Heir today, gone tomorrow
A senior minister of the God’s Kingdom Society, the late J.T. Okome, painted a technicolor portrait at a church service many years ago that may jolt observers and players in the Rivers State crisis. Not a portrait with brush but with the facility of humour.
The G.K.S cleric was explaining how couples lie to themselves when they fight.
He illustrated the comic combat with a scenario. A bottle is at a spot on a dining table, he narrated, and a spouse lashed out that a few moments ago it was at the edge and not in the middle.
So, who was the idiot that moved it to the middle when it should be at the edge?
The other spouse fumed and countered that it was clear to anyone with eyes to see that it was always in the middle and only a fool would have moved it.
A storm in a bottle. A message in a bottle. The simple solution is for one of them to push it to the edge where both agree it should be. But both of them were on edge. Both knew the problem was not the bottle or where it was located.
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The bottle was not a splinter with sharp edges. So, it could not cut a hand. No hot liquid in it to burn a finger. So, one spouse could douse the grouse with one touch.
They turned the innocent bottle into a crime. If the bottle was not broken, the couple were. It was a crime of the imagination borne out of malice. So, when two parties are in conflict, look beyond their actions. If an edifice like the state house of assembly complex is burned down, look beyond the torchbearers. It is not about the complex.
Though it is. It is more complex than that, and therefore it is about something else. If a governor says, he can sanctify a budget on four lawmakers’ votes even though the law says otherwise, you know it is not because the governor does not know.
He wears impunity like a crown just to advertise something he does not say. So, we know it is about something else when he says he will not govern on bended knees – a nifty quote. It is not about knees, though. We know of a father and a former governor who played father to the former governor when he preened as the chief executive. He sat pretty on front-row seats, with his ornate Rivers hat and benign smiles. His wife of judicial titles supremely sat beside him.
They were the political royals of Rivers State. Indeed, no one garnered more respect, more dignity than the power couple in their near octogenarian halo. The former governor named big schools and buildings after them. Suddenly this same man decided to switch fatherhood when the former governor played father to a son, who is now governor. This governor and former governor crossed swords. As father of fathers, he accompanied both father and son to sign an accord so that both parties may abide in peace. He signed. He acted like a father of the godfather then. Now, this same man is now happy with his chomps in the new dispensation. So, he has decided to be a populist on behalf of his new son, who is the son of his son. That makes him father of fathers or grandfather.
No one grants him the status of grandfather, though. So, he remains father. He has jettisoned his former son. He is a prostitute father whose hat now invokes hate in a part of the family. He is father today and a reject the next day. He swaps sons just as he changes fatherhood. Father today, gone tomorrow. His former son had a tiff not long ago with an elder in his party and daubed him a “prodigal father.” He has been quite quiet on this paternal about-face. So, this man who was supposed to be a father of governors, he being a former one, can be called the governor of governors in the state. Or governor emeritus. He is now former governor without merit. He has lost the quality of a statesman. He is supposed to be the arbiter, the peacemaker in the maelstrom. He is an elder without a white hair if white signifies the wisdom of age. This is the same man who is playing a royal against charges of corruption and has been able to secure a regal immunity against the law after allegedly dipping his hand in the meaty pie. Even the EFCC has been unable to revive the charge. He is perpetually innocent. Now this man with a shadow of corruption over his head is strutting the Rivers State high society and its plebian floor as though he is the moral exemplar of all time. So, we see that it is not about the law. He himself knows that working the law is futile. He is an instance. He knows that you can defy the law and live. Why can he not turn an extra-legal instrument for peace. If he can turn the law to honour himself by paralysing a corruption charge in the court, why not “abandon” legality for a positive thing?
He can do that by making peace outside of the law as the elder. People describe it as settling out of court. He would rather hold court as an elder of confusion. He can talk to both parties and broker peace. The president did it for him. He was there and he signed it. As the elder in the pact, he was the guarantor of its integrity. If it collapsed, it is because he failed. Whatever it took, he should have fought by stealth or in the open to make peace. Rather, at a public function, with glib lips unbecoming of a 75-year-old, he announced that the governor is the political leader of the state. He did not have to say it, even if he felt it. That was not in the spirit of the accord or even in the spirit of cutting off the umbilical cord between parent and child.
Over 25 members of the state house of assembly said they had defected. But that seems only by lips. There is no document, no signatures, no formal declarations in the house. The law says if they defect, they lose their seat if there is no crisis in the party on a national scale. That may yet be determined. But the law says it is not enough to announce defection and lose a seat, the speaker must declare the seats vacant. The speaker has done no such thing. So, we know, too, it is not about defection. It is not about whether there is a national crisis or a local crisis. We all know that. The so-called elder knows it. The godfather knows. So does the son whether on his feet or bended knees. It is not time for anger and rage. If we follow that, we become victim of a Hobbesian state of nature. Some of the rage in either camp is like the line from Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, “Sir, I am vexed, bear with my weakness.” But weakness, as we see in the play, can lead a person to a storm of no return. It’s impotent rage. So, the real thing is between two men, and the only way is to set aside the law and face humans who are at loggerheads. Stoking the streets will not help. Whipping up ethnic bile will only complicate matters. As Thoreau said, “the law has not made anyone a whit more just.” When the pharisees quibbled over doing a miracle on a sabbath day, Jesus replied that the sabbath was made for man and not man for the sabbath. To clarify the spirit rather than the letter of the law on physical circumcision, Apostle Paul asked adherents to “circumcise the foreskins of your hearts.” The other part is mass hypocrisy. When the man was a candidate, the mass backed him as a son. He was a good boy until he became a bad boy. He broke a pact and everyone pretends they did not understand each other. As Shakespeare noted in Julius Caesar, “what other oath than honesty to honesty engaged.” It was a pact without honour. Rather than sit between themselves and decide who followed their deal, they are trying to bring third parties into it. Eventually a breakdown may occur, and everyone is trying to stick to the law as they like, like a man who issues an order for the legislature to meet in government house. He has become a mass hireling. Heir today, hireling tomorrow. They may be flirting with hammer in the form of a state of emergency. They should realise that impunity has a sunset. Darkness will fall on it. Both sides must realise that. It is more the onus of the chief executive to bring the crisis to a bended knee. Or else…
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