This piece is written in the worst case scenario. Politically, it seems the land of Nsit Ubium is in a quandary. The people have to decide between the speakership of Onofiok Luke and the governorship hopes of Umana Umana. They will have to choose between the Peoples Democratic Party and All Progressive Congress. On this, party will be a non-factor. Antecedent will be everything, the sole determinant. It is a tough, yet, an easy decision. It is a choice between prospectively profitable investment and a risky venture. It is an option between certified leadership and unsafe gamble. It is a decision that may span the plains of Nsit Ubium…a judgement all Akwa Ibom people must serve as jury. Choices are free but nobody is free from the aftermaths of choice.
Robert Frost the poet in “The Road Not Taken,” wrote:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;…
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Nsit Ubium, are u a land that inter great ambitions? Sam Edem, Effiong Bob….how they fell to “brotherly” envy and sacrificed on the stake of the narrow ambition of a kinsman remains ponderable. Is it Onofiok’s turn, and still for the same deviant and schlock governorship ambition? Genuine ambitions are not fueled by schizotypal obsession. They are driven by structural needs of the people and the configurational patterns of society.
Umana Umana’s ambition today, remains ill-intentioned, ill-timed and suspicious, just as it was at the outset. On a moral scale, the main turn-off of UOU’s guber jamboree is the many futile attempts by the man himself and his subalterns to deodorize him from whatever stench they claim characterized the Akpabio years. If that era was sleazy, the incidental born-again was a sleaze-in-chief while he lasted as SSG. If the PDP is filled with crooks today, the APC governorship candidate ranked top in PDP’s hierarchy of crooks before the pages were flipped.
It is only a moral irritant that would demonize a platform that offered him a regrettable privilege to emerge Akwa Ibom’s most notorious billion-man…too questionable that the “probe” word should ever form part of his speech, public or private.
For Akwa Ibom governorship options, it is dangerous error to think Umana as a lesser evil. Even so, Baltasar Gracian, in “The Art of Worldly Wisdom,” offers a cautionary advice that we should “never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it”.
Though yet to become the main boss, Umana lived an inebriated tyrant as government secretary. He brooked no press criticism even when it was factual. He struck with his fangs and unleashed his pangs. Today in the middle of a stormy electoral excursion, he pretends he is the people’s man. But he can’t be better than a benevolent dictator. And he will run an imperial democracy in the end.
As I drove, approaching the roundabout that also links Barracks road that afternoon, I witnessed a throng of people filled Ibom Plaza, others, in groups of varying numbers were also swarming towards the congregation. It was only after I got close that I noticed the speaker’s official car. I didn’t have the patience so I went my way. Minutes later, details of that event flooded the social media space.
I have read criticisms of that event with some being wholly abusive without being sensible. But most ridiculous is a video, clearly a desperate afterthought, arranged by the APC media organ where a cluster of about a dozen persons were enticed to speak against the beautiful event of that day. Onofiok’s abrupt trip to another section of the street that day caused dazing and unsettling effects in the opposition camp.
It was another masterstroke from the genius himself. He penetrated with ease where was generally perceived to be the den of opposition, freed them from the mental shackles of deception elongated by free readership of printed falsehood; he came out triumphant. That thirsty multitude, like Charlotte Bronte echoed, I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.
A hundred “arrangee” anti-Onofiok videos can’t neutralize the dripping effects of that visit. The APC media arm should gather a voluntary crowd of same staggering proportion and let the people who cheerfully received the speaker, also reject him. Else, there’s no other acceptable way to discredit him. Onofiok is winning.
His distinctive trademarks, street cred and generosity, are shields against the arrows of mindless propaganda. He is the one formidable rock in the governing party that must be crushed if the opposition is to succeed in its morbid aims. If the APC governorship candidate had not erected a Berlin Wall and installed Iron Curtains to separate himself from the people while he laid drunk in the corridor of power, he wouldn’t solely depend on immoral skullduggeries to sell his ambition.
The speaker is everything good that the opposition wish their man was. UOU does what Onofiok did; just that he does it at his utmost convenience. That is the difference. And such is not the hallmark of a leader. For this group, indeed, politics have no relation to morals.
In his private jet, he flew in;
Flaunting a sparkle of his illicit goldmine
An oppressor garbed in saintly garment
Mocking us, yet acting as our man
Under the blazing sun they converged
Hypnotized by his filthy cents
Enchanted by his impossible promises
With probe his manifesto, yet so unclean he is.
Isn’t it funny how we hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office? The APC isn’t necessarily filled with crooks but most crooks are found in APC. The speaker appears ready to absorb more barbs. He’s got no option. That’s the price of uncompromising leadership.
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