By Professor Salisu Shehu
As a person that hails from Dogara’s Federal Constituency (Dass, Tafawa Balewa and Bogoro) I have a direct stake in Dogara’s bid for Vice Presidency. I learned that he is desperately lobbying to be picked as the running mate to ASIWAJU. It is for this reason that I felt obliged to warn the APC as a party and ASIWAJU as its presidential flagbearer against picking DOGARA.
APC and ASIWAJU should know that DOGARA will surely be a very big liability to them as a running mate for the following reasons:
1. His Constituency is the most crisis – ridden area in Bauchi State. To the best of our knowledge DOGARA never for a single day convened any sort of peace – making or reconciliatory meeting between Muslims and Christians. This was not only because he was indifferent but that he shares the primordial bigotry of his Christian tribesmen.
2. Tafawa Balewa Town, being the hometown of the First Prime Minister of Nigeria, is the most important town in Dogara’s Constituency. Since 11 years ago Dogara’s Christian brethren and tribesmen perpetrated monumental carnage and chased away the Muslims from the town. No single Muslim family lives in Tafawa Balewa all this long and there is no single Mosque standing in Tafawa Balewa Town for these 11 years.
The crux of the matter is that, as at the time of writing this piece, to the best of our knowledge, DOGARA :
(I). Never made any single effort at resettling the displaced Musim Community in Tafawa Balewa even when he was the no. 4 citizen of the country.
(II). Never made a submission to the Northeast Development Commission for the same purpose of resettling the Muslim Community.
(III). Never visited the displaced people to assuage their pains, not to talk of sending any sort of relief materials or palliatives to them.
4. As a proof of real and deep-seated bigotry, even when DOGARA embarked on a project of renovating religious edifices (churches and mosques) in the Constituency, he never offered to rebuild any of the several dozens of the destroyed mosques in Tafawa Balewa Town.
If DOGARA argues that he made no attempt at rebuilding our mosques because there were no Muslims in the town, we will then put it back to him that, what efforts then have you been making at resettling the Muslims in the town?
The list of our grievances against DOGARA can be longer.
EVEN WITH THE LIST OF DOGARA’S FAILURES PRESENTED ABOVE, IT IS CLEAR THAT HE WOULD BE A BAD PRODUCT TO PRESENT TO NIGERIANS AS VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE.
HE WILL CERTAINLY BE A LIABILITY TO APC AND ASIWAJU BUT NOT AN ASSET.
‘To be forewarned is to be forearmed”.
