Oby’s withdrawal and Naija’s political future

It’s difficult to say how one felt reading that Oby Ezekwesili aka Madam Due Process has pulled out of the 2019 presidential race. There are those like me who say that she ought not to have dabbled into politics the way she did and that the timing was wrong. Now we are wont to agree with the incredulous electoral umpire, INEC that her resignation fouls the 45-day period specified by our electoral law for candidates to pull out or make alliances. So, technically Oby’s name remains on the ballot paper, which by now should be reading like a leaf from the Torah with its long names and phony symbols.

I am equally shocked at facts emerging since her pullout. The late strongman of Kwara politics, Olusola Saraki, founded her now quondam party, the APTN allegedly to pave the way for his anointed daughter after he defected from the PDP backstabbed by his son. The plot did not work but the skeletal structure was not disbanded. How an erudite Oby ended up plunging with sharks in shallow waters would baffle her biographers. Within hours of her announced withdrawal, her party basically disowned her. By declaring its support for the APC candidate, it gave fillip to wagging tongues that she joined scam artists to negotiate for a ministerial appointment. Those who peddle this malicious fallacy have not told us under which party.

Her quondam friends did not stop at that, they’re asking her to account for the donation she received on behalf of the party and return same to the party’s coffers. With this, they imply without a scintilla of proof to impressionable minds that she must have built a nest egg from her declaration. It is not difficult to imagine though her party might not have had the structure on ground to win a council election, her international clout and friendly contacts with onyiocha meant she could have been swimming in dollars. Until she gives her account, her enemies would pot shots either for real or in their warped imaginations would hit some targets.

This is why most good people shun our style of politicking. A good name is difficult to build, but could be punctured for life by wild allegations – ask Atiku Abubakar! The Turaki of Adamawa could perhaps stand in MKO Abiola’s shoes – a local employer of labour, polygamist and philanthropist who ventures into the murky waters of politics. These lofty achievements fade into insignificance with the perilous allegations of graft leveled against him by his political frenemy, Olusegun Obasanjo in his dubious memoirs.

Atiku has not challenged the allegations either in any form either in writing or in a court of law. In the court of public opinion, silence means consent. Even with the unstable Obasanjo attempting to sell a reformed or ‘better Atiku’ to the electorate, some people are not buying into it.

Oby’s track records of innovation in public service are worthy legacies. She earned admiration by pioneering the Due Process procedure now notionally used for pseudo-accountability in the public service. She catalogued the nation’s 34 solid minerals. Her resilience in advocacy for the voiceless and the downtrodden places her in the pantheon of the likes of Olufunmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Margaret Ekpo, Gambo Sawaba, Laila Dogonyaro. Her activism for the girls in Boko Haram captivity brought her on a collision course and near death encounters with successive regimes. Give me a break, less celebrated turncoats have advocated their way into governance and the heavens did not fall. Oby has sellable international credentials to sell her conscience cheaply for a ministerial mess of porridge.

I remain vehemently opposed to her advocacy for the privatization of unity schools. A nation like ours must have institutions, no matter how nominal reminding us of our unity in diversity. Federal Government Colleges and the NYSC scheme come close to those institutions. Close to that is the federal character principle if it was applied to the First 11. I am persuaded that six decades after flag independence, the four winds of Naija have a First 11. If we keep pawning national patrimony because they do not work, we would someday have no oxygen left for citizens to breath. That is why every citizen must plant and nurture at least one tree in their lifetime. Living organisms create room for reform.

Could a third force be garnered, less than a month to a federal election to torpedo the two sides of the same coin messing up our lives in our clime? The answer is a resounding no. This nation is too fractured for it to raise such lofty dreams into reality. Not even the failed PACT that Oby denied being part of but an invited witness could have given that impetus at the time. If the Young Turks steadying their backs for electoral shellacking were serious about wresting power from the old guard, they would have to shed their cocoon of irreplaceability and work together ahead of time. Right now, they are too idealistic to do so and would remain illusory fringe players arrayed against the forces of rigging and ethno-religious politicking. Their pride is the nation’s loss.

Oby has time to pen her memoirs and with agility on her side, she’s got time to write a sequel. This adventure has left too many yawning gaps that only a tell-all could reveal.