Adamawa after Nyako: Let the people speak

To begin to chronicle the cause of the fall should be seen as out of place for there is now more urgency in looking at the task ahead, which is to plot the painstaking way forward. In this regard since the impeachment, nothing agitates the mind more than the running criticism of the state House […]

To begin to chronicle the cause of the fall should be seen as out of place for there is now more urgency in looking at the task ahead, which is to plot the painstaking way forward. In this regard since the impeachment, nothing agitates the mind more than the running criticism of the state House of Assembly, which impeached Nyako, of doing so only now for “gross misconduct” perpetrated well over five years ago. Why did they keep mute over the time, only to act now, critics ask.
It is a sentimental criticism expressed without a sense of history, and with a lack of knowledge of the facts.  One could, in fact, add that critics are lacking in empathy for the legislators who indeed barely survived the war-headed torpedoes of the retired Admiral, which were themselves flagrant breeches of the constitution. Now the shoe has gone on the other foot, only in the paramount interest of the downtrodden common folk.
When the moves began, it was in truth a convergence of events which may have seemed insignificant, but whittled executive power in the same proportion as it freed and empowered the Legislature. Twenty-two members were PDP and visibly not desirous of joining Governor Nyako in his quarrel with the PDP and his final carpet crossing to the All Progressives Congress (APC). Then reacting to the apparent “ownership” of the APC by Murtala Nyako, the three remaining members who were not even elected on an APC ticket and became APC only by virtue of the merger of their parties to form the APC formally decamped to the PDP, leaving Murtala Nyako with a full PDP legislature to contend with.
It is necessary to situate the vote of confidence for which the Legislature is now being demonized, within the context of the clean sweep of the political stakes that Murtala Nyako desired to have and failed. The assurance of a vote of confidence was no more than a political ploy to self-preservation during a difficult period when Murtala Nyako had not made that ill-advised baseless accusation of President Goodluck Jonathan of genocide against Northerners, a statement that drove the nation closer to the edge of the precipice.
Not to forget a time when if you were a believer and a true lover of democracy, you would have wept for what Adamawa State was offering the world to see. Those who vilify the Adamawa State Legislature did not know that once upon a time, the Legislature was locked down for nearly three months because the same 19 out of 25 members voted to change the then Speaker that Murtala Nyako had preferred. Thugs took over the House forcing members to go on the long irregular recess. Those who criticize the House hardly have an idea what powers Nyako wielded over it.
No accusers of the Adamawa House of Assembly understand why it became so compromised as not to have made its voice heard on the side of the people all this while, and they were supposed to have control mechanisms with which they could have harpooned the administration and brought it home. They just did not. We eat their flesh to assume that legislators were compromised by executive inducement.  At a point, they were shut down by the Executive for over 53 days, and they dared not fight back. Where were we that there was no uproar at the time, and Nyako got away with it!
A prominent member of the House told me that without the support of Abuja, the House was powerless, mainly because “a majority could not be mustered behind any cause because many members would sell out”. For the many, the immediate seemed more important than the long term. A national leader also confided in me that the state legislators had approached him to help them remove Nyako way back and he told them point blank that they were an untrustworthy lot and he would therefore not waste his money, as he believed, they would in the end “sell” him out to Governor Murtala Nyako for as much as they got, if not even less! Ironically, Nyako was impeached with this leader pitching for Nyako against the people!
The help Adamawa needs is ‘restoratio-nal’, akin to a territory liberated through a war. Infrastructure is critically deficient and affects power supply, water and roads, all fundamental basic needs. The civil service has been owed two months of salary which the Acting Governor is positioning the government to pay, but pensioners are also being owed. The help Adamawa needs, especially from the Federal Government, is a fund to support a Marshall plan that will immediately restore normalcy and shore up a buffer against the insurgents. Of course, all looted funds must be returned.
The political climate in Adamawa State is currently charged as the scores of ambitious contestants to the office of governor as well as stakeholders employ all types of scheming, tactics and tricks to gain advantage. The gambit is to claim responsibility for the ouster of Nyako and the liberation of the state and, if possible, run away with the interim government as prize. It is politics. For the ambitious, it is the exercise of fundamental rights, but sight must not be lost of the need for sustenance of peace and stability. In this regard, one hopes that the Acting Governor will call all the players to a summit and make clear some ground rules of engagement without prejudice to the country’s multi-party democracy.
Given our peculiar circumstances, the common ordinary citizens ought to be given a say in the process of selection of bidders of public office. No one is calling for a ban of any individual, but President Jonathan would be much help to side with the grassroots folk and leave them to determine the emergence of anyone from the lot seeking the 2015 ticket for Adamawa State. The one reason Murtala Nyako was such a monumental failure was that he was chosen by Abuja and imposed on the people. And he rode roughshod over them without passion.