Adamawa: What will be, will be

The first and perhaps the most immediate consequence of the development was the cancellation of the governorship by-election scheduled for yesterday. The plans, modalities, horse-trading, and intrigues evolved for the contest have all come to naught. Virtually every one who was interested in the office must have lost a fortune. When we add the numerous […]

The first and perhaps the most immediate consequence of the development was the cancellation of the governorship by-election scheduled for yesterday. The plans, modalities, horse-trading, and intrigues evolved for the contest have all come to naught. Virtually every one who was interested in the office must have lost a fortune. When we add the numerous aspirants of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who lost out earlier in the convoluted primaries of their party, the list of losses becomes uncountable. Again, our politicians have once more allowed huge public resources deployed by the electoral body for the purposes of an election to end up as a mere waste.
Are our politicians likely to learn lessons from the development?  We can only answer this question in the negative considering the transparent high degree of greed in the polity- a feature which in the first instance drove the Adamawa legislators into a compromised and defective impeachment process. They operated like a group that had a deal to remove Governor Murtala Nyako at all cost, yet he was a leader they had praised to high heavens a few months earlier.  At the same time, they envisaged that to succeed in their quest to appropriate executive powers, it was necessary to also pull out his deputy. In that inordinate ambition for power, certain basic mistakes were inadvertently committed-a fatal one being the acceptance of a booby letter of resignation that was routed straight to them in breach of the constitution. Otherwise, if the deputy governor deserved to be impeached, how would resignation cure his purported crime? Of course, the goal had nothing to do with the public good of removing bad eggs from governance; the sole aim was to take over power.
Going by the wild jubilation which greeted the coming to power of Ngilari, it would appear that the people had much earlier seen through the entire shenanigan of the holier than thou legislators. While the joyous mood of the people throughout the state, particularly the capital city of Yola showed that what was done tallied with their yearnings, why the people did nothing to show their disdain until the power game changed remains a challenge to handlers of political education. It clearly points at the painful existence of a docile and dormant civil society. Put bluntly, why can’t our numerous non-governmental organizations (NGOs) mobilize our people to reject persons who do not perform well in office?
Do Nigerians know that they needn’t wait for four years to reject a drifting legislator? In other words, do our people know of the constitutional provision which spells out how to recall failed legislators? Worse still, if such politicians managed to complete four years, should they be allowed to use whatever method to get another chance? In Edo State, for example, no meaningful legislation has taken place for the better part of this year as a result of factionalization which created two sets of legislators, one at the government house and the other at the Ring Road. Should those involved be well received during the campaigns for 2015? In the case of Ondo State, will the people give a listening ear to members of their State House of Assembly who massively decamped to the PDP simply because their governor did same? Why should people anywhere in the nation tolerate those known to have frustrated the unalloyed principle of separation of powers?
What about our the judiciary, how do we rate its scorecard? This was the topic of the debate one day after the assumption of office by Governor Ngilari. The venue of the debate was the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport Abuja where it was humour, laughter and amazement when a group of passengers tried to kill the boredom created by the usual delayed flight syndrome of Nigerian airlines. Perhaps the most exciting of the viewpoints in the group was that of a man who attributed much of the blame of our political dilemma to the judiciary. He argued that Nigeria can only progress if our judges can distance themselves from the ill-gotten materialism and murky waters of politics. The man refused to agree with the rest of us who praised the judge that ruled in favour of Ngilari. According to the man, what we were all praising as judicial activism was done only because it tallied with the wish of the powers that be. He then wondered if it was not in the same Adamawa State that a Chief Judge, having ruled that the impeachment process was flawed, somersaulted without new facts to constitute a panel to investigate Nyako’s impeachment charges. The debate ended on a rather infuriating note when someone added that may be people should beat up judges as the Ekitis do.
From this reckless opinion, it became clear that thugs too can rationalize as we all parted ways without agreeing on whether Ngilari should be a governor or not. But since the man is already in office, we can only remember that those who struggled to keep him out of fortune forgot that man proposes but God disposes. Consequently, politicians who play God whenever they are in power need to introspect and recognize that no one is the architect of another person’s destiny. In Taraba State for instance, a deputy governor was kicked out of office just to please the Oga at the top.  Today, the man calling the shots there is neither the underdog that was impeached nor the acclaimed Oga. Similarly, time will tell concerning the outcome of the battle in many places like Enugu and Imo States where deputy governors were impeached only because they were maligned. For now, we can safely say that Bala James Ngilari is governor of Adamawa State because what will be, will always be.