The Coal City is cold.
It is cold with anxiety.
Political anxiety.
The tension, far too loud to be hidden in the shadows of covert silence, yet remains unspoken. But that, indeed, is the substance of all tensions, this tension too about which I speak.There is a sense in which I find myself compelled to not only understand but appreciate His Excellency, Dr Peter Ndubuisi Mbah’s approach to governance. For a long time, I have personally shared the view that it is either we confront real governance and downplay party politics in this country, or we continue to treasure the stupendous emptiness of party politics that comes at the disastrous expense of good governance. I hold this principle as the unshaken value of my own conscience as a political leader in training. However, I concede that the real task of leadership is to find a balance where neither governance nor politics consumes the other, for both are good for the progress of man, woman, and society.
Let us admit that this is rare. A rare psycho-political mineral. And it is my hope that the outcome of my training, as with many others of my kind, conviction and ambition, brings me to that balance.
In the Southeast, Governor Alex Otti appears the only one who readily comes to mind as an embodiment of that balance. Whether that became an inherent habit in his training for political leadership, or he merely commands it by virtue and condition of his emergence as the most material figure of the truncated popular aspirations of the nation in the 2023 General Elections, I am surely not certain yet. Neither is my conclusion absolute that other Governors within the region, and in fact what constituted the Biafran state as we know it prior to the balkanization, appear to be masters of political cosmetics. They are either lost to unprincipled ambitions for second terms and post-governorship cover and appointment; disempowered by the immense reverence of unredeeming oath of submission to predecessorial bondage, or unreconcilably distracted by the unforeseen desire to break free from paranoid overlords.
Politics aside, my undeniable bias for Governor Peter Ndubuisi Mbah lies in his apparent addiction to working with quality, highly educated, and experienced minds. With the exception of his Local Government chairpersons, his appointees are largely world class. I do not readily think that there is a comparison anywhere yet in the country. This is commendable for efficient administration. As for the Local Government Chairpersons, well, I wish them well. It is neither their plight nor prayers but a reflection of the pulse of the nation, despite the autonomy, that they are rarely expected to be productive beyond agreeing to and implementing the Governor’s political desires, including returning monthly allocations to the state, from which they are given generous sums to fund their infantile luxuries.
Whether Governor Mbah’s appointees are allowed the power to deploy their expertise in substantive governance beyond clerical efficiency is another matter. But I commend him dearly for being a disappointment to the college and congregation of sycophancy that laid siege on Enugu state for far too long.
But this is not the tension about which I speak, nor the cold that has put the Coal Mistress to bed ahead of the fierce battle.
The present political tension clearly suggests that the theatrical victories of 2023 may find its way in the coming elections in Enugu state. Governor Mbah’s switch to the APC, rather than simply plugging the state to the centre, is a move to secure the assurances that such alignment promises in case of a tough tie from the coalition. By the way, one would-have-been greatest beneficiary of the ADC coalition in the state whom the present Governor would have been sure to count himself clearly behind in an open election? Rt. Hon. Chijioke Edeoga! The Labour Party guber candidate in the last election. He had so much to learn from the late Okechukwu Ezea about political patience and disciplined ambition. He learnt none. There goes his story, and I wish him well. So much and so brief for him.
But is that the tension of the moment? Not at all. It certainly couldn’t be without the mention of Chief Uche Nnaji, the former Minister of Innovation, Science, and Technology.
Take it or leave it, despite the excesses of few associates who shielded his disciplined generosity from certain well-meaning stakeholders, and some aides who sought to profit from his gentle innocence, Chief Uche Nnaji nearly transformed himself into a god by his sheer simplicity and the ease with which he endeared himself to the people. He offered real employment, freely, to men, women, and youths who otherwise could not afford the pay. He had his ways. Reserved, mild, confident, gentle, kind, and action-oriented. He understood the heart of the people, had their pulses in his hands, and the people understood and loved him for this. He was a party man who knew how to build the party without suffocating his duties. He built the APC in Enugu State from the cradle of shame and disorientation to a place of promise and competitiveness.
Nobody can take the above away from Chief Uche Nnaji. None. Had he just one dissenting associate who convinced him to circle in the militarily displaced groups whose rebellion only sought accommodation, he would have written the history of party politics in Nigeria that would pass for a family in all its practical sense.
Chief Uche Nnaji has a heart too large for a nuclear political family that he was compelled from going beyond, and it seemed less so his person and conviction than the siege of few powerful associates and shortsighted aids clearly in the minority but thoroughly preventive of healthy dissent. Chief Uche Nnaji, need I say this again, was a dutiful party man. Potentially in the realms of Alex Otti!
Governor Mbah, on the other hand, is anything but a party man. He is an elitist. This is not necessarily condemnable. It was, in fact, a necessary gift to the PDP in the state, which had grown wild, arrogant, and detached from governance. It had become a symbol of hopelessness where rascality, crass emptiness, and nepotism were brazenly promoted. It needed the holy punishment of Peter, the adamant rock, to shatter it.
Having fulfilled this historic task and pushed the PDP to its rightful doom in the state, the Governor soon found himself confronted by the souring influence of the former Minister, who naturally inherited the goodwill and favour of abandoned and disoriented PDP stakeholders, and the everyday victims of the Governor’s death threatening tax regime.
Now, make no mistakes about it, I have said that I love Peter’s commitment to duty and his lust for quality and experienced minds. His vision is certainly too tasking for this appetite-driven generation. But he certainly has so much to learn, not just from Otti about the balance of dutiful and visionary governance without genocidal tax, but from me for disciplined vision.
One understands the burden that the theatrical victory of 2023 mounts on him, but he needn’t be like unto the Myth of Sisyphus, mouthing and pushing visions that roll back to him far from fulfilled. Cut a vision according thy coat and the people will love it, not that it was big, but that it was said and fulfilled.
But this is still not the tension about which I speak. But certainly not one whose complications spare the Governor sleepless nights.
Now a tip of the tension…
On one side is the Governor, who, having switched to the APC, and now armed with the authority of both state and party, and appears to have successfully toppled the strongest oppositions, especially with the promise of return tickets for APC Governors. On the other hand is the former Minister, who, though out of office, still poses real danger to the Governor for commanding the silent loyalty of the people, both those in the party he built, those who have been dislodged in the ex-PDP, and the rebel arm of the old APC who are far from being regarded by the no-party-man Governor.
The now united APC presided by Governor Mbah stands divided along nearly irreconcilable lines. The danger of destroying opposition in state politics is that the only standing party will have the burden of accommodating every interest. Need I say that this is not just possible, but that it breeds vile anger in the unaccommodated interests who have no political window to legitimately vent their opposition? The danger also is that they either begin to work against the authority from within, like is rife currently in the state; or the authority would have to pander to all interests at the expense of good governance. That was what killed the PDP in Enugu state.
The Old APC members now ghost their own membership. The Governor is well aware of this, and has proactively begun an E-registration process for the party. The massive PDP left-behind feel poorly accommodated and secretly dream of seeing the Governor disgraced at the polls. But here lies their fears. Whether they vote or not, the Governor has plugged to the centre. Will he not scoop accordingly? But the anger is incurably high that they prefer to fail in their sabotage than thrive in their pretence. The masses, suffocated by elitist aura and tax hikes, can hardly wait to hear ‘on your mark’, before they set sail to recreate 2023. But, no one has monopoly over the recreation of 2023, the Governor himself has plugged to the centre, and a spirit whispers in the silent dark ahead, THE BALLOT OR THE BULLET.
The question is, if defeat will ever come the Governor’s way come 2027, will it be by the might of ordinary people and the abandoned stakeholders who the Governor now appears to have woken to refurbishing, or by the tremors of the centre now meaningfully threatened both by the US-Israeli-led external oversight, and the lumpen coalition. The height of the tension will be to allow the former Minister to join such a coalition. Tsunami! The delays preventing him from clearing his name in the certificate saga that cost him his ministerial seat is a tangible limitation. The Governor rides on the incumbent, but the former Minister flies on the wings of the people’s love, anger and disenchantment. Dangerous, yes. But curable, yes too.
But that alone is not the real tension about which I speak.
The real tension lies in the people. It lies with the majority of the political retailers who have become politically rudderless, uncertain of the next line of action because their masters too are as estranged from the system and unsure of their place. In them, two souls in one body, one that is theirs, impatient angry, undecided as to root for the Governor or keep wake for their master’s direction, who themselves have no directions yet. And now, this liminal position, outwardly compliant with the holder of party authority, inwardly loyal to the castles they once built and the hopes they once nursed in the old APC, leads to the loss of one’s mind. As for the everyday people, at once the targets and the consumed, their reality is clear: surviving without believing, calculation instead of hope, endurance instead of expectation.
When people arrive at this place, democracy does not collapse loudly, it erodes quietly. This is the cold in Coal City. And what the Governor does with the replacement of the late Senator Okechukwu Ezea of Enugu North Senatorial District will not only go a long way in bringing him from high up the elitist drone to the plane of mass appeal, but add some warmth to the political harmattan.
