When the present occupants of elective political offices took over about four years ago, another cycle of elections i.e. May 29, 2011, seemed very far away. But May 29, this year, is within sight now, and both incumbents and hopefuls are engaged in feverish efforts to redeem the time:
while incumbents are desperately show-casing their achievements, and corrupting every segment of their constituents, not excluding traditional rulers, with money, those angling to replace them are not standing idly either.
They are urging the electorate to take a holistic look at the stewardship of the incumbents and not just this season, when money and all sorts of promises are flying around. They add a caveat, however: If they give you money; collect it: it is yours. But vote right. Your vote is your power.”
This is the position of things in Benue state like elsewhere that people are tired of the mediocrity of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and what the running mate of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, on the ticket of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Pastor Tunde Bakare, calls the “arrogance of impunity.”
So like in most states of the Federation, it was with a sense of disappointment that we greeted the false start of the April polls, given that it halted, albeit temporarily, our planned displacement of the PDP from power, beginning with its ineffective representatives at the National Bazaar in Abuja, otherwise called the National Assembly.
But knowing now that the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attttahiru Jega, did what he did to save us from another PDP-engineered electoral sham, we understand, and look forward to this Saturday to begin the sweep of the PDP elements out of office. And in Benue state, we are using the broom to make it a clean sweep.
And the PDP-led government in the state, under the inept stewardship of Gov. Gabriel Suswam, is resorting to all desperate measures to elongate its tenancy in Government House Makurdi (GHM) even in the face of overwhelming popular rejection.
It has commenced the corruption of the traditional institution by making them PDP partisans, to the point of endorsing the incumbent Governor, and even placing curses, as in the reported case of the Tor Tiv, against former Governor George Akume. But it is as the late Reggae legend, Bob Marley, used to say: Harder they come. i.e. the more the sinking Suswam administration tries to stop the onslaught of the resurgent Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the more the party and its gubernatorial candidate, Prof. Ugbah, seem to move from numerical strength to numerical strength. And since democratic victories are functions of demographics, the Suswam camp is in complete disarray.
Having disempowered the Benue people, and having turned his back on the people and the political structures that catapulted him to power, Suswam is learning late in the day, what football enthusiasts call injury time, that an aloof political leader who holds the people in contempt is actually shortening his tenure by frittering away his political goodwill.
Today, on the eve of his sack, while the people have turned their backs on him, he comforts himself with a few pathetic figures that make his precarious position even sorrier.
On his side are faded or fading political stars like former PDP National Chairman, Chief Barnabas Gemade; Nigeria’s High Commissioner to Canada, Prof. Iyorwuese Hagher, a retired Customary Court Judge, Kehem Dajoh, and Protem House Speaker, Rep Terngu Tsegba, and former National Publicity Secretary of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), Chief Simon Shango. Of course, Senate President David Mark is with him, but this only symbolic value as, shorn of the Mark’s ‘electoral prowess,’ he has absolutely no political viability.
A cursory look at the Suswam entourage, even makes it more pathetic. Gemade, who is the PDP Senatorial candidate, was defeated in the PDP primaries in 2007 and despite his open hostility to the Akaagerger candidature, the latter went on to win the senatorial election, and has distinguished himself in the Senate. So clearly, Gemade’s day is past, and this latest effort at pensioning himself with a senatorial ticket may not avail much.
Hagher, has never won any election in Benue since 1983 as he has been rejected again and again by Benue voters since then; prompting him to seek political exile in Canada.
Ditto for Shango. Since the sun set on the Second Republic during which he served as the image maker of the then ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN), he has been operating in the political shadows, and has no concrete electoral value even in his Tarka local government save, perhaps, for political symbolism. As for Hon. Tsegba, whom Suswam brought to supplant Akume in the Senate, he has even stopped campaigning, seeing the hopelessness of his ill-advised venture against his erstwhile political benefactor.
And since nature, they say, abhors vacuum, Suswam’s political losses have become Akume/Ugbah’s gains. Powering the Ugbah candidature with unstoppable momentum are political heavy-weights like Third Republic Senate President and master political strategist, Dr. Iyorchia Ayu; former PDP National Chairman, Chief Audu Ogbeh, who is also powering the Nuhu Ribadu Campaign as Director-General; former Communications Minister and former member of the PDP Board of Trustees (BoT), Chief Isaac Shaahu; former Governor of Katsina state and erstwhile Principal Staff Officer to late Gen. Sani Abacha, Gen. Lawrence Anebi Onoja; former Governor of Katsina state, Sen. (Dr.) Joseph Akaagerger; Deputy Chairman of Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Sen. JKN Waku as well as the Prof. Ugbah’s running mate, Alhaji Abubakar Usman, popularly called Young Alhaji.
But this is not all, Prof. Ugbah’s father, Wantaregh Paul Unongo, who had supported and endorsed Suswam before Ugbah’s entry into the race, is said to have given his “son” his blessings.
So although Ugbah just joined the race, his aspiration has become something of a phenomenon. From across the three zones, the song is: Ugbah, Ugbah, Ugbah.
But politics is no precision game, so despite Ugbah’s huge advantage (79: 17), he cannot rest on his oars. What with Suswam’s power of incumbency and the state treasury at the disposal of his campaign team.
The ACN must be vigilant to the end; for it may be a political party, but it is up against a political machine that has no respect for the democratic precept of one man, one vote.
So if you ask, this is not the time to sleep; it is the time for us to vote, watch and pray.
Detsav-Akwaya, a commentator on national issues wrote in from Vandeikya, Benue state
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