THE PRESIDENT’S SYLVA MEDALS
The two reasons are the local politics of his home state of Bayelsa and the recent National Honours Awards. There is a third issue; the president’s attempt to convince members of the National Assembly of the necessity of removing fuel subsidy, and a fourth one; that of labour unions in the electricity sector holding to […]
The two reasons are the local politics of his home state of Bayelsa and the recent National Honours Awards. There is a third issue; the president’s attempt to convince members of the National Assembly of the necessity of removing fuel subsidy, and a fourth one; that of labour unions in the electricity sector holding to ransom the whole country. These latter two for later, but let us visit the first two today.
On Bayelsa, there is much evidence to show that the president is about to start fulfilling his desire for a single term for elective positions. How else would anyone interpret his purported denial of a second-term ticket to incumbent Governor Timipre Sylva? If, as insinuated, the president is denying Sylva a second term for personal reasons, the matter is not being handled well by him and his advisers. With good advisers, the president could hide his ego trip and, in one fell swoop, write his name in Gold (despite its ‘shortage’) by ‘denying’ second terms to all other second-term seekers on the platform of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP. Is he not the ‘Leader’ of the party and the next ‘Chairman Board of Trustees’ (when he leaves office after his first term)?
The president should just do for the goose what he has done for the Yenagoa gander: make it a policy of his party now and immediately that PDP positions are only for a single term. Meaning, he should just go ahead and stop the other incumbents seeking second terms in other states. Simple. That way, he would show that it is not ego that is driving him on his Yenagoa adventure. In addition, this singular action of single terming may prompt the National Assembly to see reason and pass his Single Term Bill. It could even win the president a Gold Medal, in this era of Shortage of Medals.
Talking of Shortage of Medals, the government dropped a big brick and shot itself in the foot at the recent National Honours Awards ceremony. Despite the fact that there were many well-deserving honourees, nominating Professor Chinua Achebe and similar ‘nillies’ without consultation was a big faux pas, but the biggest faux pas must be reserved for the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, Anyim Pius Anyim, who announced that some awardees would not get their medals on the day because there was a ‘shortage’ of the medals. He had gone on to say that “those that did not get their medals today will get it in a week’s time”. What confession! What crass ignorance of Public Relations! If government had good Public Relations (PR) people, not pretentious pseudo-journalists as spokespeople, the matter of shortage of medals would have been handled in a much more decorous way.
Instead of embarrassing 167 million Nigerians on live television, there could have been a thousand and one ways of explaining away the shortage matter in very unobtrusive ways. That is why there is, in Nigeria, a National Institute of Public Relations, NIPR, from the ranks of which political leaders should be looking for image makers. The key word here is ‘image’, and a journalist or writer, whatever other qualifications he may have, may not be the best person to promote and help protect a leader’s image.
Government thinks it has the last say in anything. Because of this haughtiness, and the clamour and hunger by the Nigerian elite for positions and titles and awards, Government just goes ahead and announces the name of someone, without consultation, for an appointment, a title or an award, even if that someone would have none of it. This has led to much embarrassment for both appointer and appointee. That was the case of Professor Chinua Achebe (who, to most people, was the one intended for the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature). As government knew he had in 2004 rejected the same award, someone should have had the common sense, called PR, to at least consult him or his close associates to gauge his current attitude. That would have saved us the Collective National Embarrassment, CNE (which is less than a Bronze Medal).
And now back to Bayelsa. We may all remember that, at the height of the political heat just before the last election, the then inheritor-President was said to have promised the ‘North’ that, if they let him contest, he was going to stay on for ‘only one term’. Though he refused to commit to paper (confirming PDP’s ‘Northern Leaders’ as just a bunch of ‘paper tigers’), at least the phrase ‘single term’ made its way into the political discourse. But then, no one knew the much underestimated president had another ace up his sleeve; the duration of the ‘single term’.
His handlers had earlier mentioned six years, and then it became seven years. But the president foreswore that it didn’t necessarily have to begin with him. But knowing the type of National Assembly we had (the current one has to prove itself otherwise), the new single term may well begin with this president. Now, if you add the one year and three weeks he had spent as inheritor-president to a ‘seven year single term’, what do you have? Eight years, or two full terms, and a bonus of three weeks! No! Let a single term be of only five years, as the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has successfully instituted such for all Vice Chancellors. Since that momentous revolution, peace and tranquillity had relatively ensued in universities in the matter of politics.
Five years would be a good single term for governors because, in politics, unlike university administration, a governor will need six months to wriggle his way for a favourable Election Tribunal verdict; through the horse-trading of appointing a cabinet; identify potential contractors; calculate ten percents accruable over five years. And then he needs another six months at the end of the tenure to identify whom he wants to be his Inheritor; how much is the latter going to ‘pay’ for it (in advance and arrears); ensure there is a senate seat waiting for him or the outgoing ‘First Lady’; organise a reasonable retreat from public life should it become necessary; and organise at least two Abuja accommodations, and another in Dubai. (Then we, the subjects, are assured of four years of governance in between the six months either side, making it a nice, clean five years. And what’s ten per cent of five years? Six months exactly.)
And now, a final word on those Missing Medals: remind me someone to ask if my ‘nominee’, Dr. Magaji Dambatta, has really got his, or he has to wait until ‘next week’.
And now, a final word on Bayelsa. If Timi is so Timid to allow his term to be truncated at four years, let the two million people of Bayelsa decide whether they really need a change. But let the president experiment on his Single Term of five years. At the end of it all, his name will be written, if not in Gold, then in Sylva.