DON’T worry, I am not hallucinating or addled. I know one-term, one-time Anambra governor, now-late Chinwoke Mbadinuju isn’t alive to witness the running Bola Tinubu Show in Rivers State, verisimilar to the wildly-popular “Family Feud” show being hosted across continents by coloured American humourist and TV personality, Steve Harvey, only that the moustached one isn’t violently-biased in his role as the man in-between.
Mbadinuju died April 11, 2023 at 77, going into Nigeria’s political record book of the running republic as one of the first two sitting governors of the 1999 Class, to be vanquished by enraged godfathers, just like the suspended {sounds like a school boy thing} Rivers’ governor, Siminalayi Fubara. The other governor of the Class that was outclassed by his then-godfather was Borno’s Mala Kachalla. He was run out of now-defunct APP by his then-godfather Modu Ali Sherif and porting to then-South West dominated AD could not save him from becoming a one-termer. Yes, there were other losers of that time; from Gombe’s Abubakar Hashidu to five AD governors of Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Ekiti and Ondo. Olusegun Obasanjo as president of that era was running riot with assumed limitless presidential powers, knocking off constitutional guardrails planted by the framers of democratic ethos as a pushback against full-blown dictatorship. One of those who railed endlessly against Obasanjo’s perceived fascism of that time was then-governor of Lagos, a certain Bola Tinubu who was variously and widely robed as the face of the resistance of that era. Today, the then-celebrated walking bulwark against dictatorship is now president and wait for this; he is now cuddling with demented affection, the desecrating playbook of the one he brutally roasted as a fascist in agbada; the former chicken farmer who today owns a Uni!
Let’s return to Mbadinuju. After he lost to the crude mercantilist politics of his original godfather, controversial billionaire Emeka Offor and the inherited megalomaniac youthful godfather, Chris Uba, he retreated to a private life while the Obasanjo tsunami was blowing across states with targeted elected governors kissing the dust. About a year after Obasanjo had gone back to private life, a griping Mbadinuju granted a colleague and me a very choleric interview, spewing so much anger and divulging some much about alleged events and issues of the time of his travails between 1999 and 2003, uncladding Olusegun Obasanjo not only as a dictator but an encourager of impunity, ascribing the most odious and governance oddities to the president of his time in office. He said in the peace meetings called by OBJ to mediate the crisis between him and Offor and later Uba, the then-president was just barking out orders, mandating him to kowtow to all the fraudulent, illegal and unconstitutional demands of his godfathers. He said other unprintable things. My colleague and I were just exchanging glances as he made these seemingly outlandish claims on the record. At a point, it was as if we were being treated to a Papa Ajasco Super Story where Boy Alinco is just framing sweet nonsense to win the heart of Miss ‘Pepisco’ Pepeye, considering that he actually asked for the interview because he felt Gbenga Aruleba of AIT was always dragging him on his morning show and wanted to spill more about how Obasanjo was aiding and abetting impunity in Anambra of that era. After the session which dragged into hours, my colleague who is now a federal spokesperson and I were celebrating a blockbuster of an interview. I was barely settling in our Area 3 office when calls began coming in. The former governor grew cold feet. He must have either dialogued with some confidants and shared some of his brutal assessment of Obasanjo as a human being, an elder, an administration, an arbiter and a leader, coming into the conclusion that the kind of Ebora Owu should never pass through the Aso Rock office again, or maybe with himself in a calmer state and reasoned his peace was not worth the ire of Obasanjo’s very predictable fightback, considering his boys in then-Umaru Yar’Adua’s administration and the former governor decided to capitulate even before the war would start.
One touching excuse he gave was “you know Obasanjo {he had this funny way of pronouncing the former president’s name} is a vindictive person and even out of power, he wont stop pursuing me if this interview is out the way I granted it”. He could not be persuaded that Aremu would do him no jack. The initial agreement was to scrub the Obasanjo part which would leave almost nothing new in the interview. Later all parties agreed to terminate the entire stuff and our blockbuster went out of the window.
Mbadinuju’s saga and his godfathers receiving presidential backings against him, didn’t meet with much public sympathy as it was mainly viewed as then-ruling PDP’s family affair even after the re-election ticket he allegedly won, was forced off his hand, but God decided to use his successor’s {Chris Ngige} torment in the hands of the same alleged oppressors, especially Obasanjo, to expose their maniacal ways and the buccaneer deployment of federal might by the administration, with the global outrage that trailed the reported abduction of then-governor by the Uba “terror” gang, masquerading as political power group in the state. Ngige’s tormentors had to self-implicate for rigging, of course without consequences {only hapless professors are jailed for it}, just to rid the government house of Ngige at the election petition tribunal, paving the way for a certain Peter Obi of then-APGA as governor. That Obi is the wave-making populist of today.
Power shenanigans like the one going on between Rivers and Aso Rock aren’t novel in Nigerian politics since the return of civil rule. The ‘martial” law {that is only what can give him power to sack elected representatives of the people} proclaimed in the state by Tinubu, the epauleted nestor of democracy in Nigeria, isn’t also likely to be the last of the territory capture he would attempt to sail smoothly in his re-election and repay loyalty of his “boys” like Nyesom Wike. Yoruba always warn that crayfish thieves don’t stop at one, because of the sweetness. In Kunle Afolayan’s epic movie; October 1, the diviner, played by Yemi Elebuibon warned that the killer of maidens in the town, who turned out to be the heir apparent, would still kill more {yio tun pa eniyan si} because he was using the killings as a psycho-treatment for the trauma arising from his molestation by a priest in a monastery. Despite the sound education the prince got while with the cassocked abuser, his mind was anything but sound. He returned to the village with a certificate, Queen’s English and a mind scrambled almost into permanent insanity.
I was told by someone very close to power that the Rivers’ crisis was bleeding the national economy badly due to the oil pipeline attacks {obviously orchestrated acts for leverage by whoever did it} and that the president consulted widely before doing something similar to what Yoon Suk Yeol attempted as South Korean president that got him half-way fired from office. He is now awaiting the Constitutional Court to determine his fate after the parliament dominated by his party, impeached him in a bipartisan move to nip in the bud what they saw as creeping tsarism.
Of course, such an outcome would be a miracle in Nigeria, where baba’ocracy {politics of worship} has been firmly planted. Even the undoubtedly most decent {by persona assessment} of the men who have ruled Nigeria since 1999, Goodluck Jonathan, was still accused of strongmanism. I doubt if the judiciary will save Fubara and the president would likely extend the martial law in the state because I don’t see a winning Wike going into a ceasefire without demanding all the aces, except if a courageous judge steps up to proclaim the martial law, for what it obviously is, a coup.
The politics of second term will always leave the country frayed and it was a great disservice done the country by the national assembly of David Mark when Jonathan’s push for a six-year single term, was derailed because North saw it as a tenure elongation agenda. Fubara, Wike, Aso Rock, et al. are just symptoms of the disoriented democracy Nigeria is practising. Even if courts restore Fubara and shame Wike and his Villa fada, the unrestrained use of presidential power won’t abate with a new person in office, until the faulty framework is reworked. The Nigerian presidency is already too powerful. Shaving off its unsightliness is the first step toward sanity in the polity. Imagine Tinubu swearing in the sole administrator , by himself! What a people we are!
READ ALSO: Former Anambra governor, Chinwoke Mbadinuju, dies at 78
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