Rivers State has been the focus of unsavoury media attention for some time and the subjects of their interest have typically ranged from violence and chaos to killings, kidnapping and sundry criminality, never mind the fact that other states, notably Lagos, witness these at even more alarming rates. There is probable evidence that the media bias is orchestrated from within for political reasons.
For many years we’ve had a “gossamer over-achiever”, to use novelist Joseph Viertel’s words, on our hands. It’s a tough job finding his parallel in Nigerian politics. Even the much-maligned Ladoke Akintola of the old Western Region did not engage in the willful expropriation of his people’s resources to distant lands.
There’s no denying the fact that between 2007 and 2015, Rivers State earned more money than at any time in its history. What is less certain is the use to which the money was put because much of it was wasted outside the shores of the state.
Since he became governor in 2007 Mr. Rotimi Amaechi has been the pivot around which events in Rivers have revolved. He’s been an incredibly lucky man. However, when his time in public office is done, he will be remembered as much for his meteoric rise as his perfidy and profligacy.
It’s a testing proposition trying to understand why he tends to revel in conflict and controversy and for a long time now he has engendered an atmosphere of apoplectic overload, while adroitly pointing media fixation to invented crises and violence as the predominant themes in Rivers politics and everyday life. And for good measure, he’s always the victim.
Perhaps more than any other political actor in Nigeria today, Amaechi has more reasons to be thankful for what he has already accomplished. Certainly, he couldn’t have written the script that his personal limitations would take him to the dizzying heights of becoming governor, never mind in a state like Rivers. This alone makes his hubris and lack of control difficult to fathom. But may be it can be argued in his defence that if a man can become governor without even contesting an election, he has earned the right to bullish self-entitlement!
As we set out last December to literally tee off on yet another rerun election as another phase of a putative lion’s power questing rolled on, it was a good time to reflect on what might have been had he not been promoted out of his depth and made governor in 2007. As we presaged another grim saga of wanton destruction and death in the hands of federal security agents on the pretext of endless elections made possible by INEC’s love-in with the ruling party, it was clear that the heavy price Rivers people were paying was set years ago. Then, a man whose history hardly ticked any box in the leadership matrix save, perhaps, for perceived loyalty, was put forward as governor.
His underwhelming failure in that capacity and continuing obstructionist actions underscore the need to evaluate the leadership recruitment process in Rivers if the state must make sustainable progress. Loyalty is important but, as the man has demonstrated, it cannot replace character and competence. And in the unique context of Nigerian politics, loyalty, which is often a nebulous word, is an ephemeral quality – as all of Amaechi’s benefactors have regretfully found out. Indeed, it is yet to be seen that a leader anywhere in Nigeria managed to put his successor in a bind.
Yes we can blame the illegal and “pernicious” Supreme Court judgment (apologies to Prof. Ben Nwabueze) which appointed him governor in 2007. And there is merit in the suggestion that his prima donna complex is traceable to that judgment.
Yet the original sin was committed in 2006, in the nomination process that was programmed to produce the least qualified by some distance. And he didn’t disappoint those who felt he wasn’t good for such a high office; he became a spectacle as the face of waste in Nigeria even as he lurched from one controversy to another.
Now as minister, he is bringing doubtful value home. He rather perceives his basic brief as that of a take-no-prisoner election fodder, as he amply demonstrated in the two rerun elections last year.
Without question Amaechi has impoverished the state he claims to love. With unprecedented riches at his disposal as governor, there’s no reason the infrastructural magic in Abuja, or even nearby Uyo, should not have been replicated in Port Harcourt at least. Instead, the place was a huge wasteland with disgraceful infrastructure after nearly eight years in power, while he engaged in slavish splurge outside. And thanks to his party’s scorched earth politics, Rivers State had virtually no representation in the National Assembly for one full year beginning from December 2015 even as her resources piggybacked the august institution.
Other than surrendering to the wishes of his party, there were no bases to conduct rerun after rerun elections in Rivers State in 2016. The 2015 general elections were free and fair and then INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, repeatedly made the point. But our minister, who has placed Rivers State under siege since Buhari became president, wasn’t buying it. In an extraordinary display of false memory, he launched a hugely successful media campaign denouncing the polls and alleged that his party had been denied victory through violence and irregularities. It was an astonishing claim but Amaechi’s capacity for invention is probably unexampled even in the rarified make-believe of Nigerian politics.
Although they won’t admit it, our super minister and his party know well that they have never enjoyed any worthwhile following in Rivers. Regardless, they homed in on the false narrative in classic Joseph Goebbels style, believing that a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth. And it paid off handsomely, as it provided the excuse for a puzzling whole scale annulment of nearly all legislative elections conducted in Rivers State.
An exclusive report in the lead up to the bizarre judgments revealed that Amaechi threw everything into the vile enterprise. There’s also the ready inference from the sworn statements of the two Supreme Court justices who recently accused him of attempts to suborn them to pervert justice in the governorship petition hearing.
That’s how Rivers State got entangled in the mess of endless rerun elections and countless petitions before tribunals illegally sitting in Abuja till this day.
Amaechi’s desire to claw back political capital is understandable. But less so is the rabid desperation. As stated already, fate had served him so well that his present struggles to wrest control would have been unnecessary if he had kept faith with the people. Machiavelli might have had him in mind when he advised in The Prince that he who is made prince by the power of the nobles should, before anything else, win the people over. Well, he never did.
Consequently, he has faced repeated electoral pushback from Rivers people. His nightmare is compounded by Governor Nyesom Wike who is everything Amaechi is not. Wike has got gravitas and common touch and is shunning the profligacy of recent years. In this epic contest between native land owners and foreign feudal lords represented by a perceived renegade son, the people have taken to Wike and see him as their defender against local imperialists. Additionally, he is paying salaries and re-building infrastructure on a scale that belies the present times, something that the former governor, with all the money, failed to do.
Rivers people have an inexorable sense that Amaechi wants to roll back these gains. As devious realpolitik goes, his brand of it defies logic in the grand scheme of things and represents an existential threat to Rivers people.
Ultimately, however, essential as the need to repel him is, the bigger challenge is the imperative of shutting down the kind of leadership crucible that produced an Amaechi. That’s how to disincentivize the madcap politics which has underdeveloped Rivers State for so long.
•Bob, a lawyer, wrote in from Port Harcourt.
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