Tofa told me same politicians collected money from him, Abiola for mobilisation — Abdulsalami.

Former Nigerian Head of State, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, has disclosed the deceptive practices of politicians during the June 12, 1993, presidential election crisis. In his autobiography, 'Call to Duty,' Abubakar revealed that some politicians who publicly supported Chief MKO Abiola were secretly working with the government. Others, he stated, collected funds from both Abiola's Social Democratic Party (SDP) and his opponent's National Republican Convention (NRC).

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The late Alhaji Bashir Tofa told me a story to illustrate this. He said some politicians had visited him requesting for some money for the mobilisation of supporters. They assured him that they would deliver the votes in their respective wards to him. He gave them what they demanded. Tofa later visited the state chairman of Abiola’s party, the SDP, and was dumbfounded to see the same set of people there.

Abubakar recounted a personal anecdote shared by the late Bashir Tofa, the NRC candidate. Tofa reportedly told Abubakar about politicians who approached him for money to mobilize supporters, assuring him of votes. Tofa was later astonished to find the same individuals soliciting funds from Abiola's SDP party chairman, ultimately losing Kano and his own ward to Abiola.

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I was shocked. These were politicians who, in public, were pretending not to have any point of connection, and the masses were fighting each other because of them. Here, they were hobnobbing, away from public view.

Drawing from his own experiences in the 1980s, Abubakar described Nigerian politicians as a distinct group who publicly incite ethnic and religious divisions while privately socializing. He witnessed politicians from opposing factions of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) dining and laughing together, despite publicly fueling a crisis that led to the impeachment of Governor Balarabe Musa. This encounter, he noted, solidified his view of their duplicity, especially when he later saw one of these politicians vehemently criticizing his counterpart on national television.

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A politician who was very active in the First Republic told me that regardless of the parties, most politicians of the North belonged to back then, they all used to visit the Premier, Sir Ahmadu Bello. Occasionally, they would meet, eat and drink and the Premier would give them some token.