By Charles Adingupu
A new crisis is brewing in the Caliphate as the All Progressives Congress (APC), Governor-elect of Sokoto State, Ahmed Aliyu Sokoto, inaugurates a Finance and Debt Verification Committee to probe the administration of the incumbent, Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal.
The committee headed by the Deputy Governor-elect, Mohammed Idris Gobir, has been mandated to among others identify all loans secured by the Tambuwal government since inception eight years ago and ascertain if the loans were utilized for the purpose they were meant for and the total debt burden the state has been saddled with by the outgoing administration.
Part of the reason for the tension over the work of this committee following a contentious elections in the state which saw the APC and the PDP go toe to toe, was the fact that the governor elect was Governor Tambuwal’s deputy during the latter’s first tenure before they had a falling out. In 2019, edged on by Senator Aliyu Wamakko who remains his staunch ally, he contested and lost against Tambuwal who had by then changed parties to run under the PDP banner.
Sources say by setting up the 20-member committee to examine the loans borrowed by the Tambuwal administration which lawmakers in the state put in the region of N86 billion, the incoming administration was merely continuing the battle for supremacy between Governor Tambuwal and the leader of the APC in the state, Senator Aliyu Wamakko, who initially supported Tambuwal’s run for Governor in 2015.
Wamakko remains very popular with the electorate in the State and when on the eve of the 2019 elections both gladiators had a falling out, Tambuwal dumped the Wamakko controlled APC in the state and defected to the PDP. He won after a rerun, beating his opponent and Wamakko’s choice, the new governor elect, Aliyu Sokoto, by a mere 342 votes.
This recent move by the incoming APC administration to probe the state finances during Tambuwal’s eight years in office indicates that the struggle for supremacy in the Caliphate is far from over.
