By MUSA USMAN
Even as a people and government who have since shunned the niceties of decency, choosing rather to embrace the odium associated with shame, the outrageous perfidy that is the ongoing romance between President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Chief James Onanefe Ibori, a major poster boy of corruption, is a new low in our national hall of shamelessness.
Many are surprised at the sudden resurrection of the Delta State born politician by President Tinubu, in the political life of the nation. This is against the backdrop that, as a government struggling for acceptability, the Tinubu government is definitely sending the wrong message to Nigerians and the international community about the things dear to his administration. Bad enough that Tinubu has the added baggage of a dubious past hanging on his shoulders. Then there are the tribunal cases challenging his declaration as the winner of the February, 2023 presidential elections.
That is why, for a man who rode on the crest of a controversially conducted election to Aso Rock, most people are not surprised that President Tinubu, in a seeming act of desperation, is cultivating all sorts of characters as a bulwark to garnering legitimacy for his government. This can also be assumed to be a proactive move to position for a possible run-off should the Supreme Court eventually rule that the presidential elections, which ushered in this regime, falls short of the tenets of democracy.
Let’s not forget that Tinubu, though not convicted, before now had a lot of corruption allegations against him, especially for the way he managed to hold Lagos State government in a vice economic grip for the past 24 years. As impressions go, the hobnobbing of the President with a character like Ibori and some of the people who have been seen hanging around him in the presidential villa, makes it seem like he is enthroning a government of the corrupt, for the corrupt, by the corrupt.
Chief Ibori is a convicted felon, jailed in the United Kingdom for the massive heist which he perpetrated on the people and State of Delta during his now reign as governor from 1999 to 2007. Since he completed his jail term in the United Kingdom and his repatriation to Nigeria thereafter, he has otherwise kept a national low, but luxurious, profile, operating in the dark crevices while lording it over the Governor Ifeanyi Okowa government in Delta State. That is, until the political rupture, which pitched the two in a do-or-die struggle, erupted and Ibori was worsted and demystified. Before then, it was assumed that he had Delta state politics and politicians in his pouch.
But the struggle to decide who should fly the flag of the party at the 2023 gubernatorial election saw Humpty Dumpty come crashing from his egoistic olympian wall. Ibori had wanted his lackey, David Edevbie to be positioned, unopposed, as the candidate of the People Democratic Party (PDP) in Delta State. It was a take it or be damned proposition. He arrogated to himself the sole authority to decide who should succeed Governor Okowa. As was to be later made known to the public, attempt to convince him to pick someone else, of his choice, was rejected by him. Whether anyone in Delta State likes it or not, Edevbie must be the next governor Ibori was said to have insisted. That is what led to the schism in the Delta State branch of the PDP.
Some political gladiators in the state were said to have teamed up with the governor to say a huge “no, can’t do” to the wannabe suzerain. These include his cousin, buddy and mentee, former Governor Emmanuel Eweta Uduaghan. They called his bluff, choose a grassroots man, Sheriff Oborevwori, who happened to be the then Speaker of the state House of Assembly as the governorship candidate and the rest, as the common saying goes, is now history.
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Disgraced and left without a political base, Ibori has had to go scrounging for relevance. First, he aligned with the garrulous former governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, whose group of five disgruntled PDP governors were at daggers drawn with their party’s presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. Alhaji Abubakar and Chief Ibori were friends until Abubakar against Ibori’s wish nominated Ibori’s new political arch-rival, Ifeanyi Okowa, as Vice Presidential candidate. This was an unbearable and insufferable affront. Sensing an abridgement of his political and economic relevance, Chief Ibori jumped ship clandestinely and started a two-pronged approach to sabotage the PDP. He first went to bed with the All Progressives Congress (APC), promising them Delta States votes in the presidential elections but he was in romance with the Labour Party. As the election results from Delta shows, Tinubu could not get the mandatory 25 per cent votes despite Ibori’s boast.
But as soon as Tinubu was declared winner, Ibori became a constant face in his house, a newbie apostle. He has since wormed his way into the Tinubu government, first to seek political relevance, second to ensure that he is seen as the must-go-to leader in Delta State and the South-South; third, to be the one to nominate the minister and political appointees from Delta State; fourth to curry presidential powers to attempt to use underhand moves to wrest Delta State from the Senator Okowa now led party while using the Supreme Court to abridge the freely given votes of the people of Delta State for Governor Sheriff Oborevwori. Forget that he is already a divisive factor in Delta State APC as the party is set to implode. The many factions there are seething with angst and any wrong moves by President Tinubu favouring Ibori will be the catalyst for the total decimation of the party in the state.
Nevertheless, Chief Ibori is one of the most regular faces now in Aso Rock. He has positioned himself as one of Tinubu’s kitchen cabinet members. He is rumoured to be the brain behind Nuhu Ribadu emerging the National Security Adviser. His palatial homes in Ikoyi and Abuja are the new Mecca of sorts for all kinds of politicians who now assume that his criminal past has been forgiven since he is now paraded as a beacon of political rightness. All these because President Tinubu, with an eye on a possible re-run, has rolled out the red carpet for the jail bed, who has not been pardoned, and should be hiding his face in the hall of infamy.
*Dr. Usman, a political scientist from Kaduna, writes via [email protected].
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