Akpabio, Akpabio!
Let off that hail in The Nation Editorial Board suites, and you probably would elicit equally passionate but contradictory responses.
Commendation: a socially responsible and historically conscious former governor, whose laudable education policy was aimed at ridding his people of the “houseboy/girl and cook syndrome”, by making education free, compulsory and attractive; and gifting his state monumental physical infrastructure, easily a generational reference point.
And condemnation: a brash narcissist, who always thinks he remains the issue. Whatever he says, no matter how ridiculous, he tends to feel that, because he says it, confers on it the wisdom of Solomon and the depth of Socrates.
That is Ripples’ honest sweet-sour impression of Godswill Obot Akpabio, former governor of Akwa Ibom State, and newly minted Senate Minority Leader.
That much is clear from Senator Akpabio’s latest crying wolf, over President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption war, DSS’s alleged partisanship in election matters and of course, the restive Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) staff, agitating against a 50 per cent pay cut.
“We can no longer run to the Villa for cash, so we don’t have the wherewithal to maintain that large number of secretariat workers”, Himself, Akpabio the Infallible, barked, in company with Uche Secondus, acting PDP national chairman, at a press conference. “The workers should understand that they are in a master-servant relationship, in which you cannot force an unwilling master to keep a recalcitrant servant. We are definitely going to downsize.”
Pray, what was that? No, not the master-servant stuff in employment matters. That is trite, though a being less infallible would sure have been sweeter, less stark and less combative.
Rather, it was the bit about running to the Villa for cash. Was that a Freudian slip? An Akpabio-istic hyperbole? Or a hedge-and-be-damned combative war cry from He, who cannot be wrong?
Whatever it was, was the PDP dipping its hands into the public till to run its business, simply because it ran the Presidency? Mr. Akpabio’s dismissive roar tended to suggest such.
But even if it were just the impassioned hyperbole from the House of Akpabio, it was harmful no less: for the senator’s arrogant diction seemed to portray the rump of a regnant impunity, that peaked in the power hubris, that finally smashed the PDP Humpty Dumpty.
Imagine referring to your own party workers as near-contemptible urchins that must take it or chuck it! Still, the least said on that the better: post-power PDP — and its workers — appear perfectly capable of carrying their cross!
Which takes the discourse to the Akpabio and Secondus latest campaign on DSS’s alleged satanic activism on electoral officials allegedly linked to contentious polls; and President Buhari’s allegedly skewed anti-corruption war.
Just as well the DSS, through Lawal Musa Daura, its director-general, has responded to the partisan allegations. It’s left to the public to decide the more credible — the accuser or the accused.
But, for Ripples, the issue is simple: a key security pillar of state becoming a partisan rod, does no one no good. Under President Goodluck Jonathan, DSS was notorious for such brazen abuse. By that same logic, it can’t be popular under President Buhari, if that vile habit has continued.
If true, that would be a negation of building state institutions. After all, to paraphrase US President Barack Obama, strong institutions deepen democracy, seldom strong personalities.
It is, however, rich Mr. Akpabio is raising hell now. What was his reaction to DSS excesses during the Jonathan presidency, when “golden girl” Marilyn Ogar became the stylish “Charlie’s Angel” (remember that American crime-busting TV series, that aired on ABC from 22 September 1976 – 24 June 1981 — and much later, via syndication, on NTA?) in the Jonathan government’s unending war against the opposition?
On 8 August 2014, Lai Mohammed, then opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) spokesperson, with Sunday Dare and Salisu Shuaibu, were celebrated DSS pre-Osun gubernatorial election “prisoners of war”.
On the spot, a DSS trooper alleged Alhaji Mohammed always “abused” Jonathan. Even, if abusing the president was a crime — which it is not, though it may be tort if it is slander or libel — when did DSS become the courts to settle the matter in a one-way adjudication of summary arrest? But Ms Ogar soon moved in to clear the air: those in the net were nabbed for “loitering” (another novel crime)!
The same Ogar swiftly moved in to canonise DSS’s illegal raids — twice: the second, an open defiance of an express court order — on an APC IT facility in Lagos, brutalising the staff, wrecking assets. The angelic Ms Ogar again weighed in with a plethora of “evidence”, suggestive of alleged electoral subversion. True, Prof. Attahiru Jega’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) would pour cold water on the DSS supposition, but the immaculate Ms. Ogar had spoken!
Now, what was Mr. Akpabio’s reaction to these clear abuses, though then he was both Akwa Ibom governor and chair, PDP Governors Forum? Perhaps as muffled back then, as his hell-raising now is shrill!
Sure, that would appear immaterial, particularly if the allegation is true — for, ad hominem, his preferred reaction does not affect the objective reality on the ground. But it pushes a legitimate case that Senator Akpabio, for partisan motives, might just be crying wolf where there is none.
Besides, the states under reference, Akwa Ibom (where Akpabio was involved as a partisan) and Rivers, are instructive. Media reports before, during and after the elections, in the two states, strongly suggest probable cases of grave electoral subversion (with lost lives and limbs to boot!), with alleged criminal collusion from ranking electoral officials and security agencies.
The tribunals are adjudicating the allegations. Still, the Akpabio-Secondus tag-team is not deluded enough to think that just crying partisan wolf would force the authorities to back off those with genuine cases to answer?
The alleged Buhari one-sided corruption war speaks of a particularly virulent strain of political nihilism: accusation and counter-accusation soon democratically spreads the muck among a gullible people, uh?
Though the Presidency itself has given a fitting response, the states where the PDP points a finger of guilt, Rivers and Lagos, are rather interesting.
Even under PDP banners, Rivers under Rotimi Amaechi, from all objective analysis, had a lot going for it: its futuristic public schools, its effective post-militancy security infrastructure before murderous politicking set in, by a desperate but doomed presidency; and its huge investment in physical infrastructure. The allegations would, therefore, appear a once sweet song turned sour — without prejudice to whatever the probing authorities may find.
And Lagos under Babatunde Fashola? Arguably, in his 2007-2015 set, Nigeria’s brightest advertisement for democracy.
Even if he did nothing else, his clinical tackling of the Ebola virus remains a global reference. If Lagos — and Nigeria — didn’t collapse under Ebola, Fashola earned all the plaudits. Pre-Ebola, his place, in sane and responsible governance, was secure: a tremendous blessing to his generation. Besides, how come Fashola ran Lagos with admirable pluck, that earned a national reference?
Rubbishing due praise is political nihilism taken too far. More than the target individual, the system loses the credible dream of a glorious repeat.
That is a loss a growing democracy can ill afford.
