Chidi Amuta
A giant question mark seems to hang over the Nigerian political landscape. Everybody seems to be asking everyone else this single question: What is going on? Suddenly, all seems quiet and clueless from the choir of government. The affairs of state seem frozen into a humdrum of routine and miserable predictability. There are no new excitements. No new programs and policy initiatives. Behind the ritual of state affairs, the usual FEC meetings, the goings and comings of the presidential motorcades and the boring unintelligible pronouncements of ministers and other senior officials of state bearing fancy titles, you get a feeling that perhaps government is not at home. But this is only in the zone of governance and policy formulation and implementation. Yet the urgent concerns that fired the minds of the people at election time remain largely unaddressed.
For an administration that is not quite yet two years old, the present barrenness of ideas and programs is not only disturbing. It is tragic. Worse still, for an administration that has finally branded itself as engaged in a reform of the economy, the dearth of ideas can be worrisome.
Let us admit that a few big things have been showcased. There has been a grand fanfare about an Alaskan highway that will stretch from the beaches of Lagos to the pristine sands of Calabar. Hundreds of thousands of bags of rice and beans have been distributed among state governments for onward distribution to hungry people. A hurriedly assembled student loan scheme has been shoe-horned into place without any serious thought as to how the loans will be recovered.
The Tinubu government insists that it is on a reformist path. The essence and definition of this reform orientation is to unleash an avalanche of hardships on the people. A litany of taxes, price hikes, tariff hikes, levies and surcharges on practically everything that means anything to ordinary people has been imposed. Gasoline prices have since multiplied manifold. The deregulation of the Naira exchange rate has since thrashed the Naira exchange rate towards its present struggle to catch a breadth. Nearly every price of every service or good that means anything to anyone has skyrocketed to a level where most Nigerians have resigned themselves to fate. People have since learnt to live life by the day and take what each day brings as their lot, often turning their eyes only to bare essentials.
The lack of new ideas and initiatives in the area of governance and policy has been counter balanced by sporadic dress rehearsals in the area of political activity at the level of the legislature and the states. Of course political life allows no vacuum. In the absence of concerted effort and purposive momentum, something happens. The political space has in recent weeks assumed a mix of comedy and potentially dangerous drama.
At the Senate, a female senator popularly called Natasha has seized centre stage. She has accused Mr. Akpabio, the Senate President of doing what weak men with access to big money and immense power often do in high places. Mrs. Natasha has accused Mr. Akpabio of sexually harassing her. Her evidence for now remains scanty and doubtful. The relevant Senate committees have used technicality and legislative bureaucracy to befuddle what is ordinarily a straightforward ethical transgression at the height of power in the Senate.
Even the simple procedural tidiness to bring forward her accusation properly before the relevant Senate committee has been flawed by a bit of carelessness on her part. Her sympathizers and those of Mr. Akpabio have since thronged the premises of the National Assembly, desperately angling for public attention. No one is sure where this charade could lead. But the brickbat has led to Natasha’s hasty suspension for six months by the ethics committee of the Senate. The public is perplexed that a Senate that is known for tardiness in more serious matters of state legislation was in such a hurry to suspend Natasha in a matter of hours.
The uproar is not yet over in spite of the suspension order. If Madam Natasha does manage to advance a serious enough substantiated allegation against Mr. Akpabio, then the Senate President could find himself quite busy untangling his lofty apparels from a woman’s complicated underpants.
For now, there is no certainty as to what the Natasha situation is all about and where it could lead. Some say it is politics. Others insist it is a business deal to wring some cash off the vaults of the allegedly loaded Akpabio. A minority feel Akpabio is too fond of the sniff of highly polished and perfumed womenfolk that he can hardly resist their lure. Ready evidence is drawn from his untidy encounters with Ms. Joi Nunieh, former Managing Director of the NDDC. The odium of that earlier scandal is still heavy in the air of the current drama.
For whatever it is worth, the Senate’s Natasha versus Akpabio absurd theatre is just one sign that the Tinubu presidency is running out of steam and ideas. A political space that is serious with urgent national issues such as we have in abundance would have no time to waste on matters of pants and bras in highly placed places. The Natasha distraction is just one big evidence that our political life as a nation is fast running on empty.
Elsewhere in the states, governors and power moguls are busy testing their nerves in advance of 2027. In Lagos, factions in the drama of political incumbency and succession tested each other’s nerves. House Speaker Mr. Obasa had taken a casual vacation abroad. On his way back to the country, he found that there was no royal welcome awaiting him at the premises of the Lagos State House of Assembly where he had been holding sway as a powerful Speaker and de facto political emperor. Before he could unpack his bags, his colleagues had impeached him in absentia and elected Mrs. Meranda as Speaker in his place.
He hardly understood what hit him. He began to feverishly work the phones to call the most important numbers in the politics of Lagos state. An atmosphere of instability and uncertainty enveloped the Alausa secretariat of the state government especially the precincts of the House of Assembly. Two hidden hands were pulling the strings of the Assembly leadership apparently in a dance without a name. The impression that the hands of the state governor were behind the ouster of Obasa was palpable. But then, he was ousted by a vote by 30 out 35 members of the house. He was clearly unpopular among his colleagues, accused of many sins including high handedness, arrogance, insensitivity to the needs of the other members. Obasa was rumored to be disrespectful of the youngish popular governor.
The counter narrative was that Obasa did not need to pay the governor much attention since he seemed to have the ears of a higher political deity in Abuja whose wish is the law in the affairs of Lagos. Uncertainty reigned in Lagos for weeks. Obasa sat home and kept threatening to reclaim his speakership toga at the appropriate time. An emboldened Obasa threatened to invade and overrun the Assembly premises in a bid to reclaim his throne.
The state police command initially took over the premises. Legislators stayed away. Workers who were doing the biddings of the new speaker were rounded up and taken away by the police. No one knows whose orders the State police commissioner was obeying or enforcing. A few days down the line, the state police commissioner lost his command and was sent off into anonymity by higher police authorities. The hidden hands replaced the police presence at the Assembly premises with goons of the DSS who made it obvious that they were not in Alausa to play silly games with local politicians.
A few days later, an emboldened Mr. Obasa returned to the Assembly premises in a triumphant march to stage a comeback to the office of Speaker while poor Mrs. Meranda was placated with the lowly innocuous office of Deputy Speaker. There was no obvious change in the disposition of the majority of the Assembly members. The simmering crisis in Lagos seemed to have been ‘nicely’ resolved. But the political signals seemed quite loud and obvious.
Lagos politics is not likely to be the same in the rest of the present tenure of both the governor and his president boss and enabler. We have just seen a hooded dress rehearsal of what might happen to the ruling APC in the state come 2027. Many say that the president showed his hands in the insistence on Obasa as Speaker for reasons that many are too frightened to name. Days after the resolution of the crisis, a heavy overhang of dejection was detectable on the faces of opposition legislators who did not like Obasa’s tenure and the manner in which he was reinstated or re-imposed. If this disquiet lingers and flows into the contest for power and supremacy in Lagos in 2027, then the governorship succession race in Lagos is likely to be slightly bumpier than before. It is likely to be more than a wrestle and more of a civil war. Even more frightening is the use or abuse to which the security agencies are likely to be put by political gladiators.
In nearby Osun State, a more gruesome drama of political existence played out. The famed dancing governor of the state was not in any laughing, singing or dancing mood. He needed to take over the grassroots by staging an impromptu local government election process. A challenge was lurking in the dark opposition APC led by the former governor who happens to be a cousin of the President. Another former governor, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola, had similarly fallen out of favor with the former governor, now Osun’s man in Abuja. Proxy wars among the followers of these gladiators was expected and did take place nastily. It went bloody and claimed a few casualties in the Osun countryside. But the dancing governor and his gang swept the polls. This is merely a dress rehearsal of what lies ahead in the state come 2027. Osun promises to be a theatre of blood and nasty sweat for many reasons. They say it is the actual home state of the president who has never stepped forward to claim ancestry. Nor has he disowned the immediate past former who claims to be his cousin and seems still bitter about his sacking by the dancing governor and his train. For now, the dancing governor could resume his dance steps while rehearsing for the fire next time.
Rivers state is a somewhat different and more tragic instance of politics in the absence of development and governance. The state seems to have settled into the status of a place where there is hardly any governance or development since the last two years or so. Since Mr. Nyesom Wike reluctantly handed over the keys of the government house in Port Harcourt to Mr. Fubara and relocated to Abuja as Tinubu’s emperor of Abuja, the state has hardly known an unbroken week of peace, sanity let alone any semblance of governance and normalcy. Politics has taken center stage in the lives of the people. It is not the politics that promotes development, good governance or healthy partisanship. It is the political equivalent of warfare. Impeachments and threats thereof. Multiple court cases and foolish litigations. A state legislature that has been burnt down or demolished or both. Local warriors brandishing ancient amulets and invoking primordial myths and loyalties. Free brandishing of dangerous weapons in the centre of Port Harcourt while trade, commerce and public service take a back seat. Political contractors and habitual trouble makers have seized the political space and come to town in occasional menacing war dances and rehearsals of ancient battle dance.
Mr. Fubara, poor governor, has been kept busy by Mr. Wike and his cohorts who have been busy picking and choosing godfathers and elders and changing them like nasty underpants. In turn, otherwise respectable state elders have found themselves changing allegiances and alliances with the contending partisans depending on which faction sends them the fattest bundle of cash under the cover of night.
In all of it, the politics of bad manners has taken over Rivers state at the expense of normalcy, development and the normal business of governance. If indeed Mr. Fubara survives his first tenure without impeachment that would probably be his most spectacular achievement in office. When the story of Rivers state between 2023 and 2027 is written, it would simply be that there was a governor that occupied the office but was never allowed to govern the state for one day.
In the latest round of judicial somersaults on the politics of the state, the Supreme Court has just ruled that the state be denied the statutory federal revenue allocation. The reason is ostensibly that the embattled governor has used the judiciary to exclude the majority of state legislators from the legislative functions of the state. As a result, he has had an Assembly of 5 pass the state’s 2025 budget into law while the majority of law makers were legally excluded. The Supreme Court’s argument is that our democracy was never designed to be without a legislative oversight.
The 23 Local government chairpersons have similarly been declared null by the Supreme Court, necessitating fresh Local Government elections now scheduled for some time in August. As matters stand now, the political future of Rivers state is more uncertain than it has ever been.
Taken together, these political motions without movement have provided the Tinubu presidency with a growing camouflage of activity in a polity with an embarrassing degree of governance and policy inactivity. Worse of all is the near absence of intellectual stimulus and original thought on even the most mundane problems confronting the nation. Nothing kills a nation than addiction to boredom and humdrum.
