On 24th March 2012, Chief Rochas Okorocha, then less than a year
in office as Imo State Governor, was in Kosovo where he signed a Memorandum of
Understanding (MOU) for an independent power plant, an agro processing plant
and several other industries that he promised would be established in his
state. There were neither feasibility studies nor any clear ideas as to where
the money to finance these projects would come from but those sorts of things
never really worry the ebullient governor.
A few weeks before the trip to the Balkan Peninsular, Okorocha had
declared a four-day holiday for workers in Imo State so they could partake in the take-off of the Community
Council Government (CCG) he instituted. And for this extra-constitutional
fourth-tier of government, the governor approved the disbursement of N5 million
to each of the communities in the 27 local councils from a subvention of N3
billion that was not captured in the 2012 Imo State Appropriation Bill.. He
also declared free education at all levels in the state after announcing that
he would be paying salaries to all the primary school pupils (yes, pupils, not
teachers alone). And to be sure, Okorocha actually went to some primary schools
where the pupils were lined up for him to hand them N100 each!
From
appointing chief comedian for the state to announcing the establishment of
several gigantic projects without any design or funding plan before graduating
into erecting statues in Owerri, Okorocha made it clear right from Day One that
he was not going to follow any conventional rule book. But in writing about the
governor’s visit to Kosovo—a disputed territory in South-easternEurope—in May 2012, my interest was fired by what I
watched on the African Independent Television (AIT) news.
In the course of the bilateral session, Okorocha’s host, the
Deputy Prime Minister of Kosovo, Mr Behgdey Pacconi, spoke in Albanian, the
main official language of his country thus necessitating having an English
interpreter. When it was his turn to respond, Okorocha decided to speak Igbo.
With that, a former senator on his delegation had to be translating what the
governor was saying into English before the Kosovo interpreter now translated
it into Albanian for his host.
Although I did not mention the name of the former Senator involved
in the ‘Icheoku’ drama when I first wrote about that hilarious episode in May
2012, he is no other than my friend, Osita Izunaso, the current National
Organising Secretary of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) whose name
Okorocha is now invoking as the brain behind the successful coup that has
wrestled the party from his hands in Imo State. In his lamentation at the
weekend, Okorocha said: “I have informed the public that there was no (Ward)
congress whatsoever in Imo State. Rather, the material for the
congress was missing and it was traced to the house of the APC National
Organising Secretary (Izunaso).”
It is difficult to believe that this is the same Okorocha who
boasted less than a month ago not only that he would contest for the Imo West
Senatorial seat in 2019 so as to “brighten the chances of President Muhammadu
Buhari” and prevent “bad people from taking the position” but also that his
son-in-law, Uche Nwosu will be the next governor of Imo State because “favour
has found the young man. It is God and not me. There is no place in the
constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria that says that an in-law cannot
be governor.”
Now that he has been dealt a fatal political blow, Okorocha has
been running from Daura to Abuja though from available reports, there
was indeed no credible APC ward congress in Imo State as he
argues. But I also understand that what transpired was no different from what
the governor himself had perfected only that this time, he was at the receiving
end. The lesson of course is that when desperate politicians, especially those
who know each other so well, engage in an intricate power dance, it is usually
a zero sum game. Okorocha made the job easy for Izunaso and others with the
arrogance of power that united all the opposition forces
in Imo State against him.
Before I continue, let me say very quickly that I admire Okorocha,
a very charming politician with an extraordinary sense of humour. But he has
refused to imbibe the wisdom in the Igbo adage that you do not sell a chicken
with broken legs in a nearby market. Besides, it is also common for dictatorial
tendencies to be hidden behind a mask of charisma by leaders who deploy such
disguise to cover up for their intolerance. Since people like Okorocha believe
they are the center of the universe and that everything revolves around them,
it is difficult for anybody to offer any reasonable advice that could help them
in avoiding tragic pitfalls while those who do are most often taken as enemies
to be crushed.
That perhaps explains why two months ago, the Archbishop of Owerri
Catholic Archdiocese, Anthony Obinna, was harassed and almost attacked while
presiding over a funeral service for describing the attempt to foist a
son-in-law as Governor of Imo State as unacceptable. “Not the governor, not his
deputy, not even me can handpick and determine who governs Imo without recourse
to the will and votes of Imo people” said the Archbishop. Interested readers
can Google for the account of what transpired after that statement right inside
the church premises.
Meanwhile, the issue is not that Uche Nwosu lacks the
qualification to be governor or that he should be excluded from seeking the
office just because he is married to the incumbent’s daughter. It is also not
wrong for Okorocha to take interest in who succeeds him just as he has a right
to support whomsoever he chooses to back. The point the Archbishop was trying
to underscore, which many from Imo State have also harped upon, is the manner
in which the governor has been going about the endorsement of his son-in-law,
as if the people do not matter aside foreclosing the aspiration of other APC members
in the state, including that of his deputy, Prince Eze Madumere.
Okorocha’s response to Archbishop Obinna’s statement is indeed
very telling of how far removed from the reality of Imo politics he has
become.. “This time, it is Uche Nwosu because they have seen that he is the man
for 2019 with God on our side”, said Okorocha who added that “no amount of
blackmail or tricks would change the plan of God on the young man to govern the
state. It takes someone alive in the things of the Spirit to know that Uche
Nwosu is a child of destiny. He has the divine mark. And anyone fighting him is
fighting his God” said Okorocha who apparently sees himself as that God.
Unfortunately, Okorocha is not alone in this hubristic tendency;
it is a malaise that is common among almost all governors inNigeria. The desire
of practically every one of them is to spend eight years in office, install a
puppet as successor; go to Abuja to become an executive senator while still
remote-controlling the politics of their states. Indeed, that our country has
been reduced to no better than a banana republic can be glimpsed from the
absolute powers held by some of these governors.
In many of the states, personal loyalty or reward for some past
favour dictates the issue of succession. In 2015, for instance, an outgoing
governor in one of the northern states manipulated the gubernatorial primaries
of his party in his state to anoint an unpopular candidate. The rumour among
prominent politicians in the state was that the gubernatorial ticket was
payback for the man in question (who incidentally is now late) because he
donated one of his kidneys to this (now former) governor.
It is indeed sad, if not tragic, that the main pre-requisite for
seeking to be governor is no longer about the ability of the aspirants or any
desire for public good but rather on their affinity to the incumbents. Because
of that, according to a commentator, Taneh Beemene, “morally depraved persons
and half-baked nitwits have been handpicked to occupy political offices to perpetuate
deceit and remit the spoils of such offices to their godfathers at the expense
of the masses who are hapless spectators.”
For Nigeria to develop and thrive, we must change that
paradigm. While the focus is almost always on the presidency, we have to pay
more attention to what happens in the 36 states and the 774 local governments.
We must understand that one of the reasons why many are always reluctant when
the issue of devolution of power from the centre to the states is discussed is
the fact that given our experience, accountability diminishes as you move away
fromAbuja.
Surrounded by Yes-men who pander to their vanity while treating
them like demi-gods, many of the governors behave as though above the law. We
can see that in the changing character of the Senate to where many of these
former governors have graduated, a legislative chamber that is fast becoming
their retirement home. As former chief executives of their states who had no
temperament for dissent, any Senator that does not toe the popular line is now
met with suspension oblivious to the fact that freedom of expression, including
those “that offend, shock or disturb”, according to the European Court of Human
Rights, is the hallmark of a democratic society.
All said, I don’t know how Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, the in-coming
National Chairman of the ruling APC, is going to address the problem but he
already has his job cut out for him. If there is anything that the ward and
local government congresses of the ruling party have exposed, it is the fact
that APC is not in any way different from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in
terms of electoral manipulations and predilection to violence. But whichever
way the Imo State APC problem is resolved, I hope Okorocha and fellow
travellers get the message: If our democracy is to deliver on public good, we
cannot continue with a situation in which political power is so privatised that
it is now traded almost as a commodity between some benevolent godfathers and
their godsons.
*Mr. Adeniyi chairs the Editorial Board of ThisDaynewspaper
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