would have automatically left the newcomer’s aspiration in the balance of probability.
  
What is more, despite his popularity among the potent demographic voting population in the state, particularly women and youths, Governor Lawal is still perceived by the political elite as a neophyte, whose clout may not amount to much during the presidential showdown.
 
An insider told The Guardian that unlike in nearby Kano, where Governor Kabir Abba Yusuf got the lion stake holding of 60 to 40 with the aboriginal members, Abuja believes that leaders like Yari, Yerima and Matawalle are the ones to lead the charge in mobilising Zamfara voters against President Tinubu’s opponents in the presidential contest.  
  
The tricky mathematics of 40 to 60 per cent makes sense on paper, but the arrangement is bound to throw up old animosities when it comes to the nomination of candidates for the 24 state constituencies. In the event that Lawal’s camp succeeds in returning nine members, the almighty quorum of 16 could easily be procured by the old warhorses in the Yari/Matawalle camp.
  
And with one senator to his side against two on the other flank, in the event of any political blow out, Lawal could be forced to adopt the demeanour of a visitor to Zamfara APC, just as he would have to depend on the Progressive Governors’ Forum to assert his authority on the national turf.  
 
All the same, while the master-servant relationship would pander to his interest among the commissioners, the majority of potential adversaries in the state legislature is where the greater challenge lies in the emerging political alchemy in Zamfara.
Zonal Arithmetic

Whatever happens within Zamfara State APC may be of less interest to the Presidency. But the major focus is on how President Tinubu and the party fares in the scramble for presidential ballot next January.
 
So far, it is hard to hazard a guess as to how the rough times that the duo of former Kaduna State governor, Mallam Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai and the immediate past Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), is affecting the clout of ADC in the North West Zone
 
Although a lot depends on who flies the flag of the opposition coalition ADC, President Tinubu’s handlers believe that Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s polling numbers in Kebbi, Katsina and Sokoto presents some challenge for APC leaders to do more in the zone. That is where closing the ballot window in Zamfara becomes urgent.
  
While meeting with stakeholders at the Rescue Hall of Government House, Gusau, Lawal spoke on the political situation in the country, stressing that the obvious implication of the battle for the soul of PDP is that the former major opposition party may not likely present candidates for the 2027 common election.
  
Prominent among those that attended the meeting were the Chief of Staff, Government House, Mohammed Mouktar Lugga; Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Mohammad Abubakar Nakwada and PDP state chairman, Dr. Jamil Jibo Magayaki.

Some of the stakeholders enjoined the governor to continue consultations and buy time, while studying the allocation of 40 per cent of elective offices in APC. Others maintained that even if the Court of Appeal ruling favours the Kabiru Tanimu Turaki-led PDP, the timing for primary elections leaves no room for continued gambling.
 
Yet, even when the pointers are headed in the direction of APC, there are no indications that the ADC is serious about swaying the governor. The mood in Zamfara State APC is upbeat. Party faithful expressed belief that the party would produce the next governor of the state, even as many residents insisted that Zamfara would always flow with the tide of federal might.