But for the persistence of some desperate mischief makers who could be said to have become irreversibly convinced that the political fate of their principals can only blossom if they deflate the political invincibility and relevance of Senator Babba Kaita, one wouldn’t have bothered responding to the barrage of shabbily scripted updates, which were authored specifically for the purpose of distorting and misrepresenting the unfortunate, albeit clearly sponsored, events at a wedding in Mashi, where Senator Kaita went to honour a childhood friend. For this purpose, I am picking two opinions to make few clarifications for the benefit of Senator Kaita’s teeming friends and associates who might have been deceived by the lies spurn in them. Before then, let me explain my interest in the Mashi saga, if not to depoliticize my opinion, but at least to avoid confusing more the already confused authors of the two opinions I am about to review.
My name is Cham Faliya Sharon, a political analyst, social justice and good governance advocate. I am a long term associate of Senator Ahmed Babba Kaita whose political career has been on my radar since his days in CPC, all through to his days as a Member of the House of Representatives representing Kankia/Ingawa/Kusada, and up to his elevation into the upper chamber of the National Assembly as Senator representing Katsina North Senatorial zone. It is by providence I happened to be with Senator Kaita in Mashi on the fateful day. We came to Katsina together, and I was suppose to leave for Gombe on the fateful Saturday but as fate will have it, he advised we proceed to Mashi together, attend the wedding and proceed to Kazaure to attend the wedding of another associate. In summary, this is saying I am an eyewitness to the childish events that unfolded in Mashi, which are being opportunistically distorted to score cheap political points. I was therefore dumbfounded when I read two distorted reviews of the event, hence my decision to put the records straight.
The two unintelligently scripted opinions, one titled, “WHY DAURA ZONE SENATOR WAS STONED AND MANHANDLED BY ANGRY YOUTHS AT MASHI,” authored by one “Dr” Abdullahi Nuhu Kafinsoli and the other, a supposed “eyewitness” account of one Abbas Abu Sukuntuni published by Sahara Reporters titled “How Angry Youths, Constituents Booed, Chased Away Senator From Wedding In Katsina" are extremely poor works of fiction. The two shabbily identical opinions were the best definition of digital era idiocy. Whereas the rights of citizens to be as foolish as their mileages could allow is sacrosanct, one would expect both authors to respect public sensibilities and put enough effort to disguise their hatchet jobs by smartly avoiding the glaring connections between the two. This is necessary not only to get value for the money invested in the project, but to protect the reputations of the investor(s) whose daftness was highlighted by the publications more than Senator Kaita’s reputation was wounded by the event, if at all wounded.
Nothing could be sillier than the childish attempt to paint Senator Kaita as a non-performing politician or parliamentarian. Even a donkey in Katsina State will not pretend to not hearing the glowing tributes heaped daily on Senator Kaita whose commonest description across the state is “Senator without borders.” But to a dunderhead whose head is more a fashion accessory than a thinking tool, how could somebody who is generally and fondly described as a “Senator without borders” all of a sudden turn into the unpopular politician painted in the two sponsored opinions? Particularly “Dr” Kafinsoli averred that “the protest was a demonstration of poor representation and the Senator's ugly behaviour torwards the people that installed him.”
I don’t know if the “Dr” prefix attached to the name of Kafinsoli is descriptive of academic excellence or if he is a medical doctor. Whichever it is, he is a serious danger to the sector he represents. If he’s an academician, it’s a possible proof why tertiary institutions are more or less a production line for producing unemployable youths that could be hired for diabolical purposes, despite billions of naira being poured into the sector, and despite tireless efforts of people like Senator Kaita who are insisting on judicious and equitable distribution of these resources. Unless “Dr” Kafinsoli is into “Trado-medicine,” it will remain a subject of debate among students of common sense how an academician will describe a Senator who contributed immensely in bringing a Federal Polytechnic to his zone as a poor representative!
And if that’s not enough to prove the “undoctorness” of Kafinsoli, his totally hollow and shallow mischaracterisation of Senator Kaita, who is also better known as “Me agarzayo” due to his regular Facebook updates calling for lucky beneficiaries of Federal Government appointments to rush to Abuja for documentation, will leave no one in doubt about his deficits in reasoning. By the way, Kafinsoli must have been somewhere outside this world hibernating when our democracy was evolving, otherwise he would have known that booing a politician has never ever been a matter of performance but simply a case of politicians with nothing positive to showcase themselves with adopting extremely silly and cheap methods to resolve their political deficiencies.
Let me at this point challenge “Dr” Kafinsoli to mention the names of youths who are gainfully employed through the efforts of Senator Kaita or he should publish the number of projects he attracted to Katsina North Senatorial zone and before then, as then as the Rep of Kankia/Ingawa/Kusada federal constituency. If there aren't any, then I will concede to him that Senator Kaita was booed because he is not popular!
But then, isn't it pretty clear that “Dr” Kafinsoli must be the dumbest of hired pens, considering the way and manner he introduced one Arc. Ahmed Musa Dangiwa into the brouhaha at the tail end of his verbiage. He must have embarrassed Dangiwa by pointing a finger of suspicion at his direction. This is sheer daftness by an overexcited and very clumsy favour-seeking opportunist. Guilty or not, he has unveiled Dangiwa as the beneficiary of his rude and lies infested verbiage, and by extension, the beneficiary of the sponsored Mashi event. How much more useless could a hired pen be? Straight thinking people would definitely ask, what has “Arc. Ahmed Musa Dangiwa's compassion, integrity and honesty and necessary leadership traits that provide good governance” got to do with the subject the dunderhead laboured to promote?
Let me be kind and teach Kafinsoli a lesson in how to organize booing solutions. He wrote: “the senator representing Daura Zone gets hostile reception and was greeted by a barrage of insults, chanting ''Bamayi'' by the angry youths....” The “Bamayi” chanted by the hired thugs, as he correctly narrated, is not the language of Katsina people. It’s Kano dialect. Katsina people would have chanted “Ba mu yi.” The sponsors of the event would have gotten more value for their money had they bothered to hire local youths. But then, Mashi youth would never desecrate the palace of Iya Mashi by insulting a guest of the palace much less, a guest like Senator Ahmed Babba Kaita whose political pedigree and generosity is well known to them.
Finally, my opinion on Sahara Reporters. No straight thinking reviewer of political events in Nigeria will give more than a passing glance at Sahara Reporters today. Its days of glory are long go e! Sahara Reporters is dead, and I’m not one to be caught flogging a dead horse! Believe what you read on Sahara Reporters’ wall these days at the risk of your intellectual integrity!
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