Many developments in the last few months have exposed the weaknesses that the Nigerian polity is made of – brute force and backward to say the least. Here is a government that is under threat from and a threat to the center where 5 out of 32-member state assembly are determined to remove a governor. We saw this in the case of Joshua Dariye during his battles with General Obasanjo. We saw it in Ibadan, Yenagoa and other places in the first 8 years of this civil rule.
Rotimi Amaechi is continuously winning the sympathy of majority of Nigerians who see the brute and uncivilized forces against him in Rivers State. Those who desire to remove him from office are by the day intensifying their plot apparently in astonishment of the vast majority of the citizens of the state and the country.
However, the irony about the Port-Harcourt drama is that it is supported by certain segments in the society outside the powers that be in Abuja. There are Nigerians who out of their myopism justifying the crude approach in Rivers state citing very illogical and pedestrian reasons as basis for this backwardness.
Some of these people are even professors teaching in the universities and outside of it. I have a practical case in point which really amazed me. I interacted with a few of my colleagues a few days ago on the matter and the partisan positions that some of those supposed egg heads advanced were so discouraging that any hope of building a free and egalitarian society in Nigeria would be either a difficult one or an impossible enterprise.
If a university professor would see reason in the manner the presidency is desperate to remove Amaechi on the grounds that he is supporting a Hausa man to take over the presidency from his Niger Delta kinsman only for him to be a vice president, then, reason has given way to irrationality.
I don’t know if there can be any worst pedestrian understanding of the crisis at hand. In any case, the nation seems to be silent in the face of tyranny and in my view that is a sign of the degree of decadence that the people are in.
A few weeks ago, Edo State Governor Adams Oshiomhole accused the leadership of the Nigerian labor movement of keeping silent in the face of tyranny. I agree with him that both the NLC and TUC have not come out publicly to tell President Jonathan and other co-trailers in the PDP that indeed there was and there is no crisis in the Nigeria Governors Forum. There was an election by 35 people and 19 voted one way while 16 went the other way.
Under the western liberal contraption of democracy anchored on the philosophy of one man one vote, it is clear that the will of the 19 voters was and is indeed superior to those of 16. There cannot be confusion in this case, but because the presidency stood and is still standing behind the minority 16, deliberate confusion was created in the forum and as its stand today, the majority 19 are haunted and victimized by the center especially those of them in the PDP.
Amaechi himself cautioned the leadership of the Nigeria Bar Association for keeping quiet in the face of tyranny. His position which aptly captured my views on the matter too was that their ‘silence on the matter was not golden.’ Neither the NLC, TUC nor the NBA, to the best of my knowledge, took heed from the words of Oshiomhole and Amaechi. They still are quiet and in my view that is more frightening than the Rambo style politics that Abuja is displaying in Rivers.
Just Tuesday this week, some four PDP governors were in Port-Harcourt on solidarity visit to Amaechi. A crowd of ‘angry Rivers youth’, as defined them, held the governors hostage at the airport for hours. Reports equally suggested that the governors were stoned by the so-called angry youth.
In the last week, it was reported that Patience, President Jonathan’s wife had indeed owned up to the fact that she is angry with Rivers state governor and said reasons why. Whatever that means, the message here is that the chicken seems to be gradually coming home to roost. In the last many years, several Nigerians have questioned the propriety of the roles that the wives of Presidents and Governors are playing in the running of government. Reason for this question is partly due to fear of abuses as we have on our hands today.
Of course there have been these and other types of abuses at the center and in some states over time. I do not think if the current one displayed by Mrs Jonathan with the apparent support of her husband is alarming and gargantuan. This in my view is unbearable and dangerous to the nation’s civil rule project.
I am worried that those who should stake their necks and talk on this protracted political exhumation in Rivers by Abuja seem to be keeping quiet. Only the opposition parties and those ‘recalcitrant’ PDP governors are talking. Do we realize that if this abuse reaches its crescendo we all will be the victims?
Do President Jonathan and his cabal think in the event the center could no longer hold, any segment of the polity would be spared? Or is this a case of losing all as long as we as a cabal stand to lose in any future political arithmetic?
Just when I was about rounding up this piece I came across a brilliant political mathematics posted by Nasir el-Rufai where it was succinctly presented that in the current mathematics equation of Nigerian politics, 16 greater than 19 and that 5 is also greater than 27. This is no news because we have seen something similar recently in otherwise newly democratic Egypt where imperialism under the leadership of the United States despite its claim of zero tolerance for military coup in fact covertly instigated the Egyptian military and overthrew the first democratically elected government in the country.
Soon after the overthrow, the only thing that came from the USA and Europe was that the military should facilitate early return to civil rule. The meaning of that is what I am finding difficult to understand since the development in that country reached its crescendo.
I am worried, really worried, that hypocrisy is taking over as the essence and strategy of governance. It is not likely that this can continue for too long because societies that thrive on injustice hardly see the light of day. Nigeria cannot make any progress under this atmosphere of persecution and preference for selfish ends against the good of the society. I am worried that the crisis deliberately perpetuated by the government in Abuja will do more harm to the government at the center and the people than good.
What needs to be done is that those who must speak must, and the time is now. Silence in the face of tyranny is never golden; in fact it is dangerous and self-destructive.
Those who are heating the polity should know that they are the greatest beneficiaries of the current arrangement and stand to be the most losers in the event that they force the system to either crash-land or fail.
God save Nigeria.
