Crusaders, Editors, Pink Slips
“An editor’s vote at the Nigerian Guild of Editors’ infamous gathering at Minna was as cheap as – don’t laugh – N250; the main price was N500, although others did quite better, for up to N89, 000 was reliably reported to be available for the vote-buying.”
Wait a minute, things are moving too fast and they make a man dizzy. Where were we last time? I remember running into a storm over an argument with Ray Ekpu on the power or lack of it of the Nigerian press and, if the letters published on the discourse were a fair indication, then I came out bettered in the affray. The nail was put on the coffin by Sonala Olumhense of the Punch who took side with Ray in the argument under his imaginative headline “Ray Giwa Versus Dele Ekpu,” all of which is not meant here to suggest that I concede the argument. Other things have happened, and they all took place in a whirlwind of activities. A fellow called Akure went to court to crusade against Aper Aku, who himself got into the limelight by crusading against the late Gomwalk. The National Concord’s “Thinking Corners” observed wisely that everybody seemed to be getting in on the act of crusading, a good headline catching affair, in which the crusaders are now on the receiving end. Hm! The whole crusading bit would not have been complete without Godwin Daboh getting in on the show. Daboh is the kingpin of the business of crusading. He crusading against the late Joseph Tarka, and now against the UPN, which had no business in the first place getting in the same bed with the guy, and nobody could possibly appreciate this more than Ebenazer Babatope who was the target of Daboh’s barb.
But now Daboh has found the Akure-Aku or Aku-Akure affair something of a great excitement, and he has joined the show by instutiting his own crusading suit against the poor Aku. Please don’t get me wrong here. I am not commenting on any of the two cases, fair or unfair, for it is clear that the matters are in the courts. I am only reporting on it, for what would a journalist or a columnist be worth if he can’t mention something as imaginative as the Aku-Akure-Daboh affair. And the editors didn’t think they should be left out of the excitement taking place in the country. We were in Minna where we were making even more incredible stories. Quite a number of us were trying as hard as we could to save the soul of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, as though the thing had a soul. And if it had a soul, you might then ask whether by the end of the strange weekend in Minna, anything was left of the outfit that one could call a soul. It is a question that you would like to ask by the time that you might have read Obinwa Nnaji’s story of the editors’ conference in the Satellite. Only the first part of the account had been published at the time of this writing, but I hope that Nnaji would include the fact that an editor’s vote at the infamous gathering was as cheap as – don’t laugh – N250. The main price was N500, although others did quite better, for up to N89, 000 was reliably reported to be available for the vote-buying. Which is not to say that you would still not read the whole story one day in these pages.
Ugwu in a Catch 22 Twist
Always, politics present the most interesting issue for public discussion, and the gentleman who is the minister of health, Daniel Ugwu, somehow got himself in Catch-22 twist. He has made himself into the archetype of a man munching his cake and, at the same time, trying to keep the thing in the fridge. He should know that the moment you eat you cake, it disappears in your blood stream and finds its way into your sewer. You can’t possibly eat it and then keep it. Dan Ugwu now seems the only really important member of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) trying to perform this impossible feat. Young Mohammed Hassan, the minister of NEPA, who was trying to run both ways at once has stopped running. He says he prefers the certainty to the uncertainty, as a result of which you wouldn’t say the man is not smart. Anyway, let’s review the situation. The National Executive Council (NEC) of the NPN which has a knack for making inconsistent decisions, another way of saying the committee is capricious, handed out a decision to the effect that members of the party holding party or government positions should resign their appointments six weeks before the Party’s various nomination conventions nationwide. That seems to make enough sense but not to Mr. Ugwu.
He thumbed his nose at the party that he would not do anything of the sort. He said that he would keep his job with Shehu Shagari while seeking the NPN nomination for governor of Anambra State. Mr. Ugwu has accused unnamed members of the party for trying to keep him out, what he hasn’t said of the party’s NEC must be unprintable, and for a man like Mr. Ugwu silence makes the loudest noise possible. Mr. Ugwu is a gentleman. You ought to meet him and you will agree readily that he is a paragon of good intentions and fine behavior. He believes that he can offer a better government to the people of Anambra State, and he just can’t seem to understand why powerful elements in the state wing of the party are hell bent in keeping his good self out of the race. The gentleman is missing the point. He has a choice to make: the type made by Mohammed Hasssan who is of the right age to be Mr. Ugwu’s son. You have to leave the certainty to pursue the uncertainty. If he believes strongly enough that he can fight and win the nomination of his party and later beat Jim Nwobodo in the final duel, then he must go in and have a talk with President Shagari. The talk must be about his ardent to become a governor and of his regrettable wish to be freed of ministerial responsibilities to the nation. And if the minister fails to make that kind of speech, President Shagari should then be prepared to do what he is said to hate doing: get out a scalpel and cut off Mr. Ugwu from his cabinet.
As the minister of health, Mr. Ugwu’s responsibilities appear to be the most crucial of all President Shagari’s ministers at the moment. All the hospitals under his ministry are submerged in a labour crisis that is causing death and hardship to the sick. He should be too busy trying to find solution to the problem. But the man is obviously too busy travelling home, as he surely must be doing, in trying to get his party’s state nomination, that he can’t possibly have the time to run his embattled ministry. From the sound issuing from his office or from wherever he is speaking, it is clear that Mr. Ugwu is more interested in fighting his party and negotiating, his political fortunes, than finding the strategy to deal with the nation’s teaching hospitals’ crisis. The gentleman is clearly not earning his keep. We, the tax payers, are Mr. Ugwu’s employers and, therefore, we reserve the right to query the man’s lack of attention to his job, and we call on his boss, who is our most senior employee, to do something radical with that scalpel.
The presidential system doesn’t provide for the sort of parliamentary cabinet that seems to obtain in the Shagari administration. The president, under this system, should be like the chairman of the board, with his ministers acting like executive directors running his departments. The nation, under this arrangement, is like the big corporation. We are the shareholders. And now is the general annual meeting. The power given to the president to assemble his cabinet is the sort given to an executive chairman of the board to select his senior employees. The Senate only serves as the interview panel. But from all available evidence, the Shagari administration seemed to have missed this analysis from the beginning when the president abdicated the core of his power to his party by asking the party to suggest to him the people that he could assemble to form his cabinet. That might have resulted in the fact that he ended up with many a minister that he hardly knew, and whose loyalty he could not be sure of. The question of competence of many of his ministers is another matter. The president can start now to show the nation that he understands the system he heads by saying the nation the spectacle put on slip by Mr. Ugwu that he likes more to be the governor of Anambra State than to keep doing his current job, and the president should beat the minister to the decision by handing a pink slip to him. And what were we saying before all this …
©Sunday Concord, September 19, 1982
(Pp.181-184)
