By Segun Ayobolu
For several weeks since the gory visitation of the dreaded Coronavirus to the shores of Nigeria, it was all silent on the Edo State sector of the ever turbulent and tempestuous battlefield of the country’s political terrain. Before the truce necessitated by the need to confront a vicious but invisible common enemy with a capacity to wipe out lives in multiples, his adversaries expended considerable time, energy and material resources towards removing the National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), comrade Adams Oshiomhole, from office.
For the Edo State governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, the removal of Oshiomhiole from office was a task that had to be done to help Smoothen his path to a much cherished second term in office. The bitter falling out between the governor and his erstwhile benefactor and predecessor in office resulted in the National Chairman being perceived as a major obstacle to the realization of Obaseki’s desire in this regard. And from his colleagues in Kaduna and Ekiti states in particular, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai and Dr. Kayode Fayemi, Obaseki reportedly received support in the bid to dislodge Oshiomhole all as part of calculations with the 2023 presidential ticket of the APC in sight.
The anti-Oshiomhole forces however failed to convince key stakeholders in the party that, despite his shortcomings, the National Chairman had committed any offence warranting a sanction as severe as removal from office.
Before Oshiomhole’s adversaries could regroup to launch a fresh salvo, the Coronavirus struck paralyzing activities across the country not excluding the political terrain. The restriction on movement imposed across the country in response to the pandemic forced many previously ever gallivanting governors to stay in their states and face the often abandoned task of governance in their jurisdictions.
One would have thought that the Coronavirus pandemic and the grave threat it poses both to lives and livelihoods would have forced key political actors to reflect profoundly on and rethink the character and quality of politics in the country. For those governors with their minds fixated on the 2023 presidential contest even when the Buhari administration is still in the first year of its second term, for instance, the Coronavirus offers a poignant reminder of the fragility of life and the unreliability of human plans and projections.
Following his close brush with the Coronvirus, a naturally brash, brusque and intemperate Governor Nasir el- Rufai of Kaduna State appears more sober and reflective in his public utterances and disposition. He avers that he would not wish his worst enemy to experience an infection by the virus. The el-Rufai we used to know would readily and unrepentantly feed his perceived enemies to the sharks of deadly viruses.
But not anymore it appears- reluctant thanks to almighty Coronavirus. If this pandemic will have a sobering, humbling effect on Nigeria’s men and women of power thus fundamentally changing their attitudes to the contestation for and utilization of public office, it would be an unintended fallout of an otherwise tragic situation.
It would however appear that hardly any lessons are being learnt by most of the country’s political actors from a Coronavirus pandemic that has exposed more than ever before the fragility of the country’s public healthcare system which, for practical purposes, is virtually non-existent. In the same vein, the pervasive poverty in which the majority of Nigerians live, which makes them readily vulnerable to easily curable diseases not to talk of incurable ones like the present pandemic, is inexcusable given the huge revenues reaped from crude oil sales for prolonged periods of post-independence history in Nigeria.
Yet, the level of Nigeria’s underdevelopment relative to the country’s resource endowment is largely a function of the nature of her politics and the consequent abysmal and dysfunctional quality of governance it throws up. The fierce and unstructured contestation for political power in Nigeria is invariably motivated by a desire to utilize public office as means of primitive accumulation through the criminal ‘privatization’ of public resources. Thus, there is a direct correlation between the asymmetrical accumulation of wealth by those who have had access to state power at various times in post-colonial Nigeria and the paucity of resources to provide qualitative infrastructure, viable employment, adequate security and critical social services for the vast majority of the Nigerian people.
This is how and why ‘politics underdevelops Nigeria’ to borrow the evocative phraseology of the late Claude Ake. Is there any indication that our politicians are utilizing this period of reduced activity due to the Coronavirus pandemic to press the reset button for politics in Nigeria and redirect the quest for power from self glorification and pecuniary acquisition to that of promoting the greatest good of the greatest number of Nigerians? The resumption of fierce partisan hostilities in Edo State with the forthcoming September governorship election in view does not suggest that this is so.
Firing the first salvo, the state government during the week accused members of the Edo Peoples Movement (EPM), a political pressure group, of having held mock primaries to pick a consensus candidate to contest the APC primaries against Obaseki. The meeting, which allegedly held at a private residence in Benin at the behest of Oshiomhole and in utter disregard for the social distancing guidelines issued by the state to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus, could not reach a consensus. If true, this portrays the organizers of the event as placing premium on their quest to dislodge Obaseki from office above the safety of lives in the state.
Of course, those accused of organizing the mock primaries have vehemently denied the allegation and challenged Obaseki “to prove his allegation of a crowded “meeting of more than 50 persons” by releasing a video of such event”. Condemning what they saw as Obaseki’s continued unwarranted demonization of Oshiomhole, the governor’s adversaries went on to make the damaging allegation that “Even in the current fight against COVID-19, he does not care about the sufferings of the people but is busy converting the opportunity for embezzlement, embarking on political campaign in the 192 wards under the guise of personal sensitization campaign against Coronavirus. The state was shocked when he announced they had already spent over One billion Naira on the pandemic within two weeks. Till today there is no lockdown in Edo State in order to avoid spending on palliatives”.
The sad thing is that rather than unite to fight a common enemy that poses a grave danger to lives and livelihoods across partisan, religious, class and ethno-cultural lines, the political class remains bitterly divided in Edo State as the battle for the September governorship election has resumed in earnest Coronavirus be damned. This is why Lagos State offers a refreshing example again when a number of political parties issued a statement last week thanking the Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu administration for carrying opposition party members along in the distribution of palliatives to vulnerable sections of the public.
It would appear to me that Obaseki is unduly fixated on Oshiomhole and he apparently still desires that his predecessor as governor be removed from office as National Chairman. But beyond Oshiomhole, the 19 prominent indigenes of Edo State that signed the public statement denouncing Obaseki and supporting Oshiomhole are definitely not non-entities. They include successful professionals in diverse fields, former members of the federal and state executive councils, former governorship aspirants in the state as well as former and current members of the National Assembly. How could an incumbent governor with the resources and immense influence at his disposal have amassed such a formidable field of opponents if there is not something fundamentally wrong with his politics?
But then, the situation is not peculiar to Edo State. In Ondo State, there is allegedly no love lost between Governor Rotimi Akeredolu and his Deputy while members of the Unity Forum within the APC opposed to Akeredolu’s second term are engaged in stiff intra-group struggle to pick a consensus candidate to face the governor in the primaries. And in Ekiti state, the former Governor Ayo Fayose and Senator Abiodun Olujimi’s factions are embroiled in a bitter struggle to control the PDP structures in the state.
This is also most likely to be the situation across the country. Yes, politics essentially will always be about the contestation of competing individuals and groups for the acquisition and utilization of political power. But if the primary motivation for this all important activity does not shift fundamentally from the quest for power for its own sake or for wealth accumulation to the promotion of rapid development for the benefit of the majority of the citizenry, no lessons would have been learnt from the Coronavirus crisis.
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