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By Ade Adeogun
So Udom Emmanuel and Obong Akpabio are now at daggers drawn? Just like that! Very much like what ensued between Akpabio and Atta before him. Nah wah o! After all the trouble Akpabio went through to pluck Emmanuel from Lagos to ‘singlehandedly’ make him heir to the uncommon transformation. I thought the whole idea was to ensure that his successor remained eternally loyal. So the pledged loyalty has evaporated just like that? Hmmm. That was a short honeymoon.
Point of correction, two years is not short in political years o! Have you forgotten so soon that the honeymoon between Obi and Obiano ended even before the ink on the handing over notes dried up? Or have you forgotten so soon that Chimaroke Nnamani (Ebeano) could not return to Enugu State after handing over the reins of governance to his handpicked successor? Even Theo Orji did not wait for Charlie Boy to nudge him that ‘his mumu don do’, before he sent Orji Kalu and Mama Governor out of Abia State. Look across Nigeria, from Bight of Bonny to Lake Chad, it is the same story… Ganduje vs Kwankwanso in Kano, Tambuwal vs Wammako in Sokoto. Certainly not all successor Governors have large ‘mumu buttons’ like the one in Kwara or the capacity to swallow pride like Fashola. Anyway let me borrow a phrase from Fashola… ‘may your loyalty never be tested’.
So what is the problem? Why is this conflict between godfathers and benefactors the norm in our political space? The simple answer is the personalization of governance. When elected into office Nigerian politicians convert the public offices into which they are elected into personnel estates to be willed to daughters, sons and successors in title. It is for that reason that they seek political neophytes and lily livered yes-men as successors, so that they can perpetuate their stay in office by other means. Or to cover the half buried corpses left littered in the safes of Government Houses.
Fortunately or unfortunately, Power, that intoxicating element, has a way of turning ‘Jew men’ into knights like a loaded gun in the hand of a Nigerian Policeman. Within weeks of drinking from the fountain of Power, yesterday’s weaklings regain their mojo and are emboldened to look at the men previously treated as demi-gods eyeball to eyeball. When that happens, the former demi-god is shocked that his successor has woken up from a ‘mumu’ slumber and is beginning to stir like a hungry lion roused from sleep by a well-nourished goat. Initially both attempt to manage the change of status, until such a time that the underlying feud becomes difficult to conceal like a pregnancy in its last trimester.
Should this really be the case? What is the place of Statesmen in Nigerian politics? Why can’t an Obasanjo be a statesman rather than a busybody who attempts to supervise his successors like a class captain? Why should Tinubu be interested in who succeeds him or succeeds his successors? But why should I blame them? When we turn elected officials to Kabiyesis and hail them as ‘iku baba yeye’ why won’t they assume that the throne is reserved for their descendants? It is certain that Nigerian electorates are yet to recover from the mental slavery induced by years of military rule. Rather than treat elected officials as emissaries of the voters, the electorates praise these men to the heavens thereby inadvertently elevating them to the status of second in command to the gods. So what should we rightly expect from men who have equal status as Sango and Amadioha? Why wont they split thunder from the mouth like water from a faulty tap?
We are in another season of electioneering. As usual Nigerian Governors who are about completing their constitutional second terms are anointing sons, sons-in-law and former domestic aides as flag bearers of their political parties so as to continue their dynasties. Do I begrudge them? Nay! I don’t because I know that what befell Peter Obi is waiting for them. I don’t begrudge them because I know that very soon they too will join us like Obasanjo in singing the redemption song. Even though we know that these men would soon lick their wounds, should we really just fold our hands to allow the continuation of this anomaly? Should we continue to ‘sidon look’ while these men mismanage our commonwealth and mortgage the future of our children?
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