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Ngige, Dariye and The
Presidency: Morality of the
absurd (1)
By Chidi
Oguamanam
In 1999, while responding to a
suggestion that a lot of retired generals and other political jobbers were
making monetary donations to his bid for the presidency and as such would
naturally expect to be rewarded, or to wield some influence in his
prospective regime, Mr. President (then a presidential candidate) said
that there will be no room for that kind of politics if he was elected.
Specifically, he said that those who were making financial and other
contributions in kind toward his bid for Aso Rock should not expect any
reward in return for their trouble. He counseled that they should regard
their "investment" as a bad one.
The President's seemingly
courageous political disposition elicited accolades from sections of the
press and less discernible or gullible members of society. Newspapers were
awash with a reaffirmation of the view that the President was his own man,
independent minded and not likely to be the lackey of powerful interests.
Only few read the President's lips correctly. Only a handful appreciated
that the President's statement was
mere political grandstanding. Those knowledgeable in the art of
politics, particularly democratic politics, knew that the President's
read-my-lips declaration was not a prudent or realistic way of doing the
political business of capturing and retaining power. I do not dispute that
the President is "his own man" and independent minded. What I know is that
such an attribute is not an absolute credit in democratic governance.
Indeed, an all-knowing Chief Executive makes dictatorship more attractive
than democracy that only legitimises the foolery of the majority. But that
is beside the point.
Five years later, we find a
disposition of Mr. President that is in radical conflict with his theory
of bad political investment. This is in specific regard to the Anambra
crisis. In his response to the question posed by Punch Newspaper team at
an interview: "Mr. President, who is Chris Uba?" Mr. President was
reported to have replied: "Uba is a young man who worked hard to help the
PDP to win the last election in Anambra State". Attempt by the reporters
to engender a presidential dialogue on the crisis in Anambra State could
hardly proceed because of Mr. President's contempt for the way most of us
ordinary people have perceived the crisis. He vehemently objected to a
reporter's suggested association of Mr. Uba with the abduction of Dr.
Ngige. Hear Mr. President: "Stop! Stop there! I say stop there! What do
you mean by abduction? You are saying something that you do not know
anything about. Who abducted whom? I ask you, who abducted whom?"
This is the closest ordinary folks
outside the corridors of power have come to glimpse the President's
mindset on the Anambra crisis. As for Mr. Uba, in all fairness to the
"young man", he has made no more claim than that he, and not the people,
installed Ngige in power in Anambra State, thus confirming the fact that
in Anambra State, the PDP stole the peoples' mandate. In all of these my
heart goes out to Deacon Reverend Barrister Chief Femi Fani-Kayode who has
been doing a relentless heck of a job talking about The Presidency's
neutrality in the Anambra crisis. Surely, neutrality has a different
meaning in the political lexicon of the presidential public affairs
assistant.
From the above glimpse of the
President's mindset on the Anambra crisis, two simple issues are obvious.
First, the President believes that PDP won the election in Anambra State.
He is entitled to his view as a party man. But at a time when our
President does not know that DPK (kerosene) was more costly than PMS
(petrol), and that there is abject poverty in the land, it leaves me
wondering. The claim that PDP won the gubernatorial elections in Anambra
State means that Anambra people are so cheap that after the stalemated
regime of Dr. Mbadinuju and his political godfather, Sir Emeka Offor, they
still voted for PDP-a party that held their lives hostage for four good
years without anything to show for it. The President has so much disdain
for Anambra people to think that even with a more viable alternative to
the mess created by the President's party, the opposition APGA could not
win and did not win the gubernatorial election in Anambra State.
Second, the President believes
that Mr. Uba is entitled to be compensated for the outstanding job the
"young man" did for PDP in Anambra state. The young man's investment must
yield dividend. This volte-face from the theory of bad political
investment on the part of the President is not really surprising. In
politics all things are possible. Those who expect that The Presidency has
all it takes to douse the raging flame in Anambra State are right in some
ways. If not for any other reason, the major actors belong to the same
party, and have already declared the crisis a "family affair". And the
President is the overall de facto leader of his party, this demented
"family". Perhaps, the President would have long ago counseled Ngige on
how all the young and old men and women who worked hard to help the PDP
win the presidential elections were "settled" at the federal level. It
seems that Ngige's willingness to "settle" in not in doubt. What appears
to be the issue, is what and how much settlement is good enough in the
interest of good governance and the people. The irony of Ngige is that he
now relies on, and defends the peoples' interest, the same people whose
mandate his party usurped.
As things have turned out,
even unbeknownst to him, Ngige now stands as a nemesis for his
hostage-takers literarily and figuratively in resisting but not yet
breaking the cycle of political brigandage and godfatherism in Anambra
State. In a converse direction to the President and in the interest of
good governance and the people, Ngige has made a volte-face from his
initial commitment to his godfathers. Unlike the President, he is not
known to have promised bad investment without dividend to his sponsors,
but he seems to have insisted on a conscionable measure of dividend that
does not completely short-change the people as his predecessor appears to
have done.
To be
continued
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