In Akwa Ibom, a governor and brother

By Rita Essien

In the lush ambience of Ikot Nya, a small village tucked in rustic Akwa Ibom, a sad day descended. And everyone, in symbolic sackcloth, watched and witnessed the sacred hour. One of their own, and one of Nigeria’s, was being committed to mother earth.

A man of many parts, an air commodore, a statesman, an elder, a governor, adviser, administrator and a pioneer on many perches, Idongesit Nkanga passed on last December. A cruel fate did not allow him enjoy the joys of the yuletide. But his people gathered that day when they would say, no one can see Idongesit on the streets anymore.

But one man, who knew him well, who stood by him as he stood by him also, was pushed to tears. They understood each other. Their souls communicated as kinsmen and brothers, but as humans who pursued a lofty purpose here on earth. It was not about the positions of preeminence. It was about a man of substance of the heart. A true friend, a loyalist, a royalist in the spirit. Hence the Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Udom Emmanuel, was present and presented an oration of a tearful flourish for his friend  who was, as the poet says, now belonged to the ages.

Of Ikanga, the first governor of Akwa Ibom State, Emmanuel had these lines from a sage and statesman of the ancient world: “What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments but what is woven into the lives of others.” Those were the words of Pericles. But that day, they emblematized the stirrings of Udom’s heart.

And why not? The man he called “our Otuekong, our idongesit AkwaIbom” was the sort of person that Solomon in the Bible referred to as “there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” That was the quality of his attachment to the departed.

Nkanga was his director general of his campaign, and he delivered. He did not only deliver, he was not consumed by vaulting ambition. Having been a military governor, he did not think it fit to want to deliver for himself. Rather he deferred to the young man, and bonded with him.

This is different from the contrarian spirits we have seen between campaign DGs and their candidates. They did not spar and they did not part. Rather they patted each other in the back, and more importantly, they had each other’s back.

Just in that state, we have an experience of bitter rivalry that had consequences in blood and destruction. Udom’s predecessor, Godswill Akpabio, had another party chieftain, Senator John Akpan Udo-Edehe, as his campaign chief. Things were chummy until they churned, with blood and hatred. They became duelers almost like Cain and Abel. So bad was it that the senator left his party and moved to the opposition. It was an election of fury, the intensity of which was felt by the people. Lives were lost, destructions of property including fleet of cars, became the memory of that episode. It was a duel between former friends, but the result was war on the streets.

Nkanga witnessed this as a veteran, and he was with Akpabio in those years as a PDP chieftain himself. When the Akpabio era was coming to an end, Udom was the collective choice of the party, and Nkanga with his charisma, pedigree and organizational acumen became the campaign lead.  Not long after, he worked hard to best the opposition and win grand style. He stuck with Emmanuel. He saw that the new chief executive is a man of peace. It was just like the way Winston Churchill lost after the Second World War. The British said they voted out Churchill because he was a man of war. Akpabio is no Churchill but they parallel fits the story. The people of Akwa Ibom needed a man of peace. Udom fit that dove to replace the hawk. It was also like the story of David and Solomon. David could not build the temple of God because his hand dripped with blood. Udom, the man who has allowed peace to reign, could rebuild the state without blood.

Hence when Akpabio wanted to make things difficult for his successor, Nkanga stuck with Emmanuel. He did not only do that, he helped choreograph Emmanuel’s second lightning by winning his reelection. Hence in his oration, Governor Emmanuel described him as a “man whose loyalty to causes he held dear was unshaken and whose dedication to the Akwa Ibom Project, the Niger Delta and the larger Nigerian Enterprise was total and non-negotiable.”

Next door, in Rivers State, the nation also saw a blood feud between a governor and his former campaign director general. The governor being Rotimi Amaechi and the campaign chief being Nyesom Wike. The duel still reverberates in the state today. Amaechi is minister of transportation while Wike is serving his second term as governor, succeeding the man to whom he was even a brother.

Joseph Conrad once said, “There is no friend or enemy like a brother.” Indeed both the cases of Akpabio and Amaechi and their campaign men read like brotherhoods gone awry.

But not so for the tandem of Emmanuel and Nkanga. That was why the oration has quite a few tearful moments. Nkanga’s fidelity to his faith may have played a strong part in his integrity, and Governor Emmanuel described him as “a man of Christian masculinity.” He referred to when he witnessed the pioneer state governor’s investiture as an elder of the United Evangelical Church known as Qua Iboe Church.

Few will forget that Nkanga was not only a former governor and air commodore but also a commander of the Presidential Air Fleet, chairman of the Pan-Niger delta Forum but also chairman of the Ibom Air. As Ikanga, FSS, MSS, PSC and OFR, passed on, Udom did not miss out the immortal words of Irving Berlin, “The song is ended, but the memory lingers on.” He might have called him an elder, a patriot, a man of many firsts. As he disappeared into mother earth, he might have been an elder and brother. But Governor Emmanuel might have two words in his heart as hands shoveled sand on Nkanga’s casket: Elder brother.

• Essien writes from Uyo