How many meetings = one defection?

This is the question that people are itching to ask the Group of Seven governors otherwise known as G-7 or nPDP. Since September when they walked out of the PDP’s repeat special national convention and went on to float a party faction, they have been all over the country “consulting” some VIPs, notably former Heads […]

This is the question that people are itching to ask the Group of Seven governors otherwise known as G-7 or nPDP. Since September when they walked out of the PDP’s repeat special national convention and went on to float a party faction, they have been all over the country “consulting” some VIPs, notably former Heads of State.
They were in Rivers State to show solidarity with their embattled colleague Governor Rotimi Amaechi. They have been to Abeokuta twice to meet with former President Olusegun Obasanjo. They were in Minna where they met former military president Ibrahim Babangida and former Head of State Abdulsalami Abubakar. They also met with former Vice President Alex Ekwueme as well as former Defence Minister T.Y. Danjuma. On their way back from Abeokuta two days ago, they stopped over in Lagos and had a meeting with former Head of the Interim National Government Chief Earnest Shonekan.
As anyone who has engaged in very wide consultation knows, you are likely to hear different, often contradictory things from different people. Some will counsel quick action, others will urge caution; still others will speak in a non-committal manner and urge you to think carefully before you act. So in the end, it is not the number of elders that you consult that will help you to make up your mind but your own courage and sense of purpose.
Speaking on a radio program last week, Governor Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso said there are four options open to them. One of the options he listed was a return to PDP by reaching some kind of agreement with President Goodluck Jonathan. Short of totally surrendering on their demands, it is difficult to see how the G-7 can reach any agreement with a Presidency that has sacked ministers loyal to its members, locked up its members’ state liaison offices, sealed the personal property of its members, grounded its planes in order to thwart its national tours and went so far as to send a police DPO to stop its meeting.
It is time for the G-7 to fish or cut bait. They cannot go on holding meetings and consulting elders forever. Except if they want to become the professional tour operators of Nigerian politics.
Waiting for Baba Alakyo
The Justice Fola Gbadeyan Commission of Inquiry into the May 7 killing of 74 security agents at Alakyo village of Nasarawa State is about to conclude its sitting without hearing from the man widely thought to have engineered the sordid events. This old man known as the Baba Alakyo is believed to be the chief priest of Ombatse, the secret cult group believed to have laid the ambush and perpetrated the massacre.
Baba Alakyo was due to appear before the panel last week but after waiting in vain for him to turn up, the commission set last Monday as another date for him to make an appearance. The panel members waited for many hours and again Baba Alakyo failed to turn up. The frustrated commission members therefore moved to wind up their sittings and assumed that the chief priest had waived his right to fair hearing.
But wait a minute. I thought some people said they could bring the chief priest before the panel at short notice. When the panel members visited the palace of the traditional ruler of Nasarawa-Eggon, he was quoted to have said that he could make the chief priest to appear before the panel if his security was guaranteed.
It is not even the normal way of doing business in Nigeria.  If a man is accused, by the police no less, of having a hand in a massacre I thought the right place for him to be is on remand in prison. If a commission of inquiry wants to see him, they could ask the prison warders to bring him in, not to go around pleading with traditional rulers and negotiating protection and amnesty for a suspected criminal. Apparently the rules have since been rewritten in the case of Baba Alakyo.