PDP and zoning in Abia by EBERE WABARA

IT is sheer political naivety for anyone or party to think that without pandering to the whims and caprices of National Assembly legislators and governors, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan will not achieve his re-election bid. This kind of harebrained expediency borders on deviancy.

I can stake my life and declare that without these fellows, President Jonathan will resoundingly win because of his pedigree and transformative ethos that is revolutionising most sectors of our national existentialism.

In any case, most of the lawmakers have remained passive in the past eight years or thereabouts, without making any contribution to the business of legislation. They are known formally as bench warmers—it is so bad that in a year some of them do not introduce any bill at all let alone join in the robust debates. Most of the governors are even worse with nothing to show for eight years in office. For them, the senate has become the nest for failed reputations.

And in a demonstrable abuse of democracy, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has made the process so simple and simplistic for governors who did not accomplish anything for eight years to unrestrainedly become members of the upper legislative chamber on a platter of silver! It is only in Nigeria that this kind of absurdity can happen. Governors who should be publicly interrogated for their abysmal tenure and most likely dispatched to maximum prison yards for eternal confinement are patted on the back with senatorial recompense!

If the PDP took this decision with a caveat that only governors who attained a 60 percentage performance threshold will get automatic nomination and representation at subsequent polls, there would be no reservations. But to now endorse executive governors’ leadership mediocrity and dismal governance through the instrumentality of consensual deals is irresponsible, to say the least. The implication of this kind of duplicitous arrangement is that serving or incoming governors on the platform of the PDP now have the liberty and leeway to carry on unaccountably and nonchalantly towards the people’s feelings. This is an official institutionalization of a novel paradigm of insensitivity and a culture of impunity, despotism and haughtiness of incomparability! I cannot fathom how the party arrived at this crossroads. Is it out of desperation to foreclose any possibility of electoral upset for President Jonathan?

I also do not comprehend the premium the PDP places on its governors as to depend on them for victory in their respective states. Except for a few distinguished governors who can sway their followers and the grassroots population, most governors are liabilities unto themselves and their party! Except if the PDP is creatively saying that these governors have a manipulative way of guaranteeing (euphemism for rigging, other ingenious forms of electoral fraud and unmitigated violence on all oppositional forces amid a surfeit of propagandist dubiousness), there is no justificatory basis for this blatant unilateralism on issues affecting our collectivity. This is why there is erosion of confidence in state electoral commissions which are seen as appendages of respective governors. In fact, SIECs are not better than local governments in terms of their relationship with some governors who may decide to be bullies and official (constitutionally-approved bandits!). Most governors are the custodians of local government allocations and give out a fraction to hapless and fretful chairmen who cannot raise eyebrows for obvious reasons.

From the foregoing synopsis of the undemocratic credentials of the PDP, which is responsible for the non-deepening of our democracy and vaulting rascality of some governors, we come to my state, Abia, where the PDP zoning formula has been upturned and yet everyone is keeping mum. Long before the current dispensation in the state, it had been agreed by all stakeholders and the PDP leadership over the years that 2015 should be the turn of patient Ukwa-Ngwa axis (Abia South) to produce the governor of the state. In the build-up to next year’s elections, all sorts of characters—including visible mediocrists— have come up in the past few months as aspirants for this “reserved” position for people of my community and our immediate neighbours, the Ngwa extraction. The exclusiveness of this right is borne out of the fact that since the creation of the state 23 years ago, nobody from this zone has occupied the semblance of Government House, Umuahia.

Issuing from this understanding and unwritten law that is not opaque or strange to anyone is the silence of the national PDP on developments in God’s Own State vis-à-vis who succeeds Governor T. A. Orji in a few months’ time. I had expected the national headquarters of the ruling party would have called these governorship pretenders to order by telling them to adhere to internal party mechanisms and electoral guidelines. That way, the ongoing travesty of fundamental electoral rights of eminently qualified aspirants from Ukwa-Ngwa would not be in needless jeopardy because the crowd of PDP aspirants bespeaks of untidiness.

And to compound matters, Gov. Orji has anointed a lackey of his to succeed him and is pushing it unobtrusively! This kind of imposition is why the state is still in the doldrums, 23 years after. Why should any governor insist on a particular aspirant if there is no skeleton in the governor’s cupboard? The general assumption is that when an outgoing governor installs a crony of his in office all his tracks would be covered unlike an “unknown” (relatively speaking) successor who is most likely to spill the beans! So, whenever you see an outgoing governor showing inexplicable and irrational vehemence over who takes over from him, know that this is the sole reason. I f you had served your tenure superlatively you should not be afraid of whoever succeeds you as governor. This cabalistic regime of surrogacy plays out in most other states, too, not just AbIa. I blame the national leadership of the PDP for allowing such a travesty to go unchallenged. Voter docility is still very high in our country. Otherwise, such establishment candidates should suffer irredeemable and incurable electoral defeat and hemorrhage such that in their life they will never subscribe to cronyism again!

The particular case of Gov. Orji’s emotive choice is that the potential beneficiary of his unfolding authoritarianism, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia State Environmental Protection Agency (ASEPA), is from the same community with Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, who, by the PDP awkward and endemic scheme, is likely to return to the senate on the platform of the PDP should he defeat the opposition. Why would a particular hamlet produce one of the three senators from the state and equally assume the mantle of governance in the state? Shouldn’t wise counsel, wisdom, fairness, equity, justice, forthrightness, propriety and common sense prevail in this particular instance? Do we need the PDP National Working Committee or any other third party to tell us that what is not good is not good no matter our pretentions and avowals? What is integrity all about? Can’t there be dispassion in electioneering and polling? Of essential note is the fact that Ikpeazu is saddled with the responsibility of cleaning up Aba and its environs, yet Aba is the dirtiest city in the country today! Is this not a harbinger of what to expect? From what I hear, only divine intervention can stop this imminent tragedy from taking place as Gov. Orji is hell-bent on inaugurating Ikpeazu as his successor at all costs.

Is there anything like cerebral politics where some measure of intellectualism can come to the fore instead of the pigeon-hole where it has been clamped into? I ask this question because most politicians behave so in a manner that makes one shudder at some manifestations. Why would Gov. Orji be angling for a successor from the same locality with a serving senator who is likely to return for another term? Does this awareness require any debate if there is sincerity of objectives? In a democratic dispensation, why must the space be constricted to disadvantage genuine aspirants and favour a stooge? Is it possible for our politics to be seminal so that discussions and decisions can be based on principles and gentlemanliness?

The PDP should just not stop at zoning the 2015 governorship to Ukwa-Ngwa. Let the party also be interested in who represents it at the polls. Abia State cannot have a senator and its governor coming from the same local government area. That is antithetical to the basic principles and tenets of democracy. Abia State needs a fresh breath and clean break from the past seven years-plus of retardation and stagnancy. Ikpeazu cannot drive the needed change considering his systemic attachment to outgoing Gov. Orji. If mistakenly, God forbid, Ikpeazu succeeds his mentor, Abia would be worse than what it is now going by Ikpeazu’s antecedents and current profile in ASEPA! The doom will be irretrievably beyond any messianic remediation!

I make the foregoing declarations with a sense of esteemed candour and responsibility on the grounds that we have had similar cases in the past (and currently) and the results were (and are) beyond description. The only exception, perhaps, is Gov. Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) of Lagos, who, though an “offshoot’ of Alhaji Bola Tinubu, has surpassed expectations without propaganda, vilification of his predecessor and abduction of this writer—except being an accomplice to the fact of my kidnap for not intervening when I was abducted from Lagos to Umuahia by callous policemen numbering 20 at the instance of his Abia colleague.

In the absence of an independent aspirant from Ngwaland to succeed Gov. Orji, Ukwa has a surfeit of experienced, competent and capable aspirants ready for the governor’s office. And verifiably ahead of the Ukwa aspirants is my cousin, Chief Marcus Iyanagbo Wabara, with a promise of transparency and accountability. I vouch for him and take unflinching responsibility for any failure when he mounts the throne next year hopefully and God-willing.