Until recently, Naja’atu Muhammad was the Director of Civil Society of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council (PCC). She is, for now, enjoying airtime for all the wrong reasons, primary among which is the controversy her vented fury is garnering. According to the story she tells, she resigned from APC, saying she was through with partisan politics, but allied herself to the Peoples Democratic Party presidential Candidate, Atiku Abubakar, because he had a plan for the North and a viable political structure capable of winning a presidential election. This daggers the dreamy hopes of Peter Obi’s supporters, for though she admits that he is generating quite the movement, she says his party is wanting for wideness of reach and so she decided to pitch tents with Atiku.
The APC PCC had a different story to tell. They argue that she did not resign but was sacked and that her resignation is her own way of spinning a yarn to save face. Furthermore, they explained that her sack from the APC was because she was quarrelsome and incompetent. This is not far-fetched; all her recent media outings have her scowling, incensed, vituperative and bearing a generally truculent demeanour. In a word, they are quite convinced that she is a mole and has returned to those to whom she was leaking sensitive party information.
But, her interviews tell a different story. Her mien and the rage it belies communicate the witty saying that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. According to some of her stories, she noted that when she was to be recruited, she was reluctant and hesitant. After much pleading, she agreed to sit with Tinubu, face to face, and if she was not comfortable with his agenda for the north then she had a right to opt out. She says Tinubu himself called her by 11 pm to convince her to take up appointment with the party. A man who is mentally ill, senile and geriartric? Working till such an hour when she would ordinarily have retired for the day and would no longer be picking phone calls? A senile person would not be working till 11pm still trying to recruit people. But, no doubt, Naja’atu felt elated with all the attention she was getting. Attention and quality time would do it for her, it seems. She made it clear that she could pay her bills. Thus, giving her gifts may not move her heart.
Those who are swooning over every word she says should remember that she is first a northerner before she is a Nigerian. Her nationalistic instinct pales violently in comparison to her tribal leanings. Her main focus, and the primary cause of her hesitancy in accepting the APC appointment, she says, is that she was not sure what plans Tinubu had for them “up north”. At this point, she did not care about the east that has screamed marginalization all these years. She was focused on the north. She says every single person up north is either waiting to be killed or kidnapped. She claims also that Tinubu told her he had no agenda for the north and encouraged her to draw up one. Feeling like she had a job to do, she busy-bodied till she had the agenda drawn up. When she wanted to present it, she found that the APC manifesto already prioritized security for the north. She felt scorned. Her meal was rejected for another wife’s meal.
At this point, all her attempts to see Tinubu was not meeting the success she thought she would get. She likes meeting important people, spending quality time with them and dropping their names at interviews, and APC just wasn’t getting her drift. But, another man up north was noticing her and watching the love being lost between Naja’atu and the APC.
Naja’atu was particularly disappointed in Tinubu’s running mate, Shettima. He was a northerner and should have given her more attention. So, she saved a juicy lie to slander his person with. She portrayed him in the media as housing Kabiru Sokoto, an Islamic fundamentalist and terrorist. She failed to mention that Kabiru Sokoto was found in Shettima’s house while trying to kidnap Shettima’s children. Oh, Naja’atu.
She has, however, got what she wanted from the PDP – attention. Not only has she been sighted in media pictures with the man Atiku who wishes above many other things that power remains perpetually in the north, she has also been given more than enough airtime on Arise TV, owned by a longtime PDP ally and veteran procurer of exotic foreign entertainers for topnotch political bacchanalia. It is on Arise TV that she has spoken mordantly against her former lovers, the APC. It is not evident that she was a mole in the APC although that is possible. It is, however, more evident that she was simply scorned and moved to where she would get better attention.