Shamsu Bala, the eldest son of Bauchi State Governor Bala Mohammed, has accused former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of working against his father’s reelection in 2023 and said it is time for revenge.
In a social media post on Saturday, Mr Bala said Atiku is unwilling to reconcile with his father ahead of the 2027 election.
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He said it would be difficult for Atiku to get the governor’s support because it is time for ‘settling scores’.
“He (Atiku) didn’t work for us in the 2023 election; he worked for Air Marshal (the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Abubakar Sadiq). He deployed elites in Bauchi to fight us, and we narrowly won the election.
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“Now he is taking us for granted, he doesn’t value us as humans, he is showing us that we are too small to call for reconciliation,” the governor’s son said in a tweet in Hausa.
He, however, did not mention the names of the Bauchi elites who teamed up against his father.
Possible references
Governor Mohammed, in the build-up to the 2023 election, in January 2023, directed the Bauchi emirate council to strip an elder statesman, Bello Kirfi, of his traditional title of Wazirin Bauchi for alleged ‘disloyalty and disrespect’ to him.
Mr Kirfi served as Minister of State Foreign Affairs under President Shehu Shagari and also Minister of Special Duties during the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. He is a political ally of Atiku and is probably among the elites the governor’s son said worked against his father’s reelection.
Also, another Bauchi chieftain of the PDP at that time and former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, worked for Atiku in the presidential election but worked against Mr Mohammed in the governorship election.
Atiku won in Bauchi
Despite the frosty nature between Atiku and Mr Mohammed, the PDP candidate won in Bauchi with over 100,000 votes more than his closest challenger, APC’s Bola Tinubu.
Atiku defeated Mr Tinubu with a vote margin of 109,913. He polled a total of 426, 607 votes while Mr Tinubu got 316,694 votes in the North-eastern state.
Mr Bala’s comments on Twitter followed Atiku’s visit to former President Muhammadu Buhari in Kaduna, which political observers said was part of Atiku’s effort to build a coalition against the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) for the 2027 election.
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A PDP social media influencer, Abdulaziz Na’ibi-Abubakar, appeared worried over the governor’s son’s comment.
“We hope that Atiku and Governor Bala Muhammed reconcile their differences to keep the PDP on track,” Mr Na’ibi-Abubakar replied to the governor’s son.
Governor Mohammed challenged Atiku and others in the PDP presidential primaries in 2022 before returning home to take part in the party’s rerun governorship primaries, which allowed him to run for a second term in 2023.
The governor is speculated to retain his presidential ambition and could challenge Atiku again for the party’s 2027 presidential ticket. As the chairman of the PDP’s governors’ forum, he is one of the major power brokers in the party.
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