THE IRONY OF POWER
Reckons Victor Ndoma-Egba, a senator, is having the last laugh
An age-long adage has it that “he who laughs last laughs best”. This wisdom and logic expressed in this adage aptly apply to the experience by Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba SAN, representing Cross River State Central Senatorial District in Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
review of the outcome of the last general elections held in Cross River State points squarely to the Biblical admonition that “if an act is not of God, it fails” and also that “man proposes but God in His throne and supremacy disposes”.
It is common knowledge that before the infamous Cross River State PeoplesDemocratic Party (PDP) internal party primaries on December 7, 2014, PDP leaders openly ganged up against Senator Ndoma-Egba with a view to deny him a return ticket to the Senate. The conspirators adopted all manner of political blackmail and antics to persuade the good people of the Central Senatorial District to rise up against NdomaEgba.
The PDP leadership in playing God, was neck-deep in this selfish scheme to give Ndoma-Egba a bad name in other to kill him politically. With the way the political drama has unfolded in the nation, it is yet to say whether the gladiators have achieved their selfish agenda. Their permutation was that Jonathan will become the president and they will become everything in his
Utum Etung
administration.
Many political pundits have continued to attempt to analyse why such concentrated, induced and pretentious dislike could be demonstrated to smear a harmless man like Ndoma-Egba who in many ways has contributed to the enhancement of the Liyel Imoke-led administration at the national level to stabilise him. It is known that against all odds, Ndoma-Egba helped to “wear” Imoke the “toga of immunity.”
Yet Governor Imoke is unpretentious of his dislike for Ndoma-Egba. He made sure he did not return to the Senate for yet-to-be disclosed reasons.
Speculations, however, have it that, Imoke’s outright dislike for Ndoma-Egba was because whilst Imoke was on the sick bed in faraway America, Ndoma-Egba allegedly introduced Jedy-Agba to President Goodluck Jonathan as Imoke’s preferred successor.
To confront this childish story, the ever calm and bold Ndoma-Egba frontally challenged Imoke to go with him and others to find out the truth from Mr. President. This plea did not jell with Imoke. All what was paramount to him and the cabal was that Ndoma-Egba must not return to the Senate. He then collectively dished out to the people falsehood about Ndoma-Egba non-performance to justify their selfish agenda and machinations.
However, it soon became clear to Cross Riverians that, part of the agenda of the PDP state leadership was to trade off Ndoma-Egba so that a Senator from Delta State, and a godson to an Ijaw PDP kingpin would replace Ndoma-Egba as Senate leader so that the PDP leader in Cross River would become the chief-of-staff to President Jonathan after the 2015 presidential election.
It is this selfish agenda that motivated the PDP leadership in Cross River State to be hell bent in allocating to General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd), the ridiculous number of votes even when he knows that the votes of the Hausa community alone in Cross River State and APC membership ran into hundreds of thousands.
It is interesting to remark that, because God is always on His throne, the selfish projections of the cabal came to naught. They failed because the conspiracy offended God and was therefore not sanctioned.
Today, unfortunately for the conspirators who traded-off Ndoma-Egba like Biblical Joseph, sold into slavery by his brothers, President Jonathan was not lucky enough to be elected president and all their “shared” offices had come to naught. To further prove the emptiness of the cabal’s failed plan to trade-off Ndoma-Egba as senate leader, even if he had won, PDP lost its majority status in the Senate.
The Senate leadership position has been zoned by the winning All Progressives Congress (APC) to the middle belt region, and the plan by the state leadership for elected legislators to decamp to the APC has also been punctured by the recent Supreme Court judgment on defection. It will be recalled that last week, the Supreme Court held that for an elected member to change party, the conditions stipulated in Section 68 of the 1999 Constitution must exist. The frustration imminent in this Supreme Court judgment is that the Imoke intended soft-landing plan has crashed.
It is common knowledge that these failures coupled with the fact that Imoke who took over governance from the charismatic Donald Duke has not anchored his administration well enough as not to be easily forgotten in a hurry. After all, the debt burden being left for the governor-elect, Profesor Ben Ayade to contend with is alarming and monumental: civil servants and retirees cannot be paid as at when due. The only state University (Crutech) is under lock and key, the Model College for Boki is not built, yet money appropriated; Cross Riverians are not sure of regular water supply yet several millions of naira are alleged to have been pumped to the sector, the family conference centre is abandoned, and the cultural centre sold to cronies; Calabar is losing its “clean city” status.
Above all, the PDP which formed the platform for the impunity with national support is now relegated to an opposition party in Nigeria. This is a lesson in game of power