Political office: Inheritance and private estate?

In the course of an interview on Channels Television last week, the governor of Ekiti State, Dr Kayode Fayemi and presidential aspirant on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), launched a broadside of a statement that will remain a reference point in consideration of political offices in Nigeria, for some time to come. […]

In the course of an interview on Channels Television last week, the governor of Ekiti State, Dr Kayode Fayemi and presidential aspirant on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), launched a broadside of a statement that will remain a reference point in consideration of political offices in Nigeria, for some time to come. According to him, political office is not a personal inheritance nor a traditional title. One can also add that it is not a personal estate too. Fayemi had made the statement when responding to a question by Seun Okinbaloye of Channels Television, which bordered on whether the governor’s bid to be President of the country was not an act of betrayal of his erstwhile benefactor Bola Ahmed Tinubu, also an aspirant to the office of the President, and who is a former governor of Lagos State and national leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). 

The implication of Okinbaloye’s question was whether Fayemi’s bid, may not have set up a seeming rivalry between himself and Tinubu, who had earlier made public his aspiration to succeed Muhamadu Buhari as President of the country, based on his lifelong ambition to “rule Nigeria”. It is to be noted that ever since Tinubu declared his interest to succeed Buhari, any aspirant from the South West who had any semblance of benefitting from him in the past, suffered the denigration of being referred to as an ingrate to him. The victims in this instance include Vice President Yemi Osinbanjo and now Kayode Fayemi.

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Although Fayemi might have responded to the specific question from Seun Okinbaloye, his response still has a wider implication for the Nigerian political space, where the primary drive for contesting for political office by a wide cross-section of aspirants remains a sense of entitlement, whether justified or not. And for Nigeria which for all practical intents and purposes, is a constitutional democracy, this entitlement mentality remains anachronistic to the letters and spirit of the Constitution. The Nigerian Constitution states unequivocally that the country shall be a constitutional democratic nation. It is in that same context that the designated political offices are creations of law, even as they constitute the targets of political contests and related campaigns.

Meanwhile political parties are organisations which are established for the purpose of coordinating candidates to contest and win political offices, from which they can operate governance as well as influence public policy, and by implication affect the citizenry for good and for bad. In the same context, the Constitution provides the legitimate ways and means whereby individual aspirants could win elections into constitutionally established political offices. It therefore remains anachronistic for any aspirant to public office to be driven only by a self-serving agenda of fulfilling a persona dream, except such a dream resonates with the public expectation in a verifiable manner.  This is where Fayemi’s take resonates with rectitude and the mood of the country.

Across the length and breadth of the country today, the trending expectation is that the country should never be allowed to return to the present state of affairs after the term of President Muhamadu Buhari. That is why many Nigerians take with a pinch of salt, campaign promises made by aspirants who intend to continue ‘where Buhari stops’. For against the backdrop of Nigerians’ experience under the Buhari administration, it will be beneficial for aspirants hoping to continue with his legacies to formally delineate which of such they hope to continue with, if elected.    

Against the backdrop of the foregoing, lies the question of who and what drive the typical political parties and their leaders in Nigeria? Is it the overall good of the majority of the citizens, or the capricious and parochial interests of a few leaders who have maneuvered themselves into positions of authority and thereby have personalized the soul and enterprises of these political parties? As Nigeria is on the threshold of preparing for general elections next year, these questions need answers as the stage is set for the country to get its political bearings right, or descend further into the vortex of crises and perdition. 

For too long has the lament lasted over the deterioration in the state of affairs in the country, with significant blame directed at President Muhamadu Buhari. Now that his tenure is drawing to a close and the gentleman has on several occasions indicated his disinterest in seeking for an extension of his tenure by any means, the onus falls on Nigerians to commence thinking of the post Buhari era, in terms of how to make life easier for the citizenry, to the exclusion of promoting any entitlement mentality of any aspirant, no matter how sugar coated his or her tongue may be. 

It is in this context that the bold and budding advocacy of putting people first in governance, as is presently driven by – Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs in Rivers State, a petroleum industry leader and widely acclaimed philanthropist, is resonating with the general public like sweet music from the keys of a piano. Against the backdrop of the diminished accountability and sensitivity to citizens welfare that marks the style of the present governor of Rivers State Nyesom Wike, lies the clamour for a deliverer of the citizens of the state from his megalomaniac excesses which are borne from an entitlement mentality. In the context of that dispensation, not only is he fixated on infesting the national political space with his style of obduracy in exercise of political power.  

In fact, not a few observers of the politics of Rivers State are agreed on the circumstances of Wike’s present jostle for the presidential ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has betrayed him for what he is –  a despot besotted with a high dose of unjustified self-worth. 

 Hence, as far as Wike’s political future is concerned, it is a matter of caveat emptor.

MEANWHILE, CONGRATULATIONS AND SALUTE TO EXCELLENCE.

 This is to express the commendation by the leading lights of Nigeria’s oil and gas industry of Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs over his conferment with the prestigious 2022 Petroleum Technology Association (PETAN) Award during the course of the just concluded global Offshore Technology Conference (OTC 22), in Houston Texas, USA. The OTC is an annual conference of the world’s leading operators in the petroleum sector, and has been held since 1969. Dumo Lulu-Briggs is the Chairman of Lagos and Port Harcourt based Platform Petroleum Limited.