Dr Ifeanyi Okowa is the governor of Delta state, one of the states in the Niger delta area in Nigeria.
Someone just ranted, for whatever reason that they would remove Okowa with their voting power–and I asked, “Which Voting Power?” Did you even vote him in the first place?
If Okowa, such a young and brilliant man cannot govern your state to the benefit of you all, just realise that it the dynamics of your state that has made it so.
Probably he was blessed by those who could seize the state apparatus to make him governor and is using same state apparatus to sustain his power.
What matters in the peculiar game of Nigerian politics is career success for the politician–which could not take place without granting of prebends, patronage and patrimonialism, as not all elements at play can be compensated with these at the same time and so countless subjective groups wishing for a piece of the pie front non-performance indices to the confused people either in a bid to get a piece of the action or to get power.
The people too are not left out, they too constitutite themseves into various youth groups, women’s groups, community groups and diverse phantom NGOs all in a bid to profiteer from a government that was not necessarily instituted to govern in the first place, but was just a mere “Settlement” to a people who feel a compulsory sense of entitlement to their resources which had been ab initio stolen from them and being feasted upon by their captors.
This is just the way of politics in a typical Niger Delta state–without which you , as a leader, naive of these dynamics, you must fall to blackmail and fail.
Governor Kayode Fayemi’s failure in the Ekiti state is equally closly related to this–which is why we at the Federalist Movement of Nigeria have insisted that Nigeria’s problem is more of the structure and philisophy of governance than mere leadership attributes–good or bad!
An intellectual in the Niger Delta, must be savvy enough to realise that they are not just in the minority but are vulnerable to a system ever-willing to “Settle” them in their rcapacities–as VCs, Pro-chancellors, Registrars, “Heads of this or that directorates” to just shut up and take their shares.
On the other hand, the majority, full time political jobbers simply need the leaders to “Play ball” with them to be supported or returned.
This majority does not just include power brokers in the state, but those local politicians in the villages who believe in either in brown envelopes, becoming party officers, ward leaders, LGA officials, phantom contract beneficiaries while mobilizing the rest of the population for any politician who is compliant.
This indeed is the pathway to success to any Niger Delta/Nigerian politicians who wants to remain relevant. With the sophistry of people like Okowa, Kayode Fayemi, the refined and expectant Nigerian in search of so-called good governance would yet have these leaders to no avail.
How do we stem the tide is the issue we must tackle, away from this wrist -wringing?
Remember too that given the divide-and-rule, settlements with phantoms states in the Niger Deltan (Rivers, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom, Delta), designed for the coroporate expropriation of their resources with the coorporation of their people–local godfathers and chiefs, and local champions and the ordinary people–all bogged down in a syndrome of scrambling at the table for what they originally own, the Niger Delta is worst hit by the RESOURCE CURSE–while the rest of the Nigerian state blackmails it.
I fear that even if Nigeria works, these states could hardly work.
I fear that even if Nigeria works, these states could hardly work.
No insults intended, afterwards, I am a tax-paying citizen born and raised in Rivers with total allegiance to the Niger Delta.
We need to start thinking beyond these simplistic and subjective analysis riddled with debates on relative stealing of our obviously competing leaders, defining governance performance by petty unsustainable projects, corporate social responsibility, phantom youth empowerment and gun-totting where certain groups feel they are not getting enough.
Only the few thinkers in the Nigeria Delta can recognize this and redefine this trend by tasking the FG which is the first but subtle ill-doer in the Delta.
