Fire in Tinubu’s Backyard

Comfort Obi

For the 36 state governors in the country, these are tough days. As the 2007 election approaches, one will be safe to assume that their blood pressure have gone haywire. Nobody should blame them. Some of them have the headache of where they will be, politically, in 2007. Will they still be relevant in the scheme of things or not? One of the problems general to all of them, of course, is the headache from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. Each time I see an ex-governor in handcuffs, I think of his serving colleagues. Will some of them suffer the same fate?
Governors who have served for only one term are jittery, over whether they will secure a second term or not. Both within and outside their parties, they have challengers. For the two-time governors, their problems are more complex. Aside worrying about their fate, post-May 29, 2007, they are also worrying about who succeeds them? Will the person run a government of continuity, or rubbish everything they had done? So, to safeguard themselves and their legacies, they are anointing their successors. In doing this, however, their deputies are endangered species. Some of them have, by body language, told their deputies that they will not succeed them. Some of the deputies, even those who had been loyal all these years are, for once, making public their frustrations. They are publicly criticising their bosses. Suddenly, they are calling them dictators. And they are saying the governors plan to rig elections.
In Enugu State, Deputy Governor, Okechukwu Itanyi, sounded frustrated over his ambition, which the governor allegedly does not endorse. A member of the powerful Ebeano political family, he wants his boss to allow “ a level playing ground.” In Rivers State, Governor Peter Odili, allegedly, does not have his deputy, Sir Gabriel Toby, in his calculations. In Imo State, the story is even more intriguing. The governor, Achike Udenwa, and his wife Theresa, are allegedly backing two different people. While the governor would, given the choice between the devil and a deep blue sea, go for his deputy, the quiet unassuming Ebere Udeagu, his wife is allegedly rooting for one Dr. Ik Ibe.
In Akwa Ibom State, Governor Victor Attah is rooting for his son-in-law. In Cross River State, those who thought that the governorship seat is there for Senator Liyel Imoke to pick are no longer that sure. The Imoke camp is crying foul, alleging that Governor Donald Duke is rooting for his deputy to take over. Well, that’s kind of refreshing.
However, no state is as bad as Lagos, where Governor Bola Tinubu’s allies are dumping him, and calling him names. The case of Tinubu and his allies, especially Senator Tokunbo Afikuyomi, is an interesting one. At the beginning of the Tinubu administration, when he had to battle with cases of certificate forgery, Afikuyomi stood by him. He put his credibility on the line. They had been friends for years. He issued a press statement, saying he was the one who filled Tinubu’s election forms without referring to him, Tinubu. If it boiled down to going to jail, Afikuyomi would not have escaped it. When it became obvious that he was interested in being the governor of Lagos State after Tinubu, it was taken for granted that Tinubu would back him. I guess, he himself took that for granted. Afterall, inspite of his not being a Lagos State indigene, Tinubu was instrumental to his representing two different senatorial zones, one after the other in 1999 and 2003.
But things have since changed. For Tinubu, there is no pay back time. What friendship brought together, politics has put asunder. Since the formation of the Action Congress (AC), Tinubu, his allies and especially, he and Afikuyomi, have fallen apart.
It started as a muffled rumour. Now, it is real, and public. The problem is Tinubu’s successor in 2007. The governor’s banker-turned politician deputy, Femi Pedro, is upset that the governor, who brought him out of his top job in the banking industry, is leaving him high and dry. Instead, the governor, allegedly, by body language and deed, is supporting his former Chief of Staff, Babatunde Fashola, (SAN), to succeed him. With the other aspirants, including a couple of Tinubu’s former commissioners, Pedro is asking for a level playing ground. But Afikuyomi feels more betrayed.
So, he has joined the opposition and is calling Tinubu a dictator. He and his group are comparing him to President Olusegun Obasanjo, who Tinubu is fond of calling a dictator. They are dismissing all the AC congresses in Lagos as fraudulent and are putting the blame squarely on Tinubu’s feet. Their words: “The ward congresses for Ojodu, Onigbongbo and Ikeja were taken to the office of 'the AC Leader' in Alausa and the various party offices balloted out in a manner only comparable to the Lagos Lotto.” So they warn: "We will never be silenced… No, never shall we remain silent in the face of all the on-going aberrations... From this day onward, the die is cast.” It was signed by 11 aspirants, including Afikuyomi and Tinubu's immediate past commissioner for commerce, Oluremi Adikwu-Bakare.
By the day, the crisis is worsening. On Wednesday, December 6, a splinter group that called itself the Democratic Forum, emerged from the Lagos AC. It is made up of the 11 governorship aspirants, the leadership of the Lagos AC and thousands of their supporters. The party chairman, Senator Sikiru Shitta-Bey said "the group was created because of the internal colonisation and dictatorial tendency of Governor Bola Tinubu.”
For Tinubu, this must be a sad development. Parading himself as a true democrat, it must be embarrassing to be caught in this situation. It is, indeed, sad that he is parting ways this bitterly with his allies. But it will be worse if, because of this crisis, AC loses Lagos State to PDP. That is when Tinubu's real problems will start.