Tuesday 1 January 2013

Governors or gods?


Governors or gods?
No group or section of the polity should curse the year that ends today as viciously as the state governors of this great country. For this group, 2012 is a year they would forever wish to declare as that which should belong to infamy and would pray fervently that a year like this should not come about ever again.
The year was so unfair to our gubernatorial overlords that there is a temptation to feel that the massive misfortunes that visited them in the course of the last 12 months was paranormal and that those who were unscathed should undergo lengthy periods of deliverance and pray that a replay or continuation does not become the case in 2013. Even as we read this, the gentle governor of Kogi State, Captain Idris Wada is battling for his life at an Abuja hospital after his auto convoy was involved in a ghastly accident which claimed the life of his aide-de-camp.
He was reportedly retuning from a function in Ayangba and was involved in the accident when his car’s front tyre reportedly busted between Ajaokuta and his state capital. Both the hospital and his media aide have assured that he is in a stable condition, even as other reports have it that he is yet to emerge from danger because of the complex nature of his injuries.
The country had hardly recovered from the shock of the death of Governor Patrick Yakowa of Kaduna State who was killed three weeks ago, alongside the former NSA, General Andrew Azazi, following the helicopter crash in which they were involved in Bayelsa State. Kaduna State, and in deed Nigeria, is still very much enveloped with grief at the death from the Bayelsa crash as the burial ceremony of the late NSA took place at Yenagoa just last Saturday as the Kogi governor was writhing in pain at Abuja.
The Yakowa death is still so fresh that the new governor that stepped into in his shoes just got a deputy. These facts are an indication of how fresh the last deaths are before the Wada crash of last Friday. The plight of some other governors might not be so sore, yet they are harrowing enough. The fate of Governor Suntai of Taraba State is still uncertain as he languishes at a hospital in Germany to where he was taken after he sustained serious injuries from a crash of a small aircraft which he was piloting himself. While reports of his situation remain scanty, what one can glean from pieces of news that have filtered out from very inside sources indicate that Governor Suntai might not be in a physical or mental condition to run Taraba State soon, if ever.
As devious political calculations keep information of his condition scanty and out of reach of the people who elected him, Taraba State continues to drift dangerously like a yo-yo. The situation of Taraba State is even better in comparison to Enugu State because even as the Taraba people are at least aware that their governor is indisposed healthwise and as the news that some governors – Peter Obi and Chibuike Amechi – had visited him, the fate of Governor Sullivan Chime remains a shameful mystery where some people have decided to keep the whereabouts of a governor, elected under definite constitutional provisions stays away from office for more than three months, out of the knowledgeable of the very Enugu State people who he is supposed to be governing.
Nobody can today tell you where Chime is nor what he is doing there, nor even when he would return if ever. In the process, some tin gods continue to wield power on his behalf at the bewilderment of the teeming population of the state. However, no matter how much hide-and-seek the people who are oiling the oddity in Enugu state, would want to embark on, something is very clear, Governor Sullivan Chime is ill and seriously so.
In these days and age, events and activities of people in public positions is like a pregnancy; you can hide it only for a few weeks or even months, but when the tummy obeys nature through protrusion, the truth become obvious to all. While it is only a few privileged sources that are aware of Chime’s illness, and perhaps of the efforts at his convalescence, his unexplained long absence has not only made his incapacity obvious to all, it has continued to fuel wicked rumors of his death.
And he and his aides have only themselves to blame for it. Also on the list of the state executives who have been kept on AWOL by health constraints – even when many might not accept it – is Governor Liyel Imoke of Cross River State whose aides are also playing hide and seek with the policy over the condition and whereabouts of the man who the Cross Riverians elected to govern them.
I would want to make it clear that there is no attempt to gloat over the health situation of the governors nor to make the situation light. But it is hard for me not to comment on what has become an embarrassing tendency for many of the elected governors and their aides to wish to privatize the power and authority that was bestowed to them by the electorate under clear and non-ambiguous provisions. I must equally point out that the governors and their aides learnt this very bad habit from the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and the infamous Katsina Cabal, which had believed the presidency was Yar’Adua’s birthright and it could be privatized and held down for him, even when he had lost the control of his faculties.
Today, in Enugu State for instance, nobody has presented the 2013 budget because Governor Chime is not available, and worse still, his whereabouts and situation are unknown. Meanwhile, some crooks are running affairs at his behest, but definitely not the deputy governor, who, everybody knows is a mere helpless stooge. I call the people who run affairs there as crooks because they are acting in illegality and in exercise of powers and authority they lack the right and authority to wield. Ditto for the other states where the people are being held hostage by the absence of the governor beyond the period or time span allowed by the Constitution. The sad truth today is that the governors have made themselves above the law and nobody can do anything about it.
They have rather become the law unto themselves and even riding roughshod of the Constitution which they all swore to protect and defend. While the president is routinely held to ransom by the National Assembly and the Judiciary, a fact that make the president consult them routinely, the state assemblies and judiciaries dare not dare their Imperial Excellencies, who in any case cannot even be dared by the president. Somebody has said it that any day democracy and all that goes with it goes into eclipse in this country, it would be through the omission or commission of the governors.
While some governors have so far managed to run the affairs of their state with decorum, respect of the rule of law and the mandate given to them by the people under God’s watch, some have clearly started playing God, while daring everybody else to go to hell. Let me give a few instances. Two months ago, it was reported that Governor Wammako of Sokoto State who had sworn to obey, respect and defend the human rights of all, physically assaulted a fellow Nigerian who he reportedly flogged with horsewhips till the man allegedly writhed in pain, all in the line of his duty.
Even though the governor who has all the paraphernalia of turning darkness into daylight, denied the disgraceful act, other Nigerians, including the colleagues of that senior manager at the PHCN, did not buy the denials, and had, in their outrage, threatened to throw the entire state and its obvious more civilized inhabitants into darkness. A man who occupies such an exalted gubernatorial position had obviously believed that he was above the law as to have treated a fellow adult Nigerian with such incivility.
Wammako believed he was no more an ordinary Nigerian, being a governor had made him a god. He, like some of his colleagues now plays God. Take the very sad situation of Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State, who by several acts, seems to clearly believe in his divine position, so much so, that neither the laws of the country, the Constitution or the dignity of his fellow Nigerians mean anything to him. In deed, it would be an understatement to state that Owelle Rochas is playing God, it would be more correct that he would want to teach God how to play God.
Currently in the news is the allegation that his convoy had confronted that of Senator Christy Anyanwu for daring to share a road with his Imperial Lordship, and as the cloud cleared, the aides of the senator were dripping with blood and nursing broken limbs. And as should be expected, Okorocha’s spin doctors ran to the media to create the impression that the senator was the assailant who had wanted to assassinate the governor. Of course, nobody would be sane enough to believe Owelle Okorocha who has created an easy reputation for regularly swimming against the tide of legality.
Even if the Imo State governor’s aides had convinced the whole world to believe his own side of the story against Senator Anyanwu, they would be attempting the impossible to deny the fact that Governor Okorocha and his ADC had physically assaulted aides of Governor Peter Obi at Enugu last October when we were assembling to honour Dr. Alex Alex Ekwueme for his 80th birthday.
The reason is that I was there physically and witnessed the shameful act of gubernatorial high-handedness, first hand. Other Nigerians did not need to be physically present to learn of the high-handed and illegal nature with which Okorocha had dealt with elected Local Government officials who he has continued to frustrate from exercising their mandate through a series of subterfuges. Nor does anyone need to live in Imo State to learn of the announcement of the governor when he arbitrarily and insensitively declared a two-week holiday for all the public servants in his state at the end of the year. It could not have mattered to the Imo State chief executive that such an action is unprecedented in the history of the country, neither could he be bothered that beside his sycophants, every other group has condemned the declaration of the extended holiday.
The simple deduction is that just within less than two years of his stay in office, Okorocha has completely privatized governance of Imo State and in the process, decided not to be answerable to anyone or any institution except to himself. Translation is that Nigerians, as adherents of Christianity and Islam, know that the only Being that is not answerable to any authority is God, hence anybody who acts in a manner that arrogates to himself any temporal or divine authority that cannot be challenged, ipso facto, declares himself to be God. And in the purview of our two religions, playing God is the greatest possible offence.
Today, there are many Nigerians who believe that because God is a jealous Being who never brooks competition, His anger is instantly stoked at seeing some people playing God and making people to give to them the worship, honour and adoration owed to God only. It is with that sentiment in mind that many Nigerians believe that God must be very angry with many of our governors who have assumed the toga of omnipotence, in utter disregard of the oaths they had sworn to with the Bible or the Koran.
As this very difficult year winds up, made more difficult for the ordinary Nigerians by the high-handedness of many of those who we had elected to guide and govern us, it is my prayer, as it is the wish of many of our very-much shortchanged people that our leaders should have a change of heart and govern us with better humanity in the coming year. They should all appreciate that the year 2013 is spiritually a special one to us as a nation, as it is at the threshold of 2014,when our amalgamated nation would attain a centenary in our efforts to build a nation.
It is, therefore, a trying year, when the psychological sensors in all of us should be most sensitive. And therefore, we should all strive very hard to ensure that the centre continues to hold. Meanwhile, while we move into the New Year, it should be a time of serious sober reflection for our governors, who should meditate on the sore predicament of some of their colleagues this year and, therefore, rededicate themselves to their oath of office.
For if they continue to desecrate or abuse the oath which they swore to with our two sacred books, how they would expect that God will forever remain silent? By the virtue of the collective mandate we gave our governors, we had also surrendered our collective destinies to them; we wither as they wither, and blossom as they do. May the Almighty grant us all a safer and more prosperous 2013…but that is if we all continue to play by the rules!
TheSun

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