The national question in Nigeria concerns all the underlying and recurrent issues that excite perennial discourse, debate and conflict such as federalism, revenue generation/sharing, security, injustice, energy crises, election, constitutionalism, religious extremism, ethnic intolerance, corruption and so on. Top on the list today is constitutionalism and political succession, with the President’s health and absence fueling and heating up the system.  With so many divergent voices producing a cacophony in recent weeks, the wisdom of elders was badly needed and one voice that has clearly pointed out a path to follow is that of former Akwa Ibom State Governor Obong Victor Attah.  See Sunday Sun, Nigerian Compass, The Independent and other national papers of Sunday Dec. 20, 2009.

For reasons of space, I wish to isolate only a few of the matters raised as they concern the general polity.  Many will agree that the monster of corruption is the biggest killer strangling our nation today. Former EFCC boss Nuhu Ribadu once lamented that there was insufficient national outrage against corruption when compared with the explosion of anger directed against religious and ethnic provocations. Alhaji Bashir Tofa, a former presidential candidate, and former PDP chairman, Mr. Audu Ogbeh, at different times and on different occasions, equally made significant statements on this malaise.  Tofa said the corrupt and the poor around them were feeding from the same purse.  He went on to expatiate on how, invariably, so many people relied on their loved ones in power or out of power to eat and remain alive.  Whether we like it or not, this remark, no matter how simplistic it seems, reflects the truth of how crushing poverty has rendered many Nigerians helpless in fighting corruption.  Yet, there can be no excuse for selling our souls to evil men and women.

Audu Ogbeh put it more succinctly.  He observed the sad fact that when people served the nation honestly and left office poor, they were usually derided as fools worthy of scorn.  This has been Victor Attah’s own experience since leaving office, as he told the editors.  The paradox is amazing, he said, of how people still line up for one form of assistance or the other, school fees, house rent, medical bills and so on, meaning that such supplicants expect that you must have enriched yourself while in office.  However, in answering the question, he told the journalists that he has since returned to his profession as architect and town planner with his office in Abuja.  He has to work, he explained, because his pension as governor cannot pay all his bills, including salaries for a cook, a driver, two security guards and a personal assistant.

What the former governor has told us in plain language is that, as a nation, we have to choose between honest leaders and corrupt ones.  Having been victimized by false accusations, innuendoes and insinuations, some of them from malicious officials of his home state, the former governor continues to challenge anyone who has evidence against him to come forward and present such.  These include the EFCC, the Akwa Ibom State Government, any and every other individual or organization whether within or outside the country.  How many of our past and present leaders can pose this challenge publicly to their detractors? It is on record that the Federal Government wrote a retraction and apology to Attah, following an earlier misinformation given to the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). Compensation was also paid for this error to the former governor.  

Apart from challenging Nigerians to rise up once and for all against corruption, the greatest public service rendered in the press conference is the clear-headed and logical approach to the burning issue of constitutionalism and political succession necessitated by President Umaru Yar’Adua’s absence.  At a time so many conflicting voices had produced nothing but a barrage of emotions, Attah was one of the few and, in fact, the one statesman who rose above partisan and parochial sentiments to show Nigeria and the world that truth has no room for equivocations and prevarications.  Let the constitution be respected, he averred. Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan should immediately take over as Acting President to close the gap created by Yar’Adua’s absence.  But to the extremists, Attah responded that resignation by Yar'Adua could not be the solution, since the President cannot resign one day and return later to rescind the decision.

On the whole, the behaviour of party hierarchy members of the PDP and officials of the Presidency on the President's health has been unfortunate, with all of them making statements that were outright falsehood such as claiming that they were in daily communication with their boss..  Where was the evidence?  Loyalists were fawning all over the place to demonstrate their love for Mr. President, when that was not the major issue.  For long, the preposterous impression has been given by these sycophants that even an effigy of the President deserves idolatrous reverence and will suffice for re-election in 2011.  This is utterly disgraceful.  The PDP and the nation should be grateful that a clear-sighted statesman of Attah’s calibre came forward to say:  Enough of this sentimental rubbish!  The nation and loyalty to the constitution should come before loyalty to one man, without any ill will to the sick man.

Equally a statesman-like service rendered by Obong Attah is the fearless support he lent to the current movement to form a strong opposition party, the so-called mega party. Why should anyone who means well for Nigeria and its development challenge this patriotic tendency?  The logic proffered by Attah is the same as the one advanced by scholars in political science.  America and the U.K are among the advanced democracies where, in spite of there being other parties, two dominant ones are always locked in fierce contest at every election.  This reality keeps the two contending parties on their toes, impelling them to do their best both while in office and outside power for their respective countries.  Now, in Nigeria, some PDP members are arguing that the best party loyalists are those who subscribe to their party being in power for 60 years.  Before God, humanity, and Nigeria, which is a superior argument for progress and development – a one party democracy or a strong two-party system?

For our purpose, another plank of ex-Governor Attah's press briefing that deserves a passing comment here concerns Akwa Ibom State.  He reiterated his stand about speaking the truth at all times on the way forward for this state and loyalty primarily to party, as opposed to personal loyalty to anyone.  Internal democratic dynamics at national, state and local levels and producing a credible candidate for 2011 are his major concern for now, although he feels disturbed by the obsession of Godswill Akpabio with re-election and personal glorification, in utter neglect of urgent matters of development.  There is a lot of “hyperbolic exaggeration about achievements which, on the ground, are largely ephemeral.  All these are quite distinct from the vision-filled and transformative projects that he (Attah) initiated and some almost completed such as the Le Meridien Hotel and Golf Resort, the International Airport with a hangar and MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul), the Independent Power Plant (IPP), the Science Park, the Sea Port at Ibaka and the University of Technology.  All these, he said, have laid the foundation for Akwa Ibom's economic development.  On the other hand, observers are still waiting to see the bread and butter projects of this present administration (housing, education, healthcare etc.).  Many are also asking why a whopping N200 billion has been expended on roads by Akpabio, when the Federal Government has ordered twenty road contracts nationwide at only N71 billion.  This is all a matter for future treatment.

Odum, aloymaria_best@yahoo.co.uk, resides in Lagos.