GOVERNORS sit atop the 36 states of the federation. They hold the helm in these states and are powerful, strong and reliable to borrow the once-upon-a-time pay off line of that first generation bank. Governors everywhere are strong, but the Nigerian governor is in a class of his own when it comes to showing where power lies. They are quick to tell anyone who cares to listen: ‘don’t you know that I am a governor’ or something to that effect.
They do not only let people know that they are in office, but also that they are in power. Why do they get power sottish? you may want to ask. The answer is simple: the resources at their disposal. They have a lot of resources to dispense favour. This is why many want to be in their good books. You are made if you are in the good book of a governor. You are as good as dead if you are not.
Nobody, I repeat, nobody, is too big for a governor to deal with, if he becomes power drunk. Even those who helped him into office are not spared once bitten by that bug. Can you really blame governors? The story of many of them is not different from that of a man who should lie on a mat but is offered a bed. By the time he starts enjoying the comfort of a bed, he will never remember that there is anything called suffering. Painfully, many of them came from humble background; children of peasants whom fortune and fame smiled on.
In the words of Shakespeare, some were born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust on them. Those on who power was thrust; who were brought from the slimy, seamy side of life to the sunnyside of it often times strut all over the place as lords of the manor. They walk into a place and every person stands up. It takes the grace of God for that not to get into the head of any man. The haughtiness displayed by many governors has nothing to do with the parties they belong to.
Whether All Progressives Congress (APC) or Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) or All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) or Labour Party (LP), it does not matter. All these are labels, which do not define the governors. Rather their excellencies use these labels to shape their destinies. They determine the direction their parties should go. They decide who leads the parties and other members of the executive. Their words are laws. Once, they have spoken, so be it. The nation saw it happen when PDP was in power between 1999 and 2015.
Even as president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo deferred to the party’s governors, who showed their hands in every matter. To them, there is no difference between state and party matters.They must have their say in it. That was until Obasanjo weaned himself of their control after his reelection in 2003. It is however within their parties that governors bring their influence to bear most. It was not like this on the return of democracy in 1999 when no one held political power. Then, the people’s voice mattered. But on the governors’ ascension to power things changed. They had come into money by virtue of their new offices and so they resolved to change things in pursuit of their selfish agenda.
Truly, it is when someone is in a position of power and affluence that you can really say the kind of person he is. So, is it with APC governors. Those who were governors before them on the party’s platform derided their PDP counterparts then for their selfish agenda. The public did not know that it was the kettle calling the pot black. They now know better. APC governors, from what the people have seen of them since the party came into power five years ago are like the PDP governors who held the same position years before them.
In political antics and shenanigans, they are the same. How can the people expect them to be different? They cannot be different when they share the same character traits and are mostly made from the same political cloth. They move from PDP today to APC and from APC to PDP tomorrow. Their political ideology as former APC Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki volunteered when he defected to PDP is “share the money”. Indeed, that is how a few people comprising governors who sit on a huge war chest known as security vote and other political actors have been sharing our commonwealth since 2015.
To ensure that they remain relevant on the political scene, governors always seek the control of their parties and houses of assembly. The APC crisis, which warranted President Muhammadu Buhari’s intervention can be located in this desire to remain if not in office but in power in perpetuity. They want to remain governors long after their constitutionally approved two terms of eight years and also have a puppet as party chairman so that they can be pulling the strings behind the scene. The feud between ousted APC chairman Adams Oshiomhole and Obaseki was a perfect excuse for some APC governors to achieve their well laid plan of getting the comrade removed.
The belief is that these governors have their eyes on 2023. 2023 is all about who succeeeds Buhari who they enlisted to get Oshiomhole out of the way. The governors either want to be president or vice president depending on which region the Presidency is zoned to. Governors Simon Lalong (Plateau), Atiku Bagudu (Kebbi), Kayode Fayemi (Ekiti), Nasir El-Rufai (Kaduna), among others, are working together to forge a common front for the 2023 Presidency. In their camp are some ministers from their respective regions. They find it easy to work together today because they believe that they have a common enemy in a stalwart of the party, who is believed to have interest in the Presidency.
Their time, which should be spent on working for the people of their states, is being consumed by permutations for 2023. For them, governance has taken a back seat. Their preoccupation now is to get their men in place at the party secretariat to manipulate things for them to get the presidential ticket in three years time. They have, with the President’s support, won the first round by pushing Oshiomhole, who is considered to be a cog in their plan, out of the party secretariat. They know that with Oshiomhole in control they cannot have their way in manipulating the process of getting the presidential ticket when the time comes.
Even with Oshiomhole out of the way, will things swing in their favour in 2023?