The Amaechi Years as Seen by Friends

By his second inauguration in 2011, Governor Amaechi had achieved quite a lot. He announced the setting up of a Due Process Commission, effective Health Management Board, Traffic Management Agency, effective 24-hour power supply, comprehensive Urban renewal, Greater Port Harcourt Development Authority, and Schools Management Board among others. On his own admission, he seemed to have picked up the concerns of those who genuinely suggested that he needed to slow down so as to consolidate on his gains. He admitted that: Some people have said we are probably doing too much, too quickly and that if care was not taken, we would lose focus and go astray (pg57).

It is time to pause and draw this review to a close. So, by way of conclusion, what should we take away from this book?

I am not so sure about the timing of this book and what it has set out to achieve. The book it titled, Dynamics of Change: The Amaechi Years. If I saw this book, what would cross my mind, his years as what? The man was Speaker before he became a Governor and so what are these years? It should not be the business of the reader to scratch his head to find out these years. Secondly, the book is a modest contribution by good friends, but it is not as definitive and authoritative as the title suggests. The book should be treated as a collection of essays by different friends who have done a good job of what they set out to do, but the impression should not be created that this book is about the Years of Amaechi as Governor because that requires more than the book actually did. I say this for two critical reasons.

First, the book does not contain any words by the Governor himself either arsenals, it is my position that a more radical reworking of our security architecture is needed. It has been argued by security experts that security is first of all ‘local’. Hence, effective internal security begins from communities, villages and immediate societies. It is therefore an anomaly that Nigeria has continued to operate this excessively centralised security set-up. The incoming government should set machineries in motion to decentralise the Nigeria Police Force, using the United States of America model; such that while each State controls its police force, the Department of State Security will act as the ‘federal police’ with jurisdiction on crimes or issues which affect the republic. Put bluntly, Section 214(1) of the Constitution which asserts that there shall be only one Nigeria Police Force is very unrealistic, untenable, impracticable and ‘unfederal’. In the city of London alone, there are not less than ten Police formations, while in America, even some Universities, apart from states, cities, towns and counties have their own Police formations. With much respect, a good number of sections in our Constitution are oppressive and unworkable, and I dare declare them as constitutional retardation.

Time will not permit me to talk about health, education, housing and infrastructural development. I am, however, duty-bound to comment on the judicial structure of this nation. Martin Luther King Jnr. enthused that “law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.” This nation is fortunate to have a professor of law and a former Attorney-General of a state, who gave a complete face-lift and content enrichment to the Lagos State judiciary as Vice-President. This feat should be repeated at the centre. We must begin with ensuring the independence of the judiciary, then move on to sanitizing the judicial sphere. I must not be understood that my call for sanitizing the judicial sector tantamounts to a call for the government to pocket the judiciary. Far from that. The judiciary must be respected and recognised as an independent arm of government, just like the executive and legislature, and, it is not and never inferior to either of the two. Part of sanitizing the judiciary entails proper funding and making it self-financing. Thank God for majority of our Judges who shun corruption like a plague, and who would deliver judgments based on facts and law and not on extenuating over-bearings or influences. However, my take has always been by way of verification or confirmation of claims. I think that even an interview with him would have given some authority and insight into the man’s mind, why he took certain decisions and not others and so on. Secondly, again, there is no public officer in government who made any contribution to the book again to lend authority to some of the claims in the book. So, we are left to merely speculate given that the writers are between Abuja and Lagos and not residents of Rivers State.

The book has beautiful pictures but there are some that are misleading such as the beautiful one of the mono Rail and the Greater Port Harcourt Development Authority. The website of the Authority yields very little and the Governor has already suspended the project, so why present it as a finished product when in reality, no one knows if it will breath life again.

Therefore, although I commend the great efforts and the fact that the book is a coffee table companion and lays no claims to being an academic engagement, I would have had a more modest title such as: The Amaechi Years: 2008-2015: As Seen By Friends. What is more, Governor Amaechi is still young and has many miles left in his tank and I think a tentative title would have been more apt.

In his brief years in politics, Amaechi seemed to have been born to run, to borrow the title Dele Olojede’s biography of Dele Giwa. In the process, and given the state of his life, he is still learning to walk and would require time and more courage to mature into politics. I am sure that ten or so years from now, he would look back at many decisions he took, some decisions he did not take and ask himself, Good- that a single bad egg can and will always give our judiciary a bad name, and stigmatize the vast majority of excellent judges. Thus, the few bad eggs, when and where identified, should be shown the way out, while more thorough and painstaking efforts should be put in place at appointing new judges. The judiciary itself, through some of our serving judges should stop the fanfare of randomly issuing ex parte orders of injunction against the National Judicial Council (NJC) in the performance of its constitutionally assigned duty of putting machineries in motion at disciplining erring judges, as this practice has virtually crippled the Council. The Nigerian judiciary has been constitutionally ‘unitarised’. This is unfair and unjust. An agenda for decentralising the judiciary should be quickly put in place. State or Regional Courts of Appeal and Supreme Courts should be allowed to flourish and decide cases to finality within their different spheres, zones and regions. The Federal Government has no business establishing a federal judiciary to handle state matters, whether criminal or civil.

If there is a Nigerian dream, nay a people’s agenda, I am not in doubt that it will in substance read thus:“a Nigeria where merit matters, corruption is contemptible, streets are safe, houses are lit, factories are powered, people are empowered, schools are citadels and courts are sacred.” The words of Alexandre Dumas, the famous French writer, resonate with the election of President elect Muhammadu Buhari and my brother, Vice-President elect, Yemi Osinbajo:

“It is quite rare for God to provide a great man at the necessary moment to carry out some great deep, which is why when this unusual combination of circumstance does occur, history at once records the name of the chosen one and recommends him to the admiration of posterity.”

The expected agenda as articulated above is no doubt ‘a great deep’ our incoming leaders have been saddled to carry out. At the end of the ‘duty-tour’, would we be able to recommend them to the admiration of posterity?

Nigerians expect from the incoming government that it should not be business as usual or as casual. Interestingly, the President-elect would seem to me to appreciate this, for, in his acceptance speech on April 1, 2015, he posited thus: “Our long night has passed and the day-light has broken across the land.” Nigerians would hold him to this sacred vow. The new government should not expect a long honeymoon. Nigerians are in haste and at the same time touchy, ness, what was I thinking? Both Amaechi and the rest of us owe the authors a debt of gratitude for standing by a friend. Some of the controversies and crises that have trailed his years as Governor, such as the Governors’ Forum, the State Judiciary, the State Assembly, the Truth Commission and many others cannot dwarf his achievements. Dr. Asisha Okauru and Eniola Bello make excellent forays into the crisis of the Governors’ Forum crisis, but they do not bring us any closer to understanding how the counting of a mere 35 or so votes or deciding the results between 19 and 16 became like the counting of Dunga’s donkeys (Dunga, herdsman had ten donkeys which he took grazing. At dusk, he sat on one of his donkeys as he prepared to head home. He counted the rest. He found only 9 donkeys. He came down, went into the bush to search for his missing donkey, came back, counted and found 10 donkeys. He mounted his donkey, counted and discovered again, he had only 9 donkeys…..). In the analysis however, we only hear one side but not the other side of this intriguing story. Dr. Ifeuko O. Okauru and Ilaria Chessa tell the story of the struggle to deal with Accountability and Good governance in accessible language. There are many more good articles.

The rest of the real judgment belongs to history and no one ever left the stage without controversy. The important thing is not the mistakes we make or the controversies, but the lessons we learn from them. I believe that amidst all this, Amaechi has made his mark and the history of Rivers State will accord him a proper place.

For now, this coffee table book is a great aggressive, nervy and readily/easily provoked or get nauseated. The fault is not wholly theirs, but substantially that of successive governments. The incoming government must give true meaning and bearing to democracy, and make it, indeed, and in practical terms, the government of the people, by the people and for the people. We must for once and ever, do away with the idea that the easiest way to become a mandarin millionaire is to find your way either to the Governor’s office at the State level, the Presidency or Vice Presidency at the Federal level, or sneaking to the National Assembly, or lobbying to become a Minister. Mr. President-elect has given a solemn promise, which is akin to a covenant, that he will declare his assets publicly, before assuming office, and also do so after leaving office. This is in keeping with the wordings, contents, meaning, expectation, intent and tenor of the Constitution. Other elected and appointed Public Office holders must follow suit. May I, humbly recommend to the incoming government, the alluring and evergreen words of Franklin Roosevelt, a former American President on the very essence of democracy:

“There is nothing strenuous about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy. The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They companion. I imagine that it ought to be in all the important locations in Rivers State. But that remains to be seen. The contributors have done what friends should do to a friend. In his Preface though, Dr. Amuta entered a caveat which should guide the readers of the book and it is a good note on which to end this review. He noted that: The matter of consensus in the assessment of the performance of an incumbent political office holder in Nigeria is an area of active contention. By the nature of political office, not all citizens are likely to agree that an administration has performed to their benefit. It is often the case that those who make positive judgments are likely to be the beneficiaries in one way or the other from the patronage of the office holder. In such a case, the assessment would be self-serving adulation. But when the achievement of an incumbent transcend limited boundaries of region and partisanship, independent observers (read, friends/admirers) wade in (p14).

This is not a book of adulation but friendship and nothing should be taken away from that. However, the trials, successes and failures of challenges of the tenure of the Governor would require our hearing his own voice with official documentation. For now, the judgment is up to you. But you have been presented a great offering for which we must be grateful to the authors. This is a coffee table book, so while you turn the pages, please be careful not to spill your coffee. are: equality of opportunity for youths and for others; jobs for those who can work food on the table for our citizens, security for those who need I; the ending of special privilege for the few; the preservation of civil liberties for all.”

The incoming government has to do something urgently and drastically about our warped federalism. It is an ‘unfederal’ federalism. Whatever is distilled to be good from the recommendations of the just concluded National Conference must be implemented and engrafted in the Constitution. Nigeria is fragile, delicate, frail, complex, convoluted, prolix, big and large. That election has been won by the opposition party would not be a guarantee and/or should not be taken as an assurance of the solution to our problems. The problems should be identified and tackled, and we should not postpone the solutions to them. Unless and until Nigeria is truly federalised, I am afraid if we would not be living on borrowed times. This is not an apocalyptic statement by any stretch of the imagination.

Ad infinitum, one can go on setting agenda for the incoming administration, dwelling on the tangible to the intangible, the actual to the spiritual, the economic to the infrastructural; and meandering from health to education, peeping into both the environment and ecology, and analyzing, with every force, the ingredients of good governance and democracy. But I do not have all the time in the world to do all these within the short period assigned to me. Hence, I urge the audience to accept the summarized version of an agenda as presented in this discourse. But before I leave the podium, permit me to sound a note of warning, that Nigeria and Nigerians should not under any guise or disguise, act or omission encourage or enthrone a one party state. A robust opposition is an elixir for a sustainable democracy. Therefore, the incoming administration should not stifle, annihilate, obliterate, muzzle or ‘kill’ any opposition party; and neither should it ever boast that it will govern for sixty years! It is only God that rules forever! If the incoming government should beat its chest at anytime, it should only boast in the Lord; for it is written: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of Host” – Zachariah 4:6. To God be always the glory.

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