In April 2015, barely two weeks after the presidential election when the then newly-formed All Progressives Congress (APC) was waiting to take over the reins of power following its historic electoral victory, the then outgoing governor of Kano State, Mallam Rabiu Kwankwaso, basking in the euphoria of the moment, declared with triumphant hubris that the North used the Almajiri vote to kick out former President Goodluck Jonathan from the Presidential Villa.

According to Kwankwaso, the statement credited to Jonathan's wife, Patience Jonathan, wherein she allegedly described the Almajiri as "born throw away" galvanized people in the North to ensure that the Almajiri votes were used to kick she and her husband out of the villa.

However, it is worth stating that Kwankwaso left the APC before the 2019 general election for the PDP, and supported its presidential standard-bearer, Atiku Abubakar against Buhari, not necessary out of disagreement with the president on issues of governance or principle, but because he lost out in the high-wire power game with his handpicked successor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje.

Governor Ganduje made the APC just too hot and uncomfortable for him, and the president for whom Kwankwaso had used the Almajiri vote to carry across the finish line in the 2015 presidential election, looked on with unflappable indifference.

It is tragic that the Almajiri, the "forgotten cluster", the political pawns in the hands of the Northern elite - to cheat other parts of the Nigerian federation through padded census head counts, resource allocation, determine the outcome of elections to sustain their born-to-rule mentality, as well as cause violent upheavals and promote religious crises in the country whenever it suited them, have suddenly become unwanted and unwelcomed in many states in the North because of the raging Covid-19 pandemic.

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