There is this age-long tradition in France which belongs to another clime and times, but which provides two striking object lessons to the Nigerian story I am going to tell today.
The French people celebrate their National Day on every July 14th with pomp and pageantry. That day became France’s national day because it was on that day in 1789 that the common people, no longer able to bear the high-handedness of their King, Louis XVI, stormed the Bastille Castle and set free the political prisoners that were held there. You became a political prisoner in those days just by whispering an angry word against the king. And because King Louis had emphasized that “l’etat c’est moi” (I am the state), any such act, ipso facto, was treasonable and earned anybody who was unfortunate to be fingered a date with the guillotine or a long imprisonment at the Bastille, if he was lucky.
The Prise de la Bastille, (the storming of the Bastille Castle) became the most important thing in the lives of the French because it marked the liberation of the people from the hands of their oppressors and became the beginning of the French Revolution which was to metamorphose into the birth of democratic freedom and democracy all across Europe.
Subsequently, years and centuries later, as the French celebrate on every July 14th, they never allow the crucial lessons of the Social Contract, between the leaders and the led, to be lost. The state president, who is the symbol and wielder of state authority, mounts the elevated dais at the tastily decorated parade ground to acknowledge the loyalty salute of the different arms of the Armed and other disciplined forces of the Republic along with their different types of armaments and tools of their trade. As the cart-drawn big guns drive past, they would pause before the saluting president and solemnly lower their turrets as a token and sign of respect and submission. Then, a shrill voice would ring out above the din of the occasion and announce that: “these juggernauts of war that lower their turrets in obeisance and loyalty can raise them and bark in anger and rage…” (in my translation).
The lesson is never lost on anybody, especially on the leaders, as the events of the French Revolution had amply proved that the zeal with which the led had submitted to the authority of the leader would be the same zeal with which they would rise against the authority of the same leader, if and when he steps out line, as emperors did. That, in essence is what the so-called Social Contract which we mouth everyday but which we hardly stop to meditate on, entails.
Last week, the representatives of Ebonyi people, members of the State House of Assembly, like the leaders of the French peasants in the 18th century, feeling fed up with their imperial governor, Chief Martin Elechi, looked him in the eyes, and for once refused to blink. Seeing that they had nothing to lose, they dared him. Fifteen members of the 24-member House of Assembly issued the governor, who was said to have, for the past eight years had run the state like his personal estate, with an eight-point impeachment notice, and had proceeded to ask the Chief Judge of the State to set up a committee to investigate very serious and detailed allegations of gross abuse of office, fraud and corruption against their imperial octogenarian governor. For now, and on the surface, things seem to be at a stalemate because apart from a pending restraining interim injunction from an Abakaliki High court, at the instance of the governor on the legislators, the PDP has stepped in and is trying to settle the case in their usual ‘family affair’ tradition.
It hardly matters to observers whether the legislators are finally going to be able to go through with what they have started or whether they would be stopped halfway. It is more important that the Ebonyi legislators are able to muster the guts to attempt the dismantling of a man who had regarded himself as impregnable and who had inflicted the same complex on the people that had elected him to office twice since in 2007. Governor Elechi has been around for as long as most people can remember.
In fact, as far back as after the civil war in 1970, Elechi had become politically relevant in the entire Igboland as a commissioner in the Ukpabi Asika government of East Central State. Since then, the octogenarian has bestridden his socio-political environment as a Colossus, taking everybody else as children and subjects in his imperial kingdom.
Ebonyians are reputed for their peaceful disposition and loyalty to the constituted authorities and it was perhaps on account of those attributes that the politics of that state has remained more peaceful and better manageable than the other South East states. PDP and the different administrators in the state have become the greatest beneficiaries.
The mantle had been seamlessly handed over to Martin Elechi by Sam Egwu in the understanding that power would always rotate from one senatorial zone to the order and like in Enugu State, it had worked well. But by the time that baton was about to change for the 2015 polls, Governor Elechi was said to have become too powerful to consult with anyone and had allegedly wanted to unilaterally foist his political minion on the party as a gubernatorial candidate, just as he had unilaterally acted in his management of the affairs and resources of the state, from the weighty allegations of fraud and abuse that were tabulated in the impeachment notice.
Governor Elechi must have been surprised and must have wondered from where the other political leaders got the balls to challenge him, first by rejecting his handpicked candidate and then by making him irrelevant in the party. The Ebonyians, like the French, had suddenly found their voice and staked a fight against the ‘emperor’. Still bent on proving that Ebonyi State is his private property, Elechi ignored the PDP’s broad-based arrangement that had selected his deputy, Dave Umahi, as the gubernatorial candidate.
He instead, adopted a hitherto non-existent Labour party as a foster child and started sponsoring Architect Edward Nkwegu, a man widely seen and allegedly regarded as his front in many messy business deals which form the basis of the impeachment paper, as the LP gubernatorial candidate. In the ways of emperors, Elechi is also said to be sponsoring his first son, Elechi Elechi, as a senatorial candidate under the same LP. If you were driving through the South East and stumbled on the powerful airwaves of the Ebonyi state FM station, you would immediately notice that Arc. Nkwegu and the Labour party rule the waves, when the PDP and its candidate would have been the toast of the station.
In all this, the PDP candidate, Engr Dave Umahi seems to have been left out in the cold as the entire state machineries which should have been at his disposal as the candidate of the ruling party, have been denied him and passed over the governor’s protégé and alleged business partner, the LP candidate. The truth is that if Elechi is not checkmated immediately either through the success of the impeachment or through other workable arrangements which would prove to him that Ebonyi people are not his subjects, it would be a definite disaster for the PDP on April 11.
Observers have continued to marvel at the psychological make -up of a leader who has enjoyed the support of his people but who turns around, out of a sheer imperial complex, to cause katakata in his young promising state.
Whichever way the Ebonyi case turns out, the current events will mark a watershed in the political life of Nigeria and prove again why every society must strive for super institutions rather than political supermen. The second part of this discourse will x-ray and analyse the nature and the scope of the allegations of gross abuse and fraud being levelled against the governor. It will also analyse why the legislators are only making these frantic move, this belatedly.
(To be continued...)
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