Men as shadows

August 25, 2025 by Sam Omatseye

The phrase litmus test is often abused. But no time in this republic have so much stakes attended by-elections like the one we witnessed last week. The trigger was not the PDP, but a sense of euphoric illusion by the new party in town.

 New in guise. ADC, we are told, has been refurbished. A new set of bigwigs strode in and raped it.

The deflowered party, though stooping from waist wounds, turned a limp into a swagger, and boasted it was going to fell a giant in a wrestling match.

Well, the battle is over, and it was an anticlimax for being a shellacking.

 “Anticipation,” wrote Samuel Coleridge, “is more potent than surprise.”

We sought them. We found them not. We cannot say how are the mighty fallen because the Lilliputians  did not rise.

 Jonathan Swift, the English satirist, wrote in his famous classics about moral pigmies.

In the by-elections, we saw them as though we saw them not. Not in the places where they made a boast. Not Zamfara, Kaduna, Taraba, Kano, and not even in the east except in a skewed story of a moral Lilliputian. Not anywhere.

By-elections are mock exams, foreshadows of the big battle ahead. It is the people’s pulse, two years after their chiefdoms are hailed. It is often a chance to bait and switch from the president and governors, or to hail them.

So, we saw that Pitobi urged his supporters to shun Labour Party, which is and is not his home to ADC that will and will not be his home.

 In Kaduna State, former governor and now pigmy in the state Malam El-Rufai mobilized his  ADC supporters , and he could not even deliver his ward. He was warded off.

More important, it is a sign that the social media, and to great extent, the mainline media may need to do more work to understand the pulse of the grassroots.

There were a number of messages. The Taraba story and Southern Kaduna twist have upended Muslim-Muslim hysteria.

 In medicine, doctors use virus to kill virus. The Muslim-Muslim ticket is an antidote to bigotry. So, it is a Nigerian-Nigerian ticket as this essayist advanced during the tempestuous campaigns.

For El-Rufai, and the rodents of the social media, Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna may have given us the quote of the year: that there are no polling units on Twitter and Facebook.

 Voters do not ululate or gyrate on TikTok, or Instagram. It shows that political engineering is paying more dividends than pundits and their hirelings are ready to admit. It also demonstrates that, for all the hardships in the land, there is a growing understanding that the nation is largely at one with President Bola Tinubu’s approach and philosophy.

Media pundits have decided to look the other way, and pretend the elections did not happen. The cry of rigging by some is passe and self-serving. We did not see any rumination from the errant tongue of Obi, nor a dance from ADC Southwest alawada man. Neither is El-Rufai, so quick to act the philosopher, sighted in public. The Adamawa chieftain still chafing from his disrobing from honour has said he is no more desperate. We’ll see.

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In Zamfara State, where many know to be flashpoints of bandit violence, the party in office still prevailed. The fight against the hoodlums will not go away in short order, but the leadership of Nuhu Ribadu is bearing fruits.

 Gone Ansaru leaders. Away with many a big-name gang leader. Peace comes in small doses, and they are coming. If the social media does not see it, the people who voted did. Governor Sani’s Kaduna victory combines empathy with transformational work in schools, roads, industry, commerce and financial engineering.

Bago made the enemies bang in Niger State. Okpebholo has turned Edo, for all Obi’s outcries, into fortress APC.

We cannot underplay the power of governors, as they delivered. Anambra State Governor, Chukwuma Soludo, the boom of Anambra orchestra, can boast of his party APGA’s first senator in Anambra South. But for Taraba, Kano and Adamawa states, all governors delivered. APC victories in those states are not only plus for religious embrace, but also indication of APC’s growing strength.

If anything, it is a challenge for the other parties, including the PDP that played bridesmaid in most of the polls, except in Oyo State, to wake out of its torpor.

 But the news of its inability to decide on zoning only emphasizes why it continues to wobble.

 Governor Seyi Makinde, however, evinced his hold on the state last week.

ADC recalls a story in the Bible of a soldiers on a mountain. The scriptures described them as shadows as men. That is Atiku, El-Rufai, et al. But men as shadows will strike before you know it.

ADC confirmed it has big names but small power. They are like bubbling froths on a bowl of water but nothing beneath.  As Sunny Ade croon, e simi ariwo – stop the noise.