2023: Must The Godfather Always Have His Way?

“Do not be intimidated. No man is God and no man can play God. No single person can determine who governs the Akwa Ibom State. It is only God who determines what happens the next minute, not man” – Gov. Udom Emmanuel, Second Term Declaration Speech, Friday, August 24, 2018, Uyo

 Destiny Akaiso

His Excellency, Akinwunmi Ambode, immediate past former governor of Lagos State, recently alleged that he failed to secure a second term in 2019 because of his blunt refusal to have agreed to be paying 50billion naira monthly honorarium to his penultimate predecessor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, for the four years he (Ambode) served as governor. 

Although debunked, whether or not this disclosure was a vengeful statement of frustration in the suffocating smoke of 2023, it was one bold confession that points to what anointed successors may have been made to pass through in the hands of godfathers. 

Consult history and watch and pay attention to unfolding events as we move towards 2023. You will agree that godfathers are the worst enemies and strongest hindrances to democracy in Nigeria. 

They have their knees permanently on its neck such that, like George Floyd, democracy almost literally could be heard shouting, “I can’t breathe”.   

Almost all outgoing State governors have their preferred or “anointed” candidates who are primed to succeed them - and at all cost. It would be hard to convince even a first-class nonentity that this comes without some hidden interests. 

The commonest claim given by the governors for forcing a successor on the masses is usually that they do so in public interest. To sustain a legacy. For better times ahead. 

Ironically, in many instances, the best of what could be considered a “legacy” are a catalogue of uncompleted projects and huge debts they’ve plunged their States into by their lifestyles and secret personal investments.

Their minds having been so made up for a successor of their fancy, primary elections become mere drama of formalities and the main election a simplistic matter of selection. 

This faulty and selfish recruitment pattern is the genesis of poor leadership. 

The beneficiary usually comes unprepared as a promoted mediocre and a product of opportunism than opportunity and merit, which ordinarily would have been determined by popular votes. 

Pundits are strongly of the view that any governor who, against public disaffection and condemnation, insists on forcing his preferred aspirants or candidates on the masses usually always has three cardinal objectives.

One, having tasted the luxury of power and ruing the imminent pains of exit, he would want to still hold a good percentage of shots in the incoming administration, for residual influence, for sustainable political relevance, and for the associated kickbacks. Then the best way is to emplace a surrogate who will be at his behest. 

The second reason, commentators argue, governors are bent on choosing their successors was to ensure that their vault of official and personal secrets was in safe hands. Some are said to have gone the extra mile of administering fetish oaths to would-be godsons, to make bargains a matter of life and death.   

Even though some of them are beautiful coffins, a typical governor normally carries the image of an angel, someone nothing dubious could be associated with, hence no outgoing governor with a skeleton in his cupboard would risk to be “rubbished”, avenged, or exposed by a candidate he didn’t support in the last election, but who, by turn of events, eventually won. 

That’s why some sponsored  successors are given “no go areas’ on assumption of office especially with regards to finances and contract details by a predecessor. The closest they could come to opening a can of worms could be when it was apparent there was no love lost between the past and present.  

Anambra State governor, Prof. Charles Soludo, attempted to beat the line and change that narrative. But before he could flip to the accounts section of the handover note left by Wilfred Obiano his predecessor, the latter was already airborne out of the country for an “appointment with his doctor”. Soludo however disclosed that he met only N300, 000 in the State purse. 

 

The third reason a departing governor insists on planting a successor is the egotistic opportunity it gives him to prove to the world that he has arrived, not only as a godfather but a kingmaker. Put your ears to the ground you may hear what they are saying about their invincible powers.

  

Akwa Ibom has her specular story. None of the governors the State has had from 1999 exited office with a clean cap of honour in the matter of succession. They have all tainted their best records and heated up the polity with controversial autocratic choices.  

It started with His Excellency, Obong Victor Attah. If not that his traitors and opponents were united in their mischief to scuttle his vicarious dreams, the celebrated architect and statesman certainly would have had his way with his son in-law, Udoma Bob Ekarika in 2007.

 

When Senator Godswill Akpabio, the eventual and fortuitous beneficiary of Obong Attah’s failed plot took over office, it was thought that he will act differently, himself having narrowly escaped being a victim of imposition.  

But Akpabio disappointed, and uncommonly perhaps. He didn’t only deepen the roots of godfatherism but elevated “anointing” to fine art. Although he reportedly later acknowledged his smartness as an “accident” a “terrible mistake”, part of his legacy was the schism that, “what money cannot do more money can do”, a euphemism for “do or die” politics, which still holds sway.   

  

Against odds, His Excellency, Governor Udom Emmanuel, became his godson-successor. Judged by unfolding events of the present, he too has neither disappointed nor betrayed that tradition. 

Shall the governor ultimately succeed at having his way in 2023, he confidently shall proudly take up a seat in the assembly of godfathers and kingmakers. 

The greatest losers of the culture of imposition is the masses. When personal dream is made to become a public burden and responsibility, something is wrong. Worse still, the benefiting successor too soon becomes arrogant, impudent, vindictive, insensitive, and totalitarian in manners.

Our leaders must not make Nigeria a kingdom of fake democrats and greedy godfathers who, having tasted power for once, become perpetually drunk with it and with an incurable entitlement mentality that mocks and sees the masses as a lump of helpless fools. 

This is not to say that all governors have selfish motives in anointing a successor. But history confirms the contrary to be predominantly the case, with successive successors doing worse than their predecessors. 

Admittedly, the Constitution duly grants a governor entitled freedom of choice and vote in a given election. 

But beyond the arguments, beyond the pretenses, beyond the dramatic solidarity and hysterical sycophancy, the strongest resistance to imposition still remains the masses. 

Will Akwa Ibom people in 2023, for once, defend democracy for what it was supposed to be and reverse a rueful ugly past? Or they will allow the godfather have his way?