Disgraceful rows

Editorial

 

PROMINENT political figures, who should be society’s role models, have squared off in public spats, betraying their intemperance.  That delinquent exuberance has been a marked contrast to restraint, which should characterise people in leadership.

They, thereby, have projected how leaders ought not to comport themselves, when having differences with one another.

In Imo State, immediate past governor and now senator representing Imo West in the National Assembly, Owelle Rochas Okorocha, took on incumbent Governor, Hope Uzodimma, in physical confrontation over property alleged by the state government to be proceeds of fraud.

The Uzodimma administration had, on February 19, sealed off the sprawling Royal Spring Palm Estate, said to have been built by the former governor’s wife, Nkechi.  That move was reportedly in line with the findings of a judicial panel set up by former Governor, Emeka Ihedioha (Okorocha’s fleeting successor before a judicial sack), to investigate cases of lands illegally acquired between 2006 and May 2019.

The Uzodimma government, in November 2021, adopted and gazetted the White Paper from the judicial commission.  The commission, in its finding, alleged that land, which the government’s master plan designated as green area, was acquired by Okorocha’s wife, when her husband was the state’s chief executive between 2011 and 2019.

In sealing off the property, the state government had padlocked the expansive gates leading into the premises; and had security vehicles parked there to ward off trespassers. But Okorocha, two days later, led his supporters to the property to break the government seal and repossess the premises.

In the course of doing that, his group faced a violent showdown by agents and loyalists of the state government, resulting in a handful of the actors sustaining physical injuries; aside from vandalised vehicles.  Thereafter, Okorocha and some of his supporters were arrested by the police.

Both sides expectedly traded accusations, as to who was the aggressor.  The state government accused Okorocha of mobilising thugs to the estate; and breaking the government seal to forcibly gain entry into the property.  But Okorocha and allies denied the government’s claim, stating the former governor had only gone to the site to forestall a breakdown of law and order.  They claimed he was prevailing on his supporters, who were protesting against the Uzodimma government’s unfair take-over, of a private estate, from taking the law into own hands.

Indications were strong, however, that Okorocha himself took the law into his own hands. In one of his many statements on the matter, he said: “Before going to Akachi Estate, I called the commissioner of Police and the director of DSS and they said they didn’t know of any police or security personnel at the Royal Spring Palm Estate. That  made me visit the place to see who brought the policemen there. I never expected that the governor of a state would deploy thugs…I restrained myself from telling my orderly and security aides to fire live bullets, because there could have been deaths (last Sunday). I did this because of my peaceful disposition, but Uzodimma should not take my peaceful disposition for cowardice.”

Anyone would easily see that those words dripped with dare and subversion against government authority; but as a serving lawmaker now and former governor of his state, Okorocha should have known that the judiciary should be the arbiter.

It isn’t beyond contemplation that there could be some grand witch-hunt underway; and that the property in question might have been acquired by legitimate means.  But such should be determined only by the courts; and not by recourse to self-help that hastens everyone towards the Hobbesian state.

The white paper indicates legality but it does not guarantee official innocence. Okorocha’s attitude drips malice and defiance even if he has a case.

The public brawl is a partisan ignominy beneath the aspirations of a democracy and its leaders who should be models.

Another instance, of scandalous gubernatorial conduct,  is the gutter fight largely between Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, and Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed, over the menace of killer herdsmen.

Mohammed had recently accused the Benue governor of being a prime motivator of ethnic intolerance in this country, and to the bargain, defended the right of Fulani herdsmen to bear AK-47 rifles, in purported self-defence.  But not a few have argued that “self-defence” has translated into nothing but terror and brazen criminality, against defenceless community folk, on the path of the herders.

But Ortom rejoined by branding the Bauchi governor “part of the terrorist Fulani organization.”  He somewhat overplayed the animus by accusing Mohammed of involvement in an alleged plot to get him assassinated. Such macabre melodrama are is    absolutely uncalled for.  Disagreements over public issues need not plumb into personal abuses — and definitely not sensational allegations of putative assassinations!

To a lesser extent, the Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, also openly slammed Mohammed for his defence of armed herdsmen. And following the recent Shasha market crisis in Ibadan, Senate President Ahmad Lawan accused South West governors of fuelling ethnic violence through unguarded utterances.  But the tone here was much more civil, as the governors retorted they would not engage “crisis entrepreneurs and divisionists” in a media war.

Leaders should be aware that all they do and say invariably become standards of behaviour in a growing democracy like ours. With so many fora available to them for caucus engagement, they shouldn’t be elevating their differences into public spectacles, that further inflame the already high level of emotional combustion in the polity. After all, they were elected to solve, not create problems or stoke residual suspicions.

Being already on the precipice, from the siege of criminal elements, we cannot afford political leaders with loose tongues and irate tempers coming into the open to wage private wars that distract everybody’s attention from the common threat.

In short, leaders should be guardians of the peace, not vectors of tension.

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