VIEW FROM THE GALLERY BY MAHMUD JEGA
I was startled at the weekend to see the announcement by retired Air Marshal Saddique Baba Abubakar, former Chief of Air Staff and former Bauchi State APC governorship candidate, that he was retiring from active politics. Who gave him permission to quit? In his old line of trade in the military, if a person quits the job without permission, is that not what soldiers call AWOL, Absent With Out Leave? But because politics is so open, you think you can quit with only a press statement?
All our newspapers, airwaves and online news sites have been taken over in recent weeks by political stories, of party primaries, consensus, rifts, party factions, unending court cases, congresses and conventions. There is this story of a diminutive political aspirant in Kaduna State who told the screening panel that he was 30 years old, only for his NIN and international passport to show that he was born in 2010. However, the only story I read of anyone deserting the political field was of Saddique Baba Abubakar. If former civil servants, former paramilitary men and women, small time businessmen and even itinerant politicians can stay and wither the storm, how can a whole Air Marshal take flight at this stage, when politics is yet to get even hotter?
