Evil
is in many ways like rain. It starts often as showers which could
become a deluge, fast and furious enough to sweep away common sense.
This is what is playing out now in
Taraba State, where a clearly physically infirm Governor Danbaba Suntai
is playing god, sacking his cabinet members – long suffering people who
waited for over ten months while the governor recovered from self-
inflicted injuries sustained in a plane crash; a plane that was
obviously bought with tax payer’s money – and butting heads with his
deputy who ‘remained loyal’ for almost one year while he waited for his
principal’s return.
The governor’s ten months sojourn in
foreign hospitals was presumably bankrolled by tax payers from Taraba
State and many would argue that his recovery, however fragile his health
may be right now, was in many ways linked to prayers by his people. The
same people he is now taking for granted.
There is in the actions of Suntai, or
should one say, the machinations of the cabal bent on foisting a sick
man on the people of Taraba State, something that stinks of hubris and
perverted ambition. Then there is shamelessness too and déjà vu.
The sense of déjà vu in the macabre
dance of shame playing out in Taraba is cause for grave concern because
it is fast becoming the norm.
President Shehu Musa Yar’Adua and his
kitchen cabinet were first to introduce this shameless hold on power to
Nigerians even though under Abacha there were always rumours of ill
health which a half-stoned and bespectacled Abacha always appeared on
television to douse with bad English.
Clearly ill from the moment he was
anointed presidential candidate by Olusegun Obasanjo, Yar’Adua stepped
into Aso Rock a very sick man but his wife and a power- hungry cabal
intent on holding the country hostage managed to hold on to power for
months even when it was patently clear that their principal was brain
dead in a German hospital.
Many Nigerians would remember OBJ’s
infamous phone call on national television during which he asked “Umoru,
they say you are dead. Are you dead?”
Nigerians should have taken OBJ’s hint
and should not have voted for Yar’Adua but maybe we did not vote for
him. Maybe, he was anointed and selected and then foisted on us.
Well, it was a wrong move. Bad
calculation. Yar’Adua never really assumed office. He was very sick and
spent more time lying in hospital wards than in Aso Rock while the cabal
held Nigeria hostage and effectively cut off the Vice President from
the affairs of state.
Then after his poor health was finally
confirmed, the shameless cabal snuck the brain-damaged president back
into the country at midnight after deploying a contingent of soldiers to
line the route from the airport to Aso Rock.
But it was all a futile deception.
Yar’Adua soon passed on and power changed hands. Today, that Vice
President, Goodluck Jonathan, is president and one of the architects of
that deception is cooling his heels in a German jail.
That long explanation is necessary
because we never seem to learn from history. After Yar’Adua, Sullivan
Chime of Enugu State was the next chief executive- though of a lower
level of government-to vacate his post and spend considerable time
abroad fixing his health instead of the gullies in Enugu while his state
wondered what the issue was.
Finally, brother governors took a trip
to London and wasted huge funds taking out front page spots in major
nationally circulating newspapers to assault us with pictures of
Sullivan Chime posing with his fellow governors in a London street as if
he was the Mayor of London and not governor of Enugu State. Chime is
home in Nigeria and back at his desk. No questions asked.
Now, it is Danbaba Suntai who having returned home after a long sojourn abroad is playing God and Emperor in Taraba State.
Hs oft-postponed return finally happened
on August 25, 2013 and it was a considerably bewildered, befuddled,
totally-out-of-it Governor Suntai who was practically bundled out of a
chartered aircraft into a waiting SUV. Suntai did not even utter a word
to the phalanx of press men or the teeming throng of Tarabans that had
gathered to welcome him and believe me, when a politician passes on an
opportunity to address a crowd, that politician is toast.
Days later, instead of letting sleeping
dogs lie, Suntai transmitted a letter to the state assembly and then
went ahead to sack his cabinet in a clear case of ego begetting hubris.
It was too much. The State Assembly
visited the governor, met and resolved that Suntai is not fit for office
and should return abroad for further treatment and so we ask in the
language of a dead empire where men once played god like Suntai and his
ilk, quo vadis?
What next? Nobody knows for sure but
these instances of mere men playing God and emperor with their states
which they have practically converted into fiefdoms is a worrisome
development. State governors are neither God nor Emperor. They are
elected officials asked to preside over their states in trust for the
people. What they are doing is a travesty, pure and simple.
It is a pity that the constitution
allows for a governor to spend so much time outside his state without
transmitting a written explanation. The constitution must be amended to
forestall such occurrences.
Secondly, what is behind this clinging
on to power, this I-must-die-as-governor syndrome? What makes these
governors persist in this stupid belief in their power and
infallibility? Greed and arrogance. They want the security votes of
their states which they do not account for and they want to be god, to
be unaccountable and beholden to no one.
But lastly, there are evil men and
women, spouses and friends, old mates and family members who having
tasted power have developed a taste for it like dogs for shit. They will
never stop licking and lapping it up. These are the men we must be
afraid of, these Mephistophelean whisperers.
These governors are not gods. The
constitution is ‘god’ and these puny characters without shame must learn
to abide. They must learn too that power is transient and that no man
lives forever.
One of the early Hausa expressions I
learnt is Mutuwa dole – Death is sure! Yar’Adua and his cabal learnt
that too late but I am sure Suntai still understands enough Hausa to
take heed.
•Toni Kan is a Lagos-based writer and PR practitioner. He wrote via tonikan11@gmail.com
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