Comedy of [NGF] errors

Watching the news clip on television, I could see from the face of Governor Godswill Akpabio as he emerged from last Friday’s meeting of the Nigeria Governors Forum [NGF] that things had gone badly for the arrowhead of presidential meddling in the forum’s affairs.
Akpabio looked shaken. The few men around him, one of which was Plateau State Governor Jonah Jang, had on their faces all the cheer of a funeral procession. They walked uncertainly as they approached a battery of television cameras and press microphones. These were the losers of the hotly contested election and they had every right to look grim. What they did next however will go down in the annals of Nigerian politics as one of the worst cases of sore losing, undemocratic posturing, ungentle manly conduct, political illogic, do-or-die politics, June 12-style annulment and plain bad belle.
Akpabio announced that the election, in which 35 of this country’s 36 state governors personally cast their votes, was tallied in front of all of them and the result publicly declared by the forum’s director general Bayo Okauru, was “invalid.” Why? Akpabio gave two reasons for his strange claim. One was that forum chairman Rotimi Amaechi did not step down from his post before the election was conducted. What he should have done, Akpabio suggested, was to have dissolved the forum’s executive before a new election was conducted but Amaechi sat tight and went on to preside over the election for his successor.
What is the import of this allegation? It is that Amaechi’s continued sitting in the NGF chair intimidated other governors to vote for him. In Nigeria here, there are thousands of NGOs including trade unions, student unions, academic societies, professional associations and sporting clubs that regularly conduct elections to choose their leaders. Quite often these elections are held after the outgoing executive council has been dissolved; sometimes this is not done. It all depends on the NGO’s laws and traditions.
The main reason for dissolving outgoing excos and appointing caretaker committees to preside over new polls is the fear that outgoing officers could rig the polls in their own favour or in favour of candidates that they support. It is difficult to see how anyone could instil fear in the NGF where each member has exactly the same constitutional powers over a state. Each one of them controls a rich state treasury, even if some state treasuries are more liquid than others. Each one controls a sprawling bureaucracy; each one is a prominent politician in his own right; each one has elaborate protocol arrangements and each one of them is surrounded by heavy security detail. All of them belong to the same national committees—Council of State, National Economic Council and Police Council, and each one is a member of his party’s national executive committee. Even if Rotimi Amaechi continued to sit in the chair while the NGF election was holding, it would not make the slightest difference to the voting pattern. Akpabio knows this very well.
Now, why is it that governors and even the president stay put at their posts when they are contesting for re-election? Surely, they are in a much better position to influence the outcome of a general election than an NGO leader could influence his union’s election. Yet, they stay put. If Akpabio believed so much in fairness, why didn’t he step down as governor of Akwa Ibom State before the 2011 election?
What Akpabio said next was worse than even this. He now dipped his hands into his pocket and produced a paper that was signed by 19 governors in their own handwriting. They all pledged, according to the paper, to vote for David Jang. Akpabio now went on to declare that the election that was held was invalid because 19 governors had indicated on a piece of paper prior to the election that they wanted Jang.
Let me ask Akpabio this question that has been agitating my mind since I watched his [shameful] performance on NTA. The election that he contested and won in Akwa Ibom State in 2011 was much more contentious than the NGF election. If his main opponent in that election, Mr Akpanudoehehe, produces a paper today in which tribal associations and town unions representing a majority of the people of Akwa Ibom State pledged before the election to support him, can we then declare the 2011 election which Akpabio won as invalid and go ahead and install Oga Akpan as the governor?
If the piece of paper that the governors signed annulled the need for an election, why did 35 of them go ahead and cast a vote at the election? Why didn’t they simply refer the returning officer to the paper that they already signed? In short, what is the use of holding general elections if people could indicate beforehand on pieces of paper who they prefer?
I can see where some of the confusion arose. I often read in the papers about the impeaching of Speakers in some state Houses of Assembly. Reports usually speak of the number of members that sign an impeachment notice, which is enough to remove Assembly presiding officers. The most recent case was in Taraba State. Maybe Oga Akpabio has confused NGF with the Akwa Ibom State Assembly.
Following through on this illogic, the pro-Jonathan faction declared Governor Jang as the winner and he has since been parading himself as the NGF chairman. Last Saturday, he held an “inaugural meeting” attended by 18 governors. This is two governors more than had voted for Jang in Friday’s election. Who are the two gubernatorial turncoats? As is usual with afterthoughts, Jang gave a different reason for their action when he spoke to the press on Saturday. He said there was an earlier deal for the South to hold the NGF chairman’s post for two years, after which it revolves to the North. The question is, when President Jonathan himself seized the presidency in 2011 despite a similar inter-regional accord, Jang never went and led a rebel pro-zoning faction.
From Addis Ababa where he was attending the AU Summit at the weekend, President Goodluck Jonathan added to the mix of untruth and illogic by saying he had no hand in the NGF election imbroglio. Reuben Abati’s statement said “contrary to the impression of Presidential partisanship and  interference in the affairs of the Governors Forum erroneously  conveyed by some headlines in the media today, President Jonathan...had no preferred candidate in the NGF  elections and could therefore not have been ‘floored’ by any other candidate as some newspapers sensationally reported.”
This is not true, simply. The conflict between Jonathan and Amaechi has been public knowledge for many weeks. It involves not only NGF leadership but the president’s use of the Civil Aviation Authority to ground the Rivers Governor’s plane; disbanding the pro-Amaechi Rivers State PDP exco; suspending Rivers State legislators from PDP because they remained loyal to Amaechi; the grandstanding by Jonathan’s minister Nyeson Wike as he took control of the state party chapter; sending policemen to take over a local government  secretariat; and withdrawing police orderlies from the pro-Amaechi Assembly Speaker and the governor’s chief of staff.
Even if the presidency claims that all those events occurred coincidentally, they should know that many state governors tell newsmen, albeit off the record, about how Jonathan personally called and pleaded for their support for his effort to oust Amaechi. Nor is it the first time Jonathan is doing things in a do-or-die manner, given the way he ousted Governor Timipre Sylva of Bayelsa last year.
If men who are the biggest beneficiaries of the democratic order could set such a tragic example, is it any wonder that Nigeria’s democracy gets k-leg, as touts will say? Oga Jang, if Madam Pauline Tallen were to produce some signed papers that show that Plateau people preferred her in 2011 and on that basis installs herself as governor and calls an inaugural meeting, will you attend?




daily Trust