The Idoma National Forum did something quite sensible on March 14. It invited all the governorship candidates and their deputies in Benue State to an interactive town hall meeting at Otukpo. Its primary purpose, from what I gathered from its convener, the tireless president of the forum, Dr. Alex Okopi Momoh, was for the Idoma people to interrogate these important men, one of whom would be the state’s oga at the top from May 29 year and extract from them firm promises on how they intend to improve the social, economic and political lot of the Idoma people in return for their votes.
It makes sense for the Idoma people to have some idea of what each candidate stands for and intends to do for the state in general and the Idoma people in particular. Perhaps knowing this would help the Idoma make a rational choice from among the candidates in the April 14 elections – if all things were equal. The Idoma people are waking up to the fact that they need to do more than wail about their minority status. It serves no useful purpose for them to go around with a begging bowl pleading with the Tiv for a taste of the political pudding in every election circle. But I understand. When you play second fiddle for so long, it begins to grate on your nerves.
I welcome the town hall meeting – not for what it achieved but what it helped confront the Idoma nation with. It was fitting that all the members of the Idoma Traditional Council, our very revered royal fathers, and some very eminent Idoma men attended the meeting. I am told that all the Idoma people who spoke at the forum spoke well and were passionate about the need to adopt some affirmative actions to move them up the ladder to a first class status. They must have spoken with the desperate courage of people in a permanent dilemma over their political fate.
The meeting starkly and cruelly reminded the Idoma people that the road to the political El Dorado anywhere in the world passes through difficult mountains and values. The trek is long and wearing. There could be no better evidence of this than the fact that all the governorship candidates who attended the forum were Tiv. Each of them came with his deputy from Idoma land, also known as Zone C. It could be worse.
No Idoma man has ever won the governorship primaries of a political party in the state, no matter how inconsequential the party might be, since the late General Murtala Muhammed created the state in February 1976 and made our fellow minority tribe, the Tiv, the majority tribe in the state. The senate president, Chief David Mark, once said, and quite rightly, that it would be easier for an Idoma man to become the president of the Nigeria than for him to become the governor of Benue State. Were mark in the state house of assembly, he would be the deputy speaker.
This is not a critique of the town hall meeting. Still, my take is that the primary purpose of the meeting harked to a mindset common to minority tribes. That mindset posits that politics being a game of numbers, the tribe with the numerical disadvantage is the tribe destined to play the second fiddle. In line with this mindset, the Idoma people have accepted that any attempts to dislodge the Tiv majority from their honoured perch or wrestle any concessions from them on a more meaningful power-sharing formula would be both foolish and futile. You can put it down to realpolitik. Crumbs are better than nothing. And if you upset the apple cart by being uppity, even that can be taken away from you.
Whereas the governorship candidate of APC, Dr. Samuel Ortom, and his deputy, Mr. Benson Abonu, turned up for the meeting, their PDP counterparts, Mr. Terhemen Taarzor and Mr. John Mgbede did not bother to attend. I find it intriguing. Was it a calculated snob of the Idoma people by the man who appreciates that being the PDP candidate, his election is a fait accompli? After all, the Idoma people are duty bound to vote for him. I can only hope there was a better reason for his absence.
Still, it throws up an important issue in how the PDP treats the electorate. The party loves to stick its arrogance in our faces. Its arrogance flows from its belief that not even God can shake it from political perch. God dey.
The political marginalisation of the Idoma people is pathetic but it is not hopeless. For 16 years, the Idoma people have slavishly voted PDP at all levels. For 16 years, the party has refused to enforce the zoning formula that would give people in each of the senatorial zones the legitimate right to aspire to the highest political office in the state. This is clearly unacceptable. The party enforces the same formula in other states that it controls.
If the situation must change, then the Idoma people must turn themselves into the agents of that change. The formula is simple, yet complex. The Idoma people must have the collective courage to deIiver a well-timed shock to the system. In politics, this is known simply as a protest vote. If the Idoma people protest with their votes against the PDP, they would a) force the largest party in Africa not to take them for granted and b) force whoever is its governorship candidate to negotiate with and respect the wishes of the Idoma people in their legitimate and constitutional right to rule the state.
I am painfully aware that if you put this to vote among the Idoma people, the nay-sayers would drown out the rest of the people. Their reaction would be borne out of fear; the fear of further marginalisation and its consequences. But politics necessarily lends itself to constant negotiations and compromises. If the Idoma people feel intimidated and scurry into the safety of their personal holes each time they hear the heavy footsteps of the Tiv cat passing by, then they must accept their present lot as their permanent lot.
