On The Anambra Non-Sequitor

It certainly did not occur to me that the blind wind of change in Awka would be this complacent and that ex-King Ngige would abdicate the throne he was assisted to usurp, this quietly and just like that. I expected a Katrinamic swipe which would sweep the protagonists and antagonists of the Anambra misfortune into the ready arms of historical irrelevance. I expected the former king to continue to cling on to the vestige of the pact of illegality and illegitimacy that thrust him and his ilk on our political stratosphere and eventually get consumed the Mobutu way. I did not expect him to ‘respect the rule of law and the sanctity of the Judiciary’. And I mostly did not expect that he would go right ahead to admonish us all that, ‘people in authority should endeavour to obey court rulings, no matter how unpalatable they may be’ (The Guardian, Thursday, March 23, 2006). You may think I do not express hallowed sentiments here simply because that pact with Uba packed up from day one. But there is always something in the swashbuckling of a carpetbagger that predisposes him to exhibit an avaricious a personality.

There will never be a respite from the original sin that Ngige was the one selected as a willing tool of plunder of my kinsmen in Anambra (the way they abound in various parts of this country). That he made a volte-face from the original agenda and posed as the Anambra messiah by contributing to the ‘development’ of the state (that is what is said he has done) cuts no ice with me. The choice he had in the matter was equivalent to Hobson’s-if he did not ‘deliver’ in the event of his estrangement from a godfather who is a younger version of a Lamidi Adedibu, what else was there for him to achieve? What development he is said to have made, I hardly saw when I visited a friend and used the opportunity to see things for myself sometime ago (See: Amawbia: Another view of Anambra, Daily Independent, September 28, 2005).

This is why I am of the opinion that it is only when we arrest and prosecute both the active and passive participants of the three-year siege on Anambra State that we can up the dividends of the judicial abdication of Dr. Ngige and restore sanity to a polluted political and economic environment. The way things are now, the present governor has the sort of clout that a Barkin Zuwo had in the Second Republic. Unfortunately, that is not what we are thinking and talking about today. We seem overwhelmed and bowled over with the fact that at last, the usurper has been toppled by civilized, and very painstaking methods. We exult, and like King Kong we beat our chests in an ululation that justice at last has been served. As it is now, we are not worried and not worked up how the APGA governor will swim through the shark-infested waters of the PDP-dominated Anambra legislative house. Nobody seems concerned that this sad, seamy part of our history has added yet another inferior block to our foundation as a nation. At the end of the day, we would be somewhere lying very comfy in our graves when the weak edifices we build now with our weak political approaches to incidences like the Anambra abracadabra will collapse like a pack of cards and like the buildings in Lagos ( veritable evidences of the shoddy jobs that were carried out by those who were yesterday’s builders).

Nigerians (I am sure) would really love a situation where we will not have to glamorize any of the civilian and military champions amongst us who have done so much to set our wheel of progress spinning wildly in the wrong direction. Look at Babangida. Look at Buhari (and as an aside, look at the situation in France too). Look at the present crop of politicians that bestride today’s narrow landscape. Look at Ngige. Look at Uba. Look at Adedibu. Look at Anenih. Look at most of our governors. Look at some senators whose little fingers drip with the red palm oil that stains the dignity of the entire Senate. In the past, with either the instrumentality of the gun or the unscrupulous manipulation of the ballot, they amassed so much money and so much wealth that ordinarily benumbs us to the fact that these are ordinary criminals who should be treated as lepers merely allowed to live among decent society.

Sometime ago, erstwhile Ghanaian president Jerry Rawlings had all of his privileges as a former president stripped off by President John Kuffor because Rawlings was said to be less than magisterial and presidential in his public utterances. That did not make the Ghanaian heavens fall. As a matter of fact, this introduced some sanity in a system polluted with the false sense of invincibility and immunity that that past leader thought he enjoyed. And it was only when the erstwhile Ghanaian was deemed to have taken a cue from the limitations imposed on him that those privileges were restored. Why can’t we have the courage to haul both Ngige and Uba, and all of the known enemies of progress in Anambra in, at least for questioning? How do we expect a Peter-Obi administration to succeed in a state that is under the control of a cabal as an individual and as a party? The Court of Appeal decision against Ngige has not addressed the issue in Anambra politics. What happened (in Enugu, March 15 2006) has the effect a rubber hammer would on a Mount Kilimanjaro. I believe that justice will have been properly dispensed when those who rigged their way into Awka three years ago are brought in to explain their respective roles in that Anambra debacle.