“Most countries have only [a] few honest politicians and this is just like having a body with only a few good organs functioning!” ― Mehmet Murat ildan
Sometimes in life, we are confronted with a very difficult choice between two knives to cut something and solve our problems. One knife is very sharp but has no handle; you can’t effectively hold and use it without sustaining some blistering wounds. The other has a smooth handle but is very blunt, simply good-for-nothing. In such a circumstance, whichever way you go, you have issues to confront.
The above-mentioned dilemma appears similar to the situation Nigerian voters face ahead of the 2023 general election. The dilemma is coming on the heels of the All Progressives Congress, APC, and Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, named their presidential flag bearers in Asiwaju Bola Ahmad Tinubu and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, respectively. The grumbling in town over the two candidates can be heard across the country due to the allegedly corrupt process, besides other variables, that produced them. But rather than feel riveted and fascinated by the difficulty of choosing between these hard choices like the two-knife metaphor, the Nigerian people are now finding a third force appealing and thus making the candidacy of Peter Obi of the Labour Party the centre of attraction. How did we get into such a tight corner after 23 years of unbroken civil rule? It would be difficult to muse on how we got here without looking at the role of critical political blocs known as the state chief executives (governors).
Meticulous research into the problems of democracy in Nigeria since 1999 will ascribe most blame to these power brokers called governors. Since the inception of this democratic epoch, these governors have been at the centre of all the innuendos in our polity. The needless tension and glaring waste of public resources on electioneering in this country are caused largely by governors who have unhindered access to state funds and who have flagrantly used them to overheat the polity. This anomaly is not limited to the current set of governors as the abuse has remained since 2003 when governors led a failed revolt to stop the second term bid of then-President Olusegun Obasanjo and, through that, injected a crisis that hugely affected the regime’s tranquillity. Since then the gubernatorial nuisance every election year has been apparent and distasteful.
Until governors’ excesses are effectively contained, our politics will not find its bearings.
For instance, except in the 1999 general election, midwifed by the military federal government when there were no elected governors, all the other elections in 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015, and 2019 had the negative imprint of governors trying to bend the will of the people to their side. This bizarre penchant of the governors is not limited to only one or a particular ruling political party as all of them carry and display the same selfish and overbearing characteristics.
The reason is that the system conferred enormous powers on these governors making them political gods at the state level.
The only thing the governors cannot control is oxygen in their states. That is why so many people still breathe and live to grumble about them but are unable to do anything to halt their unpleasantly overbearing influence peddling.
One state chief executive determines who becomes a minister from his state if his party is ruling at the centre. He determines who becomes board members of parastatals, whether state or federal, and picks and drops commissioners and chairmen and councillors of the local government areas. They also determines who becomes a Senator, member of the House of Representatives, and the state parliaments. He hand-picks delegates to any political gathering where serious decisions are made. He decides which type of legislation can go at the federal and state levels. In this country, governors did ask state legislators and local government chairmen to vote against autonomy and they did. Governors appoint contractors, negotiate contracts, and disburse funds.
The Accountant-General and the Auditor-General in the states, he appoints. He is everything power can confer on a single individual. It requires the grace of God for anybody with such a crown on his head not to play God. That is why it’s baffling that Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State, frustrated by his losing the APC presidential primaries, is venting out his anger on Ohanaeze Ndigbo. And he was among those who drew up the delegate list for the national convention.
These governors ganged up, deluded by their ubiquitous power, presumed they deserved to be both President and Vice President of Nigeria.
For asute and overwhelming politician who wielded his presidential powers as Olusegun Obasanjo, the cabal called governors did not find it easy. But for the not-so-decisive Presidents Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari, the governors were everywhere overwhelming the system.
After the sorry regime of President Buhari and his party, not a few Nigerians and indeed the international community had looked forward to 2023 to usher in a real regime change or steady the drifting ship of state.
But the dream and aspirations of the people hit the rocks when the governors of the two main political parties conspired and insisted that the presidential tickets of the two leading parties be allocated to them hook, line, and sinker. Even governors who have been unable to administer their states and who have failed in their gubernatorial roles all began to seek to be the President without regard to their records of performance and carriage as statesmen.
In the opposition party, for instance, the forum of governors, propelled by Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State, engineered a revolt that threw the party into turmoil. The trouble that was stirred culminated in their ultimately determining who became party leaders. The intrigues that followed led to the emergence of Atiku Abubakar who had to break the ranks of governors to win the PDP ticket, overtaking Governor Wike who was cruising to victory on the crest of petrodollars. Governors finally lost, having sabotaged one another over who would run with Waziri Adamawa. In concert with s series of previous intrigues, they succeeded in derailing the long-range plan of the Uche Secondus leadership of the PDP to bequeath a process that would birth and enthrone the new Nigeria we have always longed for.
Turning to the APC platform, it was also in-fighting and the dog-eat-dog politics of the governors that dribbled the party into a Bola Tinubu ticket [referred to by a humorist as Tinubulation]. Now, these same people are struggling to manage and accommodate the desperate APC flagbearer.
Having failed woefully to get one of them installed as a presidential candidate in the two leading parties, the governors have now resorted to the “running mate” crumbs that are left over. They are trying to arm-twist the ticket-holding candidates to look their way. Not that they have any robust ideas to put on the presidential race table; the only thing they have going for them is the “fantastically corrupt” access to the public coffers.
In PDP, the South-South governors are dangling their money as bait for Atiku to ignore at his peril given the importance of funds in the home run to the Aso Rock Villa. The political importance of the South East to Atiku’s victory does not matter much now as the money factor is pushing the Igbo factor backstage. Ditto the APC governors in the North who are influencing Bola Tinubu into a highly volatile and controversial Muslim-Muslim ticket. Who cares about the danger it portends to peace and tranquillity in the polity? The governors’ main preoccupation is selfish, not national interest. Self over the nation.
If a strategy is not deployed to contain these irritants called governors, we might be in for a prolonged dysfunctional political system that will continue to dwarf our democracy and make good governance perpetually elusive.
Moneybag politics is not good for us but even more dangerous are the governors who dole it out and still select and direct the delegates where and how to vote.
The same governors have just obtained a supreme court judgement that gives them licence to steal and continue to dance the samba on public funds without facing the consequences. The apex court ruled that even after losing immunity, governors cannot be investigated or prosecuted. That’s overstretching the immunity clause of the constitution! No be juju be that?
An American politician and economist Dick Armey says that “Three groups spend other people’s money: children, thieves, and politicians. All three need supervision.” To Nigeria’s Supreme Court, no supervision is needed for spenders of the taxpayer’s money, public funds. In the last 23 years of this political dispensation, everything seems as if opportunities have only been created for politicians to steal, bribe, and loot without looking back because nobody is overseeing them. Our politicians have become more self-serving than the public servants that they claim to be.
Tackling governors’ excesses, in government and politics, is perhaps the surest way to check the growing dysfunction in our polity. It should start by making political parties self-sustaining, independent and Supreme in real sense of it. It has to be now. God, please, help us.
