There is an anti-climax to the planned resignation of the Deputy-Governor of Benue State, Dr. Sam Ode. Instead of resigning as planned during the week, Dr Ode turned up at what was called a Parley with newsmen but during which he was enacting the grinding stone thief who, without anybody asking him, started shouting that he is not the one who stole the grinding stone the community was investigating. Everyone concluded instantly that that is the guy who stole the missing grinding stone. Answering questions that no one asked can be an admission of a reality....CONTINUE READING
Dr Sam Ode, incumbent Deputy-Gov of Benue State
At the Parley, the Deputy-Governor did not only stress the unity of political leaders as a requirement for taking Benue State out of underdevelopment, he also expressed a feeling of being honoured as Deputy to Reverend Father Hyacinth Alia whom he said found him worthy to run on the same ticket with him when there were a number of persons equally interested in the office. Describing the governor as “a Catholic priest and man of great spiritual insight that has served in the state in different communities” whose due diligence discovered him (Ode) as “the best pair with him to contest the election that brought the team to office”, Ode then asserted a promise “never to disappoint the governor and Benue people”.
Although Intervention was not at the Parley, a deconstructive reading of the rhetoric of him as a product of the governor’s due diligence and their compatibility are all direct admission of tension between the two. Moreover, Intervention was categorically told that the Deputy-Governor had been decidedly sidelined to the point of redundancy almost since the pair took- off. Instead of Ode, the governor is said to have been habour preference for a particular commissioner in the cabinet.
Why this might be happening is not clear. Intervention agrees with those who say that a single reason cannot explain the development although it appears there is an elephant in the room scenario to it. For, as the Deputy-Governor was asserting his oneness with his boss, he was similarly confessing permanent gratitude to the Secretary to Government of the Federation (SGF), Senator George Akume. What is thus hinted is that even as there might be other problems between the governor and the deputy, the botched resignation may not be unconnected, in the last instance, to the hot and cold war between the governor and the SGF whose political creation the Reverend gentleman is.
Although not a word has been heard from Senator Akume’s mouth, his well-known field commanders have been shelling the governor openly for stubbornness and entertaining the temptations of solo governance. A serving senator from the state has been particularly very vocal on this. Neither has the governor’s side been silent, letting go no opportunity to throw muds at the Akume machine. Although Governor Alia himself would call Akume the cradle of the 4th Republic, his media team never left anyone in doubt that but for the Reverend Father, the APC would have been dead in Benue State, an inference that contests and seeks to reverse the godfather status of Senator Akume as the bringer of Father Alia. Since it makes no sense for a media team to contradict their principal, it makes sense to argue that the media team has the approval of the governor to attack Senator Akume even as the governor would not use hostile terms to refer to the SGF.
One speculation is that Ode might have been trapped in between two prized fighters, a speculation given a lot of weight by stories of how he would get a federal appointment after leaving the Deputy-Governorship.
However, the Benue State power elite machine might have masticated the resignation plan because it would have laid bare the tensions playing out in the state. For one, it would have divided the Idoma cultural group further because if Ode resigned, another Idoma would have to be picked. Two, a resignation framed in terms of being sidelined could be interpreted at the national level solely in terms of Tiv-Idoma antagonism. Three, it would certainly have interrogated the governor’s political maturity and priestly standing with regards to managing those he may have developed whatever reservations about.
Benue State governor, Fr Hyacinth Alia
But considered more crucial in certain other circles is how the open and close tackles in Benue State imperils the assumption that the SGFship will transform Senator Akume into an umbrella for elite coherence as a condition for the advancement of the Middle Belt. Instead of closing of the inter-elite gaps, it seems to be widening. Yet, the assumption remains strong that for the region to close the gap between it and its Others, it needs a godfather or the human agency – someone with vision, voice, visibility, resources and network. Anybody made an SGF has all these or can be constructed into the subject position although it remains unclear whether this is what the scholarly component of the recent ‘Akume @ 70’ event was there for.
Some people argue to Intervention that this is the role General Danjuma has been playing but they add that General Danjuma suffers from a lack. Resourceful, networked and very generous, he is nevertheless, at heart, a soldier. So, for instance, he can get angry or get so disappointed unlike a Chief Solomon Lar or a Senator Tarka. Above all, he is argued to be a captured by a closet.
Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah has been severally named but, apart from being too controversial, he has refrained from formally joining politics. The implication is that no one knows how much the Catholic Church would allow one of its topflight operatives to fly with the politicians. Above all, there is the question of how far the politicians of today will kowtow to a priest and a moral prefect literarily becoming their supervisor.
Senator Bukola Saraki has national visibility and network. He has got experience across the executive and legislative branches of government too. His complexity of identity would seem to make coherence much easier to achieve but Middle Belt nationalism does not appear an attractive level of politics to him. So also Chief Steven Lawani although Chief Lawani’s own problem would be what some critics observe as the distance between him and mainstream politicians. He is a capitalist quite alright but he is not a trader or a speculator. It is thus open to speculation how far he would thus be able to supervise today’s politicians inclined to a ‘hit and go’ strategy of accumulation. Otherwise, he is highly networked, pleasant and above quarrelling with anyone or with very few.
This is argued to leave Akume with the subject positioning in the current configuration a viable contender, whether that is called godfather or whatever. The idea is someone who can aggregate elements together beyond personal kindness such that the Middle Belt can count in at least one regard like the other regions.
Intervention’s resume of the regions now shows that the Southwest exercises a discourse – power veto on Nigeria. With a solid control of the media and other discursive spaces such as more self-conscious academics, it has monopoly of agenda setting. They do not only have a culture of fighting everything out on the pages of newspapers, including divorce and admission of causes of death thereby enhancing inter-generational cultural transmission, they also raise, advance and defend agenda. As an example, restructuring which is now coming back as an item on the agenda of politics originated in its current understanding in the Southwest.
The Northwest has had a long history of dominance of the politics of power and politics of leadership of Nigeria. That is a power resource it can fall back on, depending on other variables though. The Northeast is rising in accumulation of political leadership. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar remains one of the individual republics within the republic. And the incumbent Vice-President is also there. Nuhu Ribadu is an emerging player if he can construct an imaginary. At the moment, no such imaginary exists beyond what he might have only in his head.
The Southeast is not happy but it is the undisputed merchant capital of Nigeria with particular reference to pharmacy, transport and circulation within and outside Nigeria (diaspora power). The region can go far and faster in the power game if it could cleanse itself of its (mis) representation in terms of fake drugs, cold business dealings and the culture of getting angry when Nigeria happens to it, a new language for learning how to laugh at certain things instead of getting angry.
The Southsouth has power in its awareness of the utilisation of the subject-position as the location from which much of the oil in Nigeria oozes. Notwithstanding the cost of resistance it has borne and its internal implications for the region – the problems of how to put violence back after unleashing it, the place of women in a violent environment, etc – that awareness can always be an even more positive power resource if the region can polish the approach.
Interestingly, the DG of Nigeria’s think tank on peace and conflict management (in suit in this picture) is from the Middle Belt,!
On these terms, the Middle Belt is nowhere. It doesn’t lack the human resources, including political leaders but, other than Senator Joseph Tarka, Chief Solomon Lar and General Danjuma, none has constructed a Nigeria-wide imaginary to be reckoned with. General Gowon is reckoned with but in the context of his personal examples in power and in a humane supervision of a civil war, with his “No victor, No vanquished” statement as the ultimate rhetorical testament to high mindedness if critically historicised. But this has not been done. As a soldier, it was not up to Gowon to do the theorising. That ought to have been the job of the intellectuals around him. We may not blame him and his intellectuals as those were the days of innocence anyway. In this regard, there is a Prof Isawa Elaigwu to thank for the biography of Gowon he did and Gowon himself for submitting himself to the scalpels of a well trained political scientist. But that job remains to be taken up, expanded and completed for the man who terminated Lugardian Nigeria in favour of a newer though still cumbersome Nigeria.
Intervention interprets resignation plans, indirect denial of resignation plans, accusations and counter-accusations and killings on the Plateau as all adding up to the case for a godfather for the Middle Belt. As long as Akume is SGF, he will be a contender for this position in the current epoch. It is not about whether he sees himself in that mould or whether he will get it. It is about every reality being a construction. Neither Umaru Yar’Adua nor Goodluck Jonathan constructed own presidential realities but someone else constructed it for them. But Bola Tinubu constructed that for himself. Again, it is not about whether he did it well or did it badly, it is about the constructedness of that reality.
In government, the most innocent move can be (mis)interpreted into something else. Akume might have been careful to avoid that but the entirety of life itself is political. In any case, what is at issue is the hopelessness in his region of origin and for which he has certain advantages at the moment in providing an umbrella for elite coherence that can address it.
There is no alternative to a ‘godfather’ for specific regions and zones now that institutionalists have lost the argument about how we need institutions instead of strong leaders. They were never right as both institutions and strong individuals are all products of the discourses foregrounding them. Otherwise, how did NATO become what it is today after the end of the Cold War. NATO basically expired at the end of the Cold War if seen in terms of the original essence. But NATO leaders reconfigured it and gave it new roles, a completely discursive move.
That should send a warning to champions of North Central Development Commission (NCDC) that an institution is not necessarily superior to its alternatives and its champions should be careful even as good as it sounds. The problems of the Middle Belt are not the problems most amenable to institutionalism as much as some level of elite coherence, first and foremost and, by implication, someone who can act as an umbrella for that coherence. The someone may not necessarily be someone we like but the crisis is galloping.
