By Farooq Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi When people objected to the appointment of Mrs. Amina Zakari as head of INEC’s commit...
By Farooq Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
When people objected to the appointment of Mrs. Amina Zakari as head of INEC’s committee that would be in charge of the “secretariat for collation of results” of the last presidential election, both the presidency and Zakari lied that Buhari and Zakari had no family relationship until I exploded their duplicitous mendacity in a January 5, 2019 update. (I’ll come to that shortly).
Well, many people don’t seem to notice that Buhari has compensated Mrs. Zakari for helping him to rig the 2019 election; He appointed her biological son by the name of Ahmed Rufa'i Zakari as his new Special Adviser on Infrastructure, a pointless, previously non-existent position specifically created to pay back Mrs. Zakari. Mr. Zakari holds the traditional title of San Turakin Kazaure.
Buhari also reappointed Mrs. Zakari’s brother, Suleiman Hussaini Adamu, as Minister of Water Resources. Adamu and Mrs. Zakari are full siblings, i.e., they share the same father and mother. They are the children of Alhaji Hussaini Adamu (who was emir of Kazaure) and Hajia Hafsatu Hussaini Adamu. The current emir of Kazaure, Alhaji Najib Hussaini Adamu, is their older brother with whom they’re also full siblings.
The immediate past commissioner of education in Jigawa State, Mrs. Rabih Eshaq, is also their younger sister (again, same father, same mother.) So the same family basically monopolizes political appointments in the state. And it’s all due to their Buhari/Daura connections.
Their mother, Hajiya Hafsatu, is the daughter of Alhaji Jibril Daura, a Daura native. More than that, though, Buhari’s biological sister was once married to Mrs. Zakari’s father. That makes her Buhari’s niece. The Oxford Dictionary defines a niece as, “A daughter of one's brother or sister, or of one's brother-in-law or sister-in-law.” Mrs. Zakari’s father was Buhari’s brother-in-law.
But that’s not all. As I pointed out in my Jan. 5, 2019 update, at some point in his youth, Buhari, who lost his father at a young age, came under the guardianship of Mrs. Zakari’s father, the late Alhaji Hussaini Adamu. Buhari continues to nurture his relationship with the Hussaini Adamu family. When he was PTF boss, for instance, he got Mrs. Zakari a consultancy contract with Afri-Projects Consortium (APC), “the sole manager of the PTF projects.”
When Goodluck Jonathan asked Buhari for a candidate for INEC commissionership, he nominated Mrs. Zakari. In my update, I said, “This fact, as I pointed out in my Saturday Tribune column, isn’t enough to vitiate her neutrality. After all, Jonathan defeated Buhari in 2011 while she was INEC commissioner. But deceiving the world by concealing the nature and depth of her relationship with Buhari shows that she’s up to no good this time around.” My predictions materialized.
The appointment of Mrs. Zakari’s son to an utterly purposeless position isn’t just a reward for her help in perpetrating unexampled electoral fraud on Buhari’s behalf; it’s also a continuation of Buhari’s trademarked bald-faced nepotism. I know this isn't anything that will shock anyone--or change anything-- but I just want to put it out there for the records.
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Nothing unusual in your analysis. My only problem is with your claim, "Well, many people don’t seem to notice that Buhari has compensated Mrs. Zakari for helping him to rig the 2019 election." Helping him rig election? Any proof? I think you're going beyond bounds.
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