Desperate for power

There is an overdose of desperation in the air, and we must earnestly work hard to ensure our country is not suffocated by it. Amongst the afflicted, include Imo and Ogun state governors. Both are desperate to write their succession plans in their own image, but they are unable to corral significant members of their party to their bidding. With their game plans falling apart, their excellences have become desperate and are hurling missiles with reckless abandon.

They act as if politics is not a game anymore. After all, in any game, where there is only one price to win, only one person wins it. They should accept that politics is a game and there can only be one legitimate candidate from the same political party, for any post in contest. If they come to terms with this reality, they will save themselves from the stress they are going through. Albeit, it is legitimate to wish to win every game, but it is illegitimate to want to win at all cost.

The reactions of Governors Ibikunle Amosun and Rochas Okorocha of Ogun and Imo states respectively, to the outcome of their state party primaries, give them out as desperados. Considering that they have ruled their respective states for eight years, the desperation they are exhibiting is unbecoming of what ordinarily is expected of their high office. The tantrums they are throwing at their party leaders gives the impression their lives are dependent on the success of their succession plans.

Why they are so desperate to ensure their preferred candidates succeed them beats the imagination. Could it be merely because they want somebody who will continue their legacy, or is it that they have something they will leave behind they want their preferred successor to protect from prying eyes? Who knows? Looking at the legacies of most of our governors, what they leave behind are bricks and mortar. If it is statues, bridges and buildings that Okorocha and Amosun are so desperate to protect, any person can look after that.

So they should take it easy. The accusation that Amosun is determined to foist his selected candidates for all the positions in contest in his state in the 2019 general election, levied against him by no less a person than the chairman of his party, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, may unfortunately define how he will be remembered, after his departure in May 2019. How he hopes to successfully enthrone his preferred candidates for all the positions in the state in a democratic contest, just like an emperor, beats imagination?

Of note, in all his tantrums against the party chairman and eminent party leaders outside the state, Amosun has not denied the allegation of such a desperate gamble, to be the alpha and omega of all those who will run for election in 2019, in Ogun State. His argument that the candidates he had personally announced publicly, well before the primary election were due, are consensus candidates, falls flat to any form of logical reasoning.

Working to the answer, all his preferred candidates allegedly won the primaries his faction of the party conducted outside party guidelines as stated by the chairman Adams Oshiomhole. Why Amosun and his team did not read the extant laws, which gives the national chairman of the party, the power to present the candidates of the party to INEC, should worry his desperate followers who lost of out in the primaries. How he merely hoped to run roughshod over the guidelines set by the party and INEC, defines his strategic competence.

On his part, Okorocha who has received generous dose of advice on this page, fell flat in his own gamble. This writer had urged Okorocha to assume the role of the leader of All Progressive Congress (APC) in south-east, after the 2015 elections. Considering that the party was victorious with minimal support from the south-east in 2015, we urged Governor Okorocha to wisely use his position to rally Ndigbo to carve a stake in the party, before the 2019 general elections. While thankfully, other eminent Igbo politicians have joined the APC, Okorocha has not lived up to the expectations of an early bird.

To make nonsense of the opportunities he has to gain some prominence in APC, Okorocha choose to foist his son-in-law on his state, as successor. Perhaps he has not bothered to examine the history of his state, with respect to how they deal with succession battles. To make matters worse, he has also worked into a dispute with the Catholic Church in the state, just like his predecessor, Ikedim Ohakim. With the alarm bells ringing loud, Okorocha is threatening his party, as if his political life must end in 2019.

To show that he may have made a mistake about the competence of his preferred gubernatorial candidate, the young man he wanted to succeed him, appears to have gone gaga, against his party for failing to acquiesce to his father-in-law’s failed succession plan. As if the gubernatorial price will be won by the enormity of vulgar abuse hurled at imaginary enemies, Okorocha’s candidate, Uche Nwosu, has busied himself with hurling all manner of invectives at the national chairman.

Surely the wind has blown and the unfurled feathers of the hen have exposed its anus. While Okorocha is clearly a gifted orator, the family dynasty he hoped to build must appreciate that this is not the time for meaningless cant. Rather, it is a time for introspection. The much he has achieved could be wasted if he dedicates his last months in office to fight a fight he should not have engineered in the first place. While he may not be the only nepotism afflicted leader around, he should have known that his people will not spare him.

With the desperation in the air so overwhelming, I hope that Nigerians will be wary in making their choices, at the polls. Party candidates are already making impossible promises, to gain advantage. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar have shown a strain of such desperation, by promising to crash the pump price of fuel from N145 to N90, if elected in 2019. The presidential candidate of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN), the cerebral Oby Ezekwesili, described the promise as a fraudulent misrepresentation of reality, otherwise known as 419, and I agree with her.

While the politicians may be desperate for power, Nigerians should be desperate for good governance. Without exception, they should demand for better representation from the legislators, and quality management of resources from the executive. Those who lack integrity in their previous incarnations will not suddenly gain it, because they have been out of power for a few years. Those who are about to lose political power should not turn to desperadoes after all, life must go on.