By Ugoji Egbujo
Dear Lion of Ubima. I greet you. God said, Don’t put your trust in man. But you put your trust in Buhari and ran around the stadium in premature triumph. You must write your memoir. A frog doesn’t make an afternoon dash in vain. What exactly led to that joyful exuberance? Buhari must have promised you something. The nation needs your memoir because you can tell it all.
When the memoir comes, please let it not be like Baba Akande’s. Baba said he had to beg Tinubu to run for president in the interest of the Yoruba. And Tinubu resisted the idea, saying he didn’t have money. Unbelievable. The same Tinubu who had been preparing to be president forever, so much so that he had a turn. The same Tinubu who had once suggested that he was richer than Akande’s Osun. Rotimi, your memoir must tell us why you ran like a cheetah on a sunny day in April 2022. You must tell the youths do they learn not to run in vain. You must tell us if you think age affected Buhari’s maigaskiyarism. It’s my prayer that that disappointment turns into a blessing for you in future.
Some say you should have swallowed your pride and campaigned aggressively for Tinubu. After all, the Igbo say the madman moves around with his senses. Perhaps you could have become Tinubu’s Otimkpu not out of love but out of the abundance of political caution. Not for self-preservation, because you are a lion, abi? But to ward off his politically promiscuous relationship with Wike and its consequences on your supporters, Rivers state and multiparty democracy in Nigeria. But I guess after that farcical post-convention reconciliatory visit to your house by Tinubu and the photo ops, you must have gleaned he was too arrogant to be interested in mending long-damaged fences. Dan Amana, in all you do, don’t allow pride hold you hostage.
You have been through a lot. Some said you were naive. Others called it presumptuousness. It seemed you waited in vain not for Godot, but for a promised anointing. Then cold fleeting set in and you had no credible plan B. I know you are prayerful, but had you relied less on a fickle old man and courted many more people around him boldly, taking the risk of being bludgeoned for being overambitious, the outcomes might have been different. Yet you can’t be blamed. Who could have believed that Buhari could turn to such a jelly? You noticed how the Emilokan declaration, which ought to have infuriated, made him look supple and intimidated. Perhaps your naivety was in not knowing that Buhari could be too self-centred, too aloof to bother so much about enthroning a protege.
Buhari aside, Dan Amana, you didn’t have a plan B. And that’s why many think you are not a politician. You lost the ticket and congealed, like a jilted bride. Politics requires psychological ruggedness. Quick bouncing back. It’s too arbitrary and chaotic for prolonged feelings of righteous indignation. For a man who was born in the dog-eat-dog politics of Rivers, your inflexibility and one-way attitude show a dangerous sense of entitlement. You are simple and spontaneous. But politics requires more. It requires, within moral boundaries, a measure of adaptability. Some have whispered your feelings to the old man. Some have said that the man said that you got more than you sowed. Is this true?
When an old woman falls twice, we stop her to check what’s in the basket on her head. The hubris in your head could be your albatross. Use your tongue and count your teeth. You are not a man manager. Your political operations lack thoughtfulness and planning. But your biggest problem is pretentiousness which you seem to think is a smart strategy. Yet what it often does is to inhibit elaborate planning. And more often than not people see through these schemes of false nonchalance. You have to build the capacity for fashioning vivid visions and community organizing.
Dan Amana, come down from your high horse. Your supporters in Rivers are like sheep without a shepherd. You can’t leave the organizing to them and come in 2026 to help the ticket go to your friend again. Since 2023, you have spent too much time on microphones telling people that continued bad governance and the reign of impunity were a result of their passivity. You have said that if they were prepared to stone bad leaders, politicians would sit up. If indeed you think you deserve to be stoned alongside your colleagues like Wike and others with whom you ran Rivers and wasted millions of dollars on a non-functional metro line, then why not start by submitting yourself to voluntary imprisonment? Certain mistakes can only be atoned for by crying publicly like Chidi Llyod. Any man who threw Wike onto the national stage deserves a koboko deliverance session by the gods. It is one thing to incite the people to a revolution against bad governance as if you are a politician from Mars, it’s another to insist that the railway you built to Maradi in Niger was a good use of public funds borrowed from China and not an attempt to woo a clannish Buhari, to buy his endorsement
Dan Amana, many people in Rivers believe your presidential ambition was too heavily dependent on kissing the ass of the North. It cost Rivers so much in opportunities. You were a River’s minister but your focus was too national. I don’t think you should be compared to Umahi, who is literally running errands for the Chagouris, the presidents Alobams. At least you were gunning for something. But when you had an opportunity to site a national transport university, you took it to Daura. This was when even supposedly apolitical military Generals were dragging universities to their hometowns with reckless abandon. You took yours to Daura. You loved Buhari. Gen Buratai, your friend, brazenly took the Army University to Biu. You wanted to be seen as a decent politician. We all know you are detribalised and patriotic but many believe you did those funny things to win Buhari’s heart. I don’t even know if it’s rude to remind you that the university which you later tried to bring to Ubima is nowhere to be found.
Rivers politics is substantially cash and carry. So a leader man without political and financial power is a featherless one-legged hen. He can’t feed his hungry and restless brood. Kites will swoop on some. Others will wander Yet there is something fundamentally wrong with your ability to retain your closest aides. Chidi Llyod once used a mace to break a head to stop a kangaroo impeachment that was designed against you. When he left you for greener pastures in Wike’s camp, he cried profusely in public like a man who had found God after working tirelessly for the devil. He promised to serve Wike like a boiboi the rest of his life. Okocha was once your chief of staff like Wike. Today, he is a willing tool in the hands of Wike to reduce Rivers APC to his handbag. Magnus Abe was your SSG. Many believe he has sabotaged you more than anyone else. Did you groom anybody? Many of the people you trusted have deserted you. I know River’s politics has mercenarism written all over it, and many players have less loyalty than the girls at Ayilara Street, but your leadership recruitment strategy seems particularly short-sighted. If Wike is what you have said of Wike, then you are not a good leader either. You made him a minister to get rid of his potential nuisance? Was that how much you loved this country? Anyway, that chicken came home early to roost in 2015, and the rest is history. And you reaped the reward of your labour.
Dan Amana, 2027 is around the corner. If you have retired from partisan politics, let the people know. You have buried your head in the sand. Whining behind the microphones won’t help you and the country. Lions are not timid. The country needs a virile opposition. We haven’t heard you criticizing policies and canvassing ideas. Before I forget, we haven’t seen you in Daura in two years. Please even if you don’t want to see Baba for now, send country palliatives to kingdom. The country is hard. It’s not good to abandon the people and make them feel you took the title because you wanted the APC ticket.
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