By Abdul Sulaiman Gusau
I read with great astonishment a lengthy write-up by the former Deputy Chief of Staff to His Excellency, Dr Bello Mohammed, the Executive Governor of Zamfara State, where he emotionally poured scathy and unholy accusations against his person and the very administration he served.
All the issues raised by Dr Bashir in that piece were glaringly vituperations of a wounded person. For those who understand how a wounded person reacts, they will not take his myriad of accusations seriously, except for those things he has admitted of committing by himself. He said he was not safe and I believe him. He obviously need to save himself from himself.
I am not the mouth-piece of Governor Matawalle, but I know that Dr Bashir Maru came into political and administrative limelight in Zamfara State by singular grace of the Governor. Relatively unknown Dr Bashir was made the Deputy Chief of Staff at the Government House, with literally all the work of substantive Chief of Staff domiciled in his office.
Dr Bashir Maru was emboldened to develop his political ambition by the same privileges of his new found patronage where he made his contacts and money to pursue same. Going by what is practically available to us, His Excellency was not against this new phase of steps taken by Dr Bashir Maru to test his clout among his people and also his popularity.
As the saying goes, however, one cannot run faster than one’s shadow. Dr Bashir Maru tested his popularity at home and found out his real worth. Naturally, only those who are patient enough to be groomed in all the nitty-gritty of politics brace themselves to failure as the possibility and an opposite of success. A green horn will naturally behave wildly to a political knock-down, and we have all seen that in Dr Bashir Maru.
When he lost, he squarely blamed his failure to his only political and administrative benefactor, the benevolent god-father who moulded him into what he thinks he is today politically in Zamfara State. He also threatend court case against his loss and continued to say so many things badly aimed at damaging the reputation of His Excellency.
The latest is his recent write-up where, in his bid to further damage his former boss, he opened his own can of worms and desperately tried to win public sympathy in a case which the public cannot be his judge. Only the court can. He voluntarily made it public his clandestine action of manipulating a Government vehicle which he secretly dispatched to a nearby state capital with an intent of selling it for his personal benefit.
Reports I received indicated that the car’s colour was repainted from white to black colour, delivered to a buyer who gave advanced payment on the vehicle before it was discovered. Dr Bashir in his write-up revealed that he was the distributor of all the Security vehicles purchased by the administration of his Excellency. He unofficially allocated to himself one of the vehicles and hid it somewhere all this while, until he thought it was ripe for him to dispose of it.
The worst part of it all was the discovery of a forged allocation letter he sneaked into the distributed vehicles documents where the name of a deceased public figure was used to cover for the vehicle he hid and later attempted to sell. Well, only Police investigation and subsequent court prosecution can exonerate him or otherwise.
It is laughable that Dr Bashir, who served the administration of Dr Bello Mohammed for about two years, defended it vehemently in all his social media write-up, will suddenly realise it’s dishonesty after he has lost an election, a failure he chose to blame the Governor for. It is funny that he tried in his latest write-up to portray himself as the Saint and everyone else as the villain.
However, those who know him much more earlier than now can testify to the crooked life of Dr Bashir as I later came to know. Some day, someone will ask about his University days, why he was expelled in a certain Federal University before he chose to go to an obscure private University to return to us with a medical certificate. Someone will also ask one day, yes, of the issues surrounding his medical practice registration as well.
It is not right to bring someone down for his past mistakes, but it is equally not right for someone to bite the fingers that fed him. Those who love him should advise him that he has allowed over ambition and penchant for betrayal combined to derail him and might lead him to his own political crash-landing.