Tag: Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi

BETWEEN President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, the top dog, and Rivers Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, the underdog, there is a parallel in William Shakespeare’s plays.

In Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra, Mark Anthony often thought aloud. When he led Julius Caesar loyalists to crush the Brutus-led conspiracy against Julius Caesar, the subject of Julius Caesar, another Shakespearean play, Augustus Caesar was only a subaltern while he, Anthony, was already a general.

How come then, he wondered, that the mirthless Augustus always worsted him in military manoeuvres, in the fierce struggle for power among the second Roman triumvirate of Mark Anthony, Augustus Caesar and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus?

Anthony, of course, lived in denial, for the facts were stark.

The colourful Anthony ensnared himself in the Alexandria court of Cleopatra, the enchanting Queen of Egypt. But Augustus, the prim-and-proper empire machine, back home in Rome, accused Anthony of abandoning state duties.

By the time he, self-serving no doubt, released damning evidence of Anthony’s will giving part of his estate to his children by Cleopatra, Rome was furious of an uxoriousness unbefitting and unbecoming of a Roman noble.

Rome declared an anti-Cleopatra war, which Augustus needed to get rid of Anthony, to remain the last of the triumvirates standing, having earlier got rid of Lepidus. The beginning of the end, for Anthony, came with the defeat of his forces in the Battle of Actium, in Greece, in September, 31 BC. He, with his Cleopatra, later committed suicide in Alexandria, thus doting in death as they were in life.

Like the tragic Anthony, President Goodluck Jonathan may well permit himself some dose of self pity, in pondering the Rotimi Ameachi political challenge.

In Nigeria’s skewed federalism, Amaechi is only a governor — of oil-rich Rivers State, no doubt but a “wretched” governor, nevertheless, in Nigeria’s peculiar unitary federalism. Yet he always ran rings round the all-mighty president in political manoeuvres!

Still, to be fair, a Jonathan-Amaechi contrast is not quite as starkly dramatic as an Anthony-Augustus one. While Jonathan was a quiet, taciturn deputy governor to Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, the inimitable “Governor-General of the Ijaw Nation”, Amaechi was an up-and-coming Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly, under the colourful Peter Odili.

But for former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s political elimination of Alamieyeseigha on corruption charges, it is doubtful if Jonathan would even have attained the Bayelsa governorship, given his low-profile under Alamieyeseigha.

On the contrary, as Speaker, everything pointed to an Amaechi ascendancy, as a son in whom the Odili political establishment was well pleased.

As two-year governor to complete impeached Alamieyeseigha’s term (December 2005- May 2007), Jonathan could hardly point to any enduring project, though a still uncompleted high rise hotel in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa capital, has become some tower of Babel of recrimination between Jonathan and his estranged successor as governor, Timipre Silva. To be fair though, Jonathan was governor for only 18 months.

In contrast, Amaechi has remarkable achievements to point to in health, futuristic and egalitarian educational policy, sports development, huge investment in roads and other infrastructure, and improved security before the recent slide-back, following the current Rivers political crisis.

Though Amaechi is a two-term governor and Jonathan but a brief one, were quality to propel political ascension, Amaechi, on the strength of his gubernatorial performance, would most probably have, other things being equal, acquitted himself better than Jonathan as vice-president and later president.

But Amaechi is not The Nation Man of the Year Runner-up because of his better performance, compared to Jonathan’s, as governor. He earned the accolade because he, in 2013, stood as an irresistible and implacable symbol of justice for the oppressed and the underdog, stout and fearless defender of the inviolability of citizens’ right as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution as amended, positive force for the federal principle in Nigeria’s pseudo-federal set-up and a solid tower of democratic dissent.

Of course, in Nigeria’s brazen federalism, where a president assumes the role of a demi-god, no matter how woefully he performs in office, and dissent is always equated to rebellion no thanks to shallow understanding of democratic concepts, the courage of Ameachi’s stance can better be appreciated.

Yet, morning indeed showed the day. It is just that President Jonathan, Amaechi’s principal opponent for the soul of democracy in Nigeria, did not appear to listen.

When in 2007 Obasanjo announced the cancellation of Amaechi’s Rivers State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) gubernatorial ticket, claiming in pidgin English the ticket “get K-leg”, Amaechi did not lay to be run over. Instead he stood for his right.

Though back then it seemed the grand folly of a David faced with the Goliath of a sitting president and the entire PDP apparatus, or even a man daring a zooming train, Amaechi triumphed at the courts. Though that audacity earned him his first arbitrary PDP suspension, Governor Amaechi enjoyed the rare spectacle of his party eating crow.

The moral of that first judicial triumph was clear: though the president could be all-powerful and the ruling party all-foreboding, a citizen’s right, guaranteed by law, is inviolate if that citizen has the balls to insist on it.

But all seemed lost on President Jonathan, when his aides fired the first shot: the president was reportedly cross with Amaechi because he was allegedly planning to run as presidential running mate to Jigawa Governor, Sule Lamido. Elder Godsday Orubebe, Niger Delta minister, fired that first salvo.

Now, in a republican democracy, why is it wrong for Amaechi to run for vice-president, even if just alleged, when it is right for Jonathan to run again for president?

Then came the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) election, from which to preclude Amaechi, Jonathan virtually released a presidential fatwa. But again, Amaechi triumphed with the votes of majority of governors. The subsequent play of naked impunity, epitomised by the disgraceful mathematical gerrymandering, in which 16 is greater than 19, further wrong-footed the Jonathan presidency. Again, Amaechi’s victory here is not just a personal triumph. It is a solid blow for the sanctity of democratic institutions, in a realm of democracy sans democrats.

The NGF carry-over impunity would, for PDP, lead to even graver consequences. Enter, the G-7 PDP dissenting governors: five later defecting to the All Progressives Congress (APC), one reportedly “threatening” to follow suit in January and the remaining one adamant to remain, even if he declared his beloved party was brain dead, only waiting to be buried!

But perhaps where Governor Amaechi’s armour glitters most is upholding the federal principle against the bale, the bile and the consistent battering of a bully president, egged on by uncritical, if not outright sycophantic, acolytes.

Against rogue “federal might” that would throw everything — compromised police chief, politicised police, destabilised Rivers Assembly and ethnic blackmail, in a bid to procure an illegal gubernatorial impeachment; and even reported freelance anarchists alleged to be former militants — Amaechi has stood firm.

He has insisted on the right and majesty of his gubernatorial office and the right of his state, particularly regarding the alleged pilfering of Rivers oil wells, for which he alleges the president of the Federal Republic stands indicted.

Indeed, not since Lagos Governor Bola Tinubu’s titanic face-down of President Olusegun Obasanjo, has the republic witnessed a continuous Gulliver vs Lilliput match-up, in which the giant is consistently worsted. That, by the second, drives the hapless Gulliver crazier and more ultra-reckless!

From media reports, the Jonathan group still seeks the procurement of an Amaechi “impeachment” by any means possible, including another legislative gerrymandering of six trumping 24! It is the classic presidential malady of doing things same way but expecting different results.

However the plot plays out, Amaechi has brilliantly made the point that a democratic republic ought to be based on law, not on arbitrarily power, no matter how the powerful the overlord feels he is, and how puny and frail the underdog is made to feel he is.

Nigeria’s democracy will deepen when both the strong and the weak, as routine, totally surrender to the dictates of the law. It is way back to the pristine Social Contract, a paradox of the past being a compass for the future.

Indeed, in Ameachi, David has again slain Goliath — and the fledgling federal democratic republic is the better for it.