Modibbo Ishaq Kawu is a columnist and an illustrious son of the Ilorin Emirate, the voting bloc that most times determines who governs Kwara State. In an article titled "M. D. Belgore and the unfinished work in Kwara State",published in the Vanguard March 15, Kawu pointed out what he said inhibited the governorship ambition of Mohammed Dele Belgore (SAN), the governorship candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in the 2011 ballot. 

Kawu got many things right in his article which has expectedly ignited heated debates online, in Kwara and beyond. These includes that the emergence of MDB, as most youths have come to identify the senior advocate, has helped to finally demystify the myth of invincibility long built around the Sarakis. It was also true that the MDB phenomenon has brought the youth to the centre stage of the state politics – a feat attributable to his mass-oriented campaign strategy. And Kawu was also right in his claim that the MDB phenomenon almost made the Sarakis bankrupt! 

But Kawu equally got many things wrong in the same article. His claim that ACN is loathed in Ilorin runs afoul of the election-day reality and the clear pattern of voting. Belgore, lacking any rigging machinery, scored a clean 82,152 votes from Ilorin alone, compared to Ahmed's 100,014 dubious votes. Why did I say so? ACN presented to the tribunal several INEC Forms that showed vote swapping and eye-popping discrepancies. Take the case of Asa Local Government, one of the local councils in the Emirate. I will cite just an instance to save space. Form EC8B (result sheet for ward) for Afon Ward in Asa showed that ACN polled 836 votes as against PDP's 808. But the tally changed on EC8C (result sheet for the whole council) for the same Asa Local Government as 245 was recorded for ACN, while 920 was given to the PDP! 

If Kwara people were really against ACN because Kwarans are affiliated to the North and would not support a South-west party, why didn't the majority vote for CPC which filed a guber candidate in the poll? After all, by the same token that ACN may be described as a South-west party, so can CPC be described as a North-west party. Assuming the PDP actually won the election, did the voters vote for Ahmed because his party is a northern party?

As Kawu himself pointed out, votes recorded for Ahmed were borne out of intimidation, threat of demotion or removal of Obas, thuggery and violence, outright bribery before and on the day of election, sacking of rebellious top civil servants and compromise of corpers. As shown during the legal challenge, total votes cast often did not tally with the number of ballot papers used. Results, in many cases, exceeded accredited voters! The PDP candidate fared worse among the youths during the poll. For instance, at the two polling units in the permanent site of the University of Ilorin where I voted, just as it was across all the higher institutions here, Belgore got more than 80 per cent of the votes. In Offa, Omu Aran, Oro, Ajase, Igbaja, it was Belgore all the way. Don't ask me how Ahmed was eventually announced the winner based on votes manufactured from villages. It is one of the tragedies of our time. 

Whereas the Supreme Court has spoken on the matter – and it is final – the truth remains that Ahmed's victory defies all demographic theories as he lost in most of the hugely populated cities. If, in spite of these manipulations, Belgore could come neck and neck with Ahmed in the Ilorin Emirate, Kawu's anti-ACN theory remains imaginary. As he himself admitted, the youths in the Emirate constitute the bulk of the voting bloc. If the largest voting bloc in the emirate had decided to pitch their tent with ACN's Belgore, how correct then is his claim that ACN is loathed in the Emirate? 

A part of Kawu's article reads: "MDB (Belgore) is my cousin and I was strongly linked to his campaign, but for me, (and others), the most difficult issue all through, was the choice of the platform, the ACN, as vehicle for the ambition of providing an alternative to the Saraki domination of the state.... A central issue in Ilorin, even amongst the modern elite, is the deep suspicion of south west- based ACN....They are fed up with Saraki hegemony but they do not want a state where Bola Tinubu will come to determine our lives, or a situation where our governor, as a member of the ACN will begin to attend meetings of Southwest governors."

Again, Kawu missed it. His claim that ACN platform is loathed for being a South-west party is a veiled reference to the so-called Hausa/Fulani-Yoruba rivalry in Ilorin. This position erroneously gives our people away as backward folks still trapped in primordial ethnic chauvinism, at a time we should de-emphasise ethnic bickering and embrace the concept of human brotherhood and pursuit of good governance. We are no longer interested in these backward sentiments which had taken us nowhere over the years. What should matter to us is the quality of the human person anybody brings on board. Poverty makes no distinction between a Yoruba person and a Nupe person. 

The dreaded Tinubu factor is a non-issue. ‘Personality cult' in politics is rooted everywhere in the world: the Kennedys, the Ghandis and the Nkrumahs and if you like the Mandelas and now our own Buhari in Nigeria. In the U.S., the Democratic Party was almost synonymous with the Kennedys. Look at the record high endorsements Obama got minutes after the patriarch of the Kennedy Family endorsed him to be the democratic flag bearer in 2008. Yes personality cult should not be exploited for the wrong reasons. But even nature somewhat endows certain individuals more than the rest. We therefore cannot run away entirely from having certain individuals having some advantage and good will in a particular set up. If MDB goes to Buhari's CPC today, the Igbominas in Kwara South are certain to say "he wants to sell us to the Hausa Fulanis again". Such sentiments will always exist, as baseless as they are. 

This is another example, which also punctures Kawu's arguments: The PDP is a successor party to the defunct NPN - a Hausa/Fulani party, as some would say. But the same PDP ruled the South-west between 2003 and 2007. Were South-west PDP governors attending Northern Governors Forum's meeting? No. And didn't they attend PDP meetings bringing together governors from both regions? They did. Did they cede the South-west to the North? No. 

Oshiomhole is an ACN Governor. He attends South South Governors' meetings as he does ACN's. When last did the Edo people, who interestingly had the same ethnic rivalry with the Yoruba as was the case with the Ilorin matter, say Oshiomhole will sell them to Tinubu? And, where is the evidence that Tinubu has sought to exert any influence in any of the ACN states other than in Lagos? Tinubu having been Lagos Governor for eight years, still reside there while his former chief of staff is governor, it is foolhardy for anybody not to expect that he will have some influence.

It is negative thinking in this day and age to view a party on the basis of where it is said to come from as opposed to what it can do. Kawu's writings in other contexts has condemned President Goodluck Jonathan on the basis of "South-south parochialism"; is he not guilty of the same thing in the views he is expressing now?

For me, the issue ahead of us in Kwara should be how to strengthen our capacity to rout the rapacious and parasitic Sarakites and their underlings in 2015. As Kawu correctly argues, the man Belgore is in our best 11. The best we could do is for all of us thirsty for positive change, North, South and Central, to rally round him.