Each time any of my younger siblings was rude to me or sometimes attempted to smack or slap me and then run away, my mum would wiggle her finger and warn them, ‘ma fi abara kekere gba nla’. Meaning, Funke’s palm is bigger than yours and so her slap will hurt more than the one from your smaller palm. That was the scenario that came to my mind when the Supreme Court smacked Governor Sim Fubara and Rivers State with that judgment that sent all the Local Government Chairmen back home to the wives.
After reading through the story, I heaved a sigh, not of relief but of exhaustion. I said, wow, after all that drama and tension that preceded and followed the election, is this how it will all end? Remember that Governor Fubara was elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, but somehow the Action Peoples Party, APP, won the leadership of 22 out of the 23 councils. Not PDP, his party. Think of the millions or billions that was expended on that election.
And now this Supreme Court has trashed and thrashed both the money and the effort. A few strong men have decided that the votes counted and discounted mean nothing and Rivers people would have to go and look for more money, more billions to conduct the election that the courts, judges and law would approve. All that strain and stress and grandstanding just to lose to the court, not to the opposition party, PDP. What a shame. What a waste of time and deflation of ego.
So what are the lessons here? If your palm is small, do not slap the person with a bigger palm. His Excellency, Sim Fubara looks like he has taken on a bigger man or men. His palm is smarting but it looks like the man he slapped did not even wince. The slaps the governor has been dealt are enough to relocate anybody’s two ears to the same side of the head and I am not sure he has received the last slap yet. His fight with Minister Nyesom Wike has been, sad, bad and mad. It is not a fight that should have started in the first place but the ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’ of that fight is a subject that is ripe, not only for deep study but one for national debate.
Those who want to quote the Bible or democratic tenets here are definitely not Nigerians. The godson and godfather politics, the I-will-choose-my-successor mentality of governors and the oppression and betrayal that follow are so totally incorrigibly Nigerian. That one godson is being slapped in 2025 does not mean prospective godsons are not lining up for endorsement. Indeed, Fubara will produce his own godson who he most likely will also slap into deafness. Nigerian politicians are unteachable like that.
Could Fubara have handled this better, more effectively? The answer would depend on where you are standing. If you are standing with the Rivers people whose funds, including the ones that will be withheld, you will see that they are the grass being trampled by all the elephants in this fight. They are the ones who voted a PDP governor and also voted APP local Government executives. Only God knows which party will win the next round.
The next lesson is do not accept and submit to godfatherism if you have no intention of following the tenets of the concept. A man does not become a godfather overnight. He knows things. He is capable of things. If he can suspend democratic tenets for you, he can suspend them again to un-father you. You cannot expect to enjoy the prize of being a godson without paying the price. If some peoples’ ambition and aspiration were discountenanced to favour you and you wore your godson robe proudly while pretending to be a democrat, weep not when the day of reckoning arrives.
For now, let us wish Governor Fubara the fortitude to ride out this storm. I know he is not sleeping well.
Am I in support of Wike and making fun of Fubara? Far from it. The godfather-godson thing shortchanges me, you, the people, democracy, everybody. The only people who profit from it are the godson and his godfather. If they did not fall apart, would we have known some of the details of their alliance? And when politicians align, the people are hardly included in the equation. Or you think when they hold those closed-door, nocturnal meetings, they discuss how to build new dams to generate more megawatts of electricity or make irrigation a national policy? No, they discuss a different kind of power, power sharing. They review who got what and will get what. It is when what brought them together separates them that they call in the lawyers, rush to the courts and generally entertain us for a while. The lawyers are cashing out from the bloated egos of the political actors while the judges are gradually establishing ‘judicracy’ – we vote, they decide who rules.
For now, let us wish Governor Fubara the fortitude to ride out this storm. I know he is not sleeping well. Who can, when people who are holding brooms are chasing you all night, only for you to wake up to find a fierce-looking umbrella-wielding one breathing fire by your bedside?
A sick North and its leaders
Governor Dikko Radda of Katsina State has a PhD in Agriculture and Rural Sociology. Nasir Idris, Kebbi State governor holds a PhD in Education. The governor of Sokoto State, Ahmad Aliyu also holds a doctorate in Business Administration. Dauda Lawal, Zamfara State governor has a 1992 Masters Degree in Political Science/ International Relations. Governor Gawuna Yusuf of Kano holds a Bachelors Degree in, wait for it, Biochemistry. So, how did a North with governors this educated end up with a strange, obnoxious, nasty and distasteful directive that shuts schools for Ramadan? How did the North get here and how will the region ever get out of this cesspit of affliction?
Please are the children and grandchildren of these helmsmen attending the schools that are going to be shut down for Ramadan? Are the children and grandchildren of the Senators, Representatives, all political office holders and indeed the elites of the north all affected by this sit-at-home-during –Ramadan schools closure in the North? Are the schools in Saudi Arabia also closed for Ramadan or it is just Northern Nigerian Muslims that are holier than those whose womb birthed the holy Prophet?
Why are we not seeing or hearing protests against this sad holiday? The Muslim community is quiet. The affected parents are going about their businesses as if this is okay. The Muslim clerics’ silence is the most shocking.
The schools that were shut, are there Christian students there? Will the teachers be paid for the month they are fasting and not working? That last question brings me to the biggest question of all; this closure of Northern schools for Ramadan, was it the initiative of the governors? What exactly were they thinking? Did they hold meetings with all stakeholders in this matter and how did they justify the move? How do Northern leaders sleep at night, really?
I have always been suspicious that the many social diseases that are afflicting the North are the fault of their leaders. This confirms it. Northern leaders and elites like a sick north. It works for them. They like a North West with almost nine million out-of-school children and a North-East with more than five million. Or what else is the reason why every statistic with negative figures in education domiciled in the North and then some governors still go ahead to give this kind of directive? Exactly in whose interest is this no-school-during Ramadan holiday, the teachers’, the students’, the parents’ or whose?
These governors, these Northern leaders, where do they see the North in Nigeria, in world equations in 10 years? Do they think producing Nigerian Presidents regularly is what gives the North power? Me, I think if Nigeria has an Hausa or Fulfude- speaking President for 20 unbroken years where the North still does what it presently does, the region will still not catch up with the rest of Nigeria. Anyway, it looks like those who are beaten are not crying while people like me are swallowing ‘panadol’ for a Northern headache.
*Egbemode ([email protected])
