Just as numerous fans of Governor Ahmad Aliyu of Sokoto were getting ready to celebrate the spectacular achievements of his administration’s second anniversary; his detractors came up with their usual tactics of distracting people’s attention from his epic performance, which includes the successful delivery of over 250 impactful projects under the 9-Point Smart Agenda. The political jobbers unfolded a new twist in the Hamdiyya Sidi game of disinformation and blackmail.
It had happened before, not long after Governor Ahmad Aliyu was decorated with the well-deserved Governor of the Year Award by The Sun Publishing Limited. The agents of darkness tactically pushed out a falsehood that Hamdiyya Sidi had been convicted and sentenced to 12 strokes of the cane, or two years in prison, with an option of N50,000 fine. Though totally false and baseless, the story, rather than achieving the purpose of the ungodly sponsors, of hatred and disgust against an innocent man, won him the sympathy of many Nigerians who saw through the antics of the opposition.
Lady Hamdiyya’s name always strike a chord in the ears of those who have followed her deceptive antics, ever since she accepted to play the ignoble role of agent provocateur, in the script of some disgruntled politicians who found in her a willing tool of blackmail, to be deployed from time to time, against Governor Ahmad Aliyu of Sokoto.
It would be recalled that Hamdiyya, falsely presented by her puppeteers as a mere teenager, had in late 2024 sought to incite civil unrest in Sabo Birin Daji village of Wurno Local Government. According too the police, she had sought permission from the village head to assemble some women in the village, for an empowerment programme guise. But she proceeded to scandalise Governor Ahmad Aliyu and his innocent family members, making unguarded utterances about security matters which she knew absolutely nothing about. After asking the women to invade and forcefully occupy government houses, she went ahead to circulate social media content calculated to incite wider hatred for constituted authorities, doing all these in a part of the Sokoto state where federal security forces are grappling with serious terrorist activities.
As would be expected, Hamdiyya was arrested on November 13, 2024, and duly charged by the Sokoto state police command for attempting to cause public disturbance, contrary to the provisions of the penal code law of Northern Nigeria. Since her first day in court, Hamdiyya has enjoyed undeserved public relevance by actively cooperating with her heartless minders in a series of comic twists and turns, aimed at frustrating her trial and extending the validity of her currency as a tool for blackmailing Governor Ahmad Aliyu Sokoto.
The latest antics in the Hamdiyya comedy series took place on May 20, 2025, when she was billed to appear before a magistrate court in continuation of her trial. Rather than honour her day at the temple of justice, the puppeteers conspired to declare her missing and, as usual, conjured up tales by the moonlight to buttress her “disappearance”. As the story goes, Hamdiyya was abducted by unknown persons on her way to buy foodstuffs in Sokoto, only to be found in Bakura Local Government Area of Zamfara state, some 80 kilometres away from the location of her purported abduction.
It’s important to stress that her disappearance was never reported to the police authorities.
Following her purported disappearance and subsequent rescue in Bakura, her trial has once again been adjourned to June 18, 2025, which is the gam plan of her handlers. This particular adjournment marked the tenth time (yes, ten good times in six months), the Hamdiyya Sidi trial was being postponed, all of them at the behest of her lawyers and behind-the-scenes sponsors. It becomes obvious, therefore, that the real directors of this epic drama of blackmail do not want the show to end. Sincere advocates of the rule of law, like Amnesty International and the career blackmailers behind the mendacious online radio in Abuja, ought to have been at the forefront of people pushing Hamdiyya’s speedy trial, since the rule of law stipulates that those accused of breaching the law deserve to instantly have their day in the court of impartial judges.
You are then left to wonder what exactly the puppeteers of Lady Hamdiyya hope to gain from the protracted delay of her trial. It becomes very clear that the whole plot involving this supposed teenager was incubated and hatched by misguided political opponents who suffered well-deserved crushing defeat at the hands of Governor Ahmad Aliyu in the 2023 elections, with the sole purpose of blackmailing the innocent man. The Hamdiyya story is being carefully preserved as a trump card ready to be played periodically to divert people’s attention from the stellar achievements of the governor and detract from his growing popularity and widespread endearment in the hearts and minds of the Sokoto electorate.
However, any initiative or sneaky plot to dim the shining light of Ahmad Aliyu of Sokoto ahead of the 2027 is dead at conception, not even on arrival, because such plots cannot even arrive. The good people of Sokoto state know where the pasture is greener between Governor Ahmad Aliyu and the camp of his traducers. They know where their bread is buttered between the inertia of Aminu Waziri Tambuwal and the epic development initiatives of the present administration, and no political jobber can mislead them with gimmickry and Hamdiya Sidi antics.
Again, the security authorities need to take more than a passing interest in the safety of Lady Hamdiyya as the central character in this political gimmickry. Since the actors and promoters seem not to be interested in justice, but solely fixated on causing occasional embarrassment to Governor Ahmad Aliyu, because they may go to the extent of wasting the life of one naïve lady and blame it on the governor who really has nothing to do with her lawful arrest and prosecution for breaching the law.
Hamdiyya is enjoying her bail, granted with objection from the prosecutors, and it is only a mentally deranged person that can believe and propagate the cock and bull story that a mature giant of the political stature and personal carriage of Governor Ahmad Aliyu of Sokoto would be locking horns with a supposed teenage girl over a social media video. The world is often thrilled at the David versus Goliath scenario, but this one is just Lady Hamdiyya versus the law of the land.
Their hope was that, having intimidated the governor, he would be compelled, as a good man that he is, to direct his Attorney General to enter a Nolle Prosqui and terminate her lawful prosecution. Though an acceptable practice in our criminal justice system, the governor should allow the law to take its course, and he can then grant her a state pardon. But these mercies are not granted through blackmail and intimidation of the one in the position to dispense them. Of course, Ahmad Aliyu is not the sort of person to yield timidly to misguided blackmailers.
While the Hamdiyya comics show continues, let it be known to the sponsors that it would not give them any political mileage in 2027, as they wrongly project. Also, Hamdiyya should proceed with utmost caution since it has become clear that her puppeteers could do anything, including inflicting harm on her, just to bring odium to the person of Governor Ahmad Aliyu. The only beneficiaries of this sordid affair are the content creators and the defence counsel who grow their social media platforms or gain cheap publicity, making a rugged mountain out of a simple molehill.
Gatekeepers News is not liable for opinions expressed in this article, they’re strictly the writer’s
