As the Curtain Falls on John Okpa...
By Oke Epia
Just as the fall of the curtain usually heralds the exit of actors on stage, the life performance put up by Chief John Oyom Okpa came to an unexpected end last Thursday. The frontline Cross Rivers State politician bowed to death's cruel blow with so much yet that he could have offered.
Okpa, from the Atam ethnic extraction in Obubra Local Government, had only last June, returned to the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) after a sojourn in the realm of political irrelevance.
Until his death and especially during the days of intense politicking predating the 1999 gubernatorial elections, Okpa had built up a reputation for himself as a reliable grassroots mobilizer with adequate political clout to tilt the balance in the direction the favoured. It was such influence that he employed to help sway victory for Governor Donald Duke on his ticket he contested as running mate in 1999. Ironically, it was in the same government that he helped bring to power that he eventually cut to size in a manner left him in political wilderness until he died.
Okpa first hit it big in his political career when he became State chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), one of the two political parties decreed into existence during the aborted Third Republic. By being in the SDP, Okpa had the benefit of useful political romance with the late Major General Shehu Musa Yar'adua (rtd) and by extension, Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who inherited the political machinery bequeathed by the former.
And by the time the whistle sounded for the commencement of Fourth Republic politics, Okpa had successfully aligned himself with mainstream forces in Cross River and beyond. Accordingly, he played significant roles in the emergence of Governor Donald Duke as Chief Executive in 1999 after surprisingly ditching an extant alliance with political forces from the northern Senatorial district of the State.
And that was how Okpa emerged as Deputy to Duke, a position he held until serious misunderstanding bordering on the former's ambition to succeed his boss in 2003, broke in the relationship between the duo.
Having fallen out of favour with Duke, Okpa became exposed to the darts fired at political foes from which impacts he could not survive. Thus on January 29, 2003, Okpa resigned his job as Deputy Governor to save himself the imminent disgrace of impeachment by the State House of Assembly.
Smarting from the injury inflicted on him in the PDP and seeking to actualize his gubernatorial ambition, Okpa quickly defected to the rival All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), moving what was left of his support base along with him. Though he had no qualms in picking the governorship ticket of the party, the former deputy governor could however not match up the strength and savy of his former boss. Shortly before the polls, he was arrested on a number of charges and kept out of circulation till the season of voting and counting had lapsed. Thus, Okpa lost the elections and inevitably started off on a spell of political oblivion from which he somewhat loosed himself by retracing his steps back into the PDP fold.
Though those he crossed paths with in the state had expressed some misgivings about his return to the party, it sure would have been interesting to see how Okpa would have played his cards. Unfortunately, the ultimate powers that be have wielded the big stick thereby putting a destined but abrupt end to the shuffling of his undisclosed aces.
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