Kure and the South

Kure and the South-South

Sam Nda-Isaiah

Senator Roland Owie is a man I respect, as anyone who knows him should. When you sit with him, you know he loves Nigeria and takes public office seriously. I will sleep with my two eyes closed, with such people in high office. Recently, we had a discussion in which he said he was thoroughly embarrassed by the fact that, in the South-South where he comes from, only two senators were openly against the third term roguery, and, even then, one of them, Senator Daisy Danjuma, was by marriage.

I tried to laugh off his comments but he was dead serious about what he was saying. The other senator who was openly against third term and who I will support for higher office any day is Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, whose position on the issue could be said to be a product of good breeding. Senator Owie who was once a political associate of Tony Anenih but fell out with him on account of character incompatibility wants all of Nigeria to unite into an organic whole to produce the best candidate that will lead the country out of the current scandal of leadership rocking our nation. It is hard to fault this position.

A few weeks ago, Engr. Abdulkadir Kure, the Niger State governor who became the face of the struggle against the third term, granted ThisDay an interview in which he was said to have condemned the entire South-South and asserted that no one there was capable of becoming president in the struggle for Obasanjo’s successor. Early morning on the day the interview was published, my friend, Dattijo Aliyu, who is the Niger State commissioner of health and a political associate of the governor, called me to ask if I had read the ThisDay interview.

I told him I had not. He was angry with what he called the newspaper’s misrepresentation of his boss and said the interview was reported “upside down”. He said his governor only dwelt on the credentials of Governor Peter Odili, the only South-South politician who is currently busying himself to take over from Obasanjo. I told him I would read the interview and get back to him. The following day, Governor Kure issued a press statement clarifying his position. He did not say what was ascribed to him and he has nothing against the entire South-South, he said.

When I read the interview, I laughed because, apart from the clear attempt and mischief to put words into the governor’s mouth, the interview was quintessential Kure. The governor who, for all intents and purposes, is not a politician in the archetypal mould of the Nigerian politician, will not mince words about anything he believes in and will not talk from both sides of his mouth as you see today with most politicians. The governor only said what most other governors and others have been saying privately. When he said he did not say what ThisDay wrote in the sense of bringing down the entire South-South region, I believed him because if he said so he would not deny it. A governor who was not afraid to confront Obasanjo openly about third term because he believed it was wrong, at a time others were cringing, is not likely to flinch today confronting lesser forces.

I have also personally spoken with him about it and he told me exactly what he said. His problem, like the problem of many Nigerians today, including most people of the South-South, is with Peter Odili trying too hard to be president. He has no apology for that and many Nigerians will agree with him. Even the Niger Delta militants have threatened and let it be known that if they ever hear Odili, as much as utter the word “presidency”, they will blow up his residence. What has Odili got to show for all the billions of naira he received from the federation account in the last seven years? What does he think the presidency is about?

Is it because Obasanjo has turned it into an office where anything goes that he thinks he can have a bite of it? I am sure there are other people in the South-South who would want to aspire to the presidency and most Nigerians would not feel the same disgust towards them, as in Odili’s case.
Three weeks ago, I asked Governor Donald Duke of Cross River State why I have not heard his name among those who want to contest for the presidency.

In his characteristic manner, he simply joked about it and said the “presidency has not been zoned to my village”. But on a more serious note, he said he was too busy trying to finish up most of his projects that any such talk could be a distraction. And if you have been following the developments in Cross River State in the last seven years, you know there is a lot going on there. In my conversation with Kure, he even insinuated that he would have no problem with a Duke presidency for instance, even though, for now, it should be clear to everyone that he is nourishing the candidacy of his own candidate.

I have no trouble with this thing called power shift. I have always been for bringing forward the best material for the job. It is power shift that has put us in this mess in the first place. But there is a logic, which makes sense: you cannot be talking about power shift to the South-South when the entire zone (with the exception of only two senators, and others like Hon.
Temi Harrimann) canvassed a life presidency for Obasanjo only a few days ago. This Odili who now wants to be president, where was he before the last one month when the battle against the shameful self-perpetuation bid of the president was raging? Was he not the one who declared on the Cable News Network (CNN) that Obasanjo was the only person fit for the Nigerian presidency and that he should be there forever? Even if I am a proponent of power shift, I would rather support individuals like Gov. Duke, Senator Udoma and Co. for the presidency than put it in the context of a power shift to the South-South region.

This reminds me of David Mark who I hear is now attempting to be governor of Benue State, but who brought his huge status crashing down by openly supporting third term. His own was even so glaring because he went against the grain of the very state, Benue, he now wants to govern. He now wants the people who fought to kill the third term to reward him with their governorship. This is a joke carried too far!

I am not trying to hold brief for Governor Kure, as he has proved to possess enough courage to do that for himself. I am only concerned that a few people, some at the very top (apologies to General Oladipo Diya in his coup trial case) are trying to mismanage the disputed ThisDay interview to divide the country.