2 days Ago By Rapheal
On Monday, April 13, governors on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) met in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital. Among the governors at the meeting were Senator Douye Diri (Bayelsa), Ahmadu Fintiri (Adamawa), Caleb Mutfwang (Plateau), Sheriff Oborevwori (Delta), Agbu Kefas (Taraba), Peter Mbah (Enugu), and Dauda Lawal (Zamfara). Pastor Umo Eno of Akwa Ibom State was represented by his Deputy, Akon Eyakenyi.
The governors discussed matters affecting the party, including plans for the 2027 presidential election.But barely 24 hours after, Governor Eno was on Television drumming support for the re-election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The governor made the show during his speech at the flag-off ceremony of a 65-km road construction in his State.
“Let me end by assuring our president (Tinubu), our people-loving president, he will complete eight years because we are going to stand by him,” the governor stated. Tinubu belongs to the All Progressives Congress (APC), the governor is of the PDP.Elsewhere, while congratulating Tinubu on his 73rd birthday, Anambra State governor, Prof Chukwuma Soludo, nearly described him as the best thing to have happened to the country since the North-South Amalgamation of 1914.
Soludo said, “The President’s inclusive approach to governance and willingness to partner with subnational entities for national progress reflect his belief in a Nigeria that works for all”. Soludo and Tinubu, are not in the same political platform, at least, for now. He belongs to the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).
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display('div-gpt-ad-1718806029429-0'); }); Neither Soludo nor his Akwa Ibom counterpart, had come across as being frivolous. On Friday, April 5, 2024, I did a piece titled; “Girl child empowerment: Gov Umo Eno’s shining example”. What drew my attention to the governor was his compassionate and encouraging disposition to a female member of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) from Cross River State, Abang Marris, who returned to her parents’ thatched house to show gratitude to her dad for sacrificing to see her through in school.
The young Marris was featured in a viral video, marching to her village in full NYSC attire. On getting to the family house, she pulled out her uniform and cap, hoisted them on her father and gave him a salute in appreciation.The background, depicting the thatched house in which Marris’ parents lived, indicated a family struggling to survive.
But the young lady was proud of herself and family. Her action caught the attention of Governor Eno, who sent a team to verify the video content. On conviction that what was displayed was real, he decided to build a three-bedroom house for the family.
Besides the commendable gesture, Eno has come across as one delivering good governance to his people.Soludo on his own, had before coming to governorship, brandished rich credentials garnered over the years in academic and at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), where he was the governor at a time. As Anambra governor, he has equally recorded commendable impacts in the life of the state in terms of human resource development and infrastructure uplift.
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push({})}); Soludo will be seeking a reelection on November 8. In a normal setting, his performance profile should speak for him at the poll. But that would be a huge risk and staking his luck too far.
APC national chairman, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, had before the September 21 2024 governorship election in Edo, boasted that after walking over Edo, Anambra, would be on the line for capture. As if working according to script, Anambra APC governorship candidate, Nicholas Ukachukwu, is already carrying himself as a governor-in-waiting.You can then understand why Soludo has of late, been seriously rattled and seems willing to do anything to win Tinubu’s favour, if only to allow him win a second term.
He understands that the APC-led administration in the land is a blight that no one contends with without getting hurt. With a massively corrupt Mahmood Yakubu-led Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), a timorous national legislature and heavily compromised judiciary, any state the president and his party have eyes on, is in trouble. That was what played out in the Edo governorship election where the entire electoral process was manipulated to throw up APC’s Monday Okpebholo as against the more favoured Asue Ighodalo of the PDP as the winner.
Almost all the first-term governors, especially in the South, are gripped by that fever, hence the support for Tinubu’s second term is gaining ground. For them, the fear of Tinubu is the beginning of political wisdom. Incidentally, the presidency is enjoying and even stoking the inanity.
In many parts of the country, Tinubu’s posters, have taken over strategic points in major cities. Forget about the feeble outings by his image handlers, telling promoters of the campaign to desist from their action, they are enjoying the game. It is a project that is being unfolded in phases.
Of course, there is nothing wrong in the president seeking a second term at the appropriate time. The constitution allows him that. But this is an administration that is yet to convince Nigerians that it has any tangible programme, since its inception.
By May 29, Tinubu would be two years in office. Those are two years that Nigerians would wish were forgotten in their lives. They are years of the locusts.
Under Tinubu, many lives are lost to insecurity, families cannot feed themselves, the out-of-school children ratio has soared, the various fault lines in the country have been widened, the national currency has been reduced to a tissue paper, and the country reduced to a laughing stock among other nations. For some time lately, Plateau, Benue and Borno have been soaked in blood due to activities of murderous Fulani herdsmen and Boko Haram insurgents. 51 citizens were killed in just one instance in renewed onslaughts in Plateau, three days ago.
Similar odd stories resonate elsewhere.While the former President, Muhammadu Buhari was leaving office on May 29, 2023, the assumption was that Nigerians had had it all in terms of bad governance, ethnic and parochial proclivities in policies and programmes, insensitivity to other regions of the country and economic hardship. But in less than two years in the saddle, Tinubu has made a child’s play of all Buhari’s shortcomings.
You can only be a member of his Yoruba ethnic stock and a member of his inner clique to feel the good side of his administration. Nigerians had never had it this bad. Yet, for Tinubu, what matters is securing a second term.
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