Guardian

THE matter of the controversial election of the Nigeria Governors Forum to choose a chairman is still raging. Now the parties are in court to prove an elusive point. I will explain why it an elusive point. Let’s work with the most favourable scenario, which is that the Supreme Court may be persuaded to declare Governor Chibuike Amaechi winner of the election and be sworn-in as the chairman of the forum. At least, that is what Governor Fashola of Lagos State (SAN), who is reportedly leading the legal onslaught wants. Does that rest the crisis? The answer is no and we all know why. The court can only take the horse to the river but it cannot force it to drink water.

A bigger issue is the status of the forum after the election. The forum right now is divided down the middle and it is not in the place of the Supreme Court to force a healing of the open wound if the wounded are reluctant. Put differently, the Supreme Court cannot make a declaration compelling all the 36 governors to attend the forum’s meeting summoned by whoever the court says is the chairman? What I am saying is that the solution does not lie in the court for the simple reason that a court lacks the power to compel a governor to remain in or exit the forum.

The forum is not listed anywhere in the 1999 Constitution. Membership or non-membership does not attract any special benefits or disadvantages as such. The forum does not make laws for the good governance of the states. Even if it makes law, same is not enforceable or binding on members. The NGF is what it is; a loose platform for peers (the 36 governors) to review operations and compare notes. And there were no hassles when the forum was operated within these parameters. It was an attempt to load the forum with higher significance by an ambitious leadership that touched off the current crisis that is threatening to consume it.

Now the NGF is doing very little of peer review, but doing so much of helping the National Assembly to act as check on the Presidency. Governor Amaechi as the NGF chairman had been very vehement in this crusade. Once, he rallied the forum to force the presidency to abolish a savings scheme called Sovereign Wealth Fund and put all revenue accruals from overshot production and price benchmarks from oil on the table for distribution among the three tiers of government.

Naturally, the Presidency would be disturbed by the rising profile and the seemingly expanded scope of operations of the forum under Amaechi, who has never pretended to be a friend of President Goodluck Jonathan. At some point, the 2015 general elections and who succeeds Jonathan as president began to dictate momentum at the forum. No sitting president would fold his hands and wait to be overrun by an upstart. To put it squarely, President Jonathan had good reason to be interested in who succeeds Amaechi as the chairman of the NGF. Stories that Amaechi had his eyes fixed on the Presidency as vice presidential candidate to Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa only helped to increase the anger of the President.

Ab initio, the NGF’s election became a ground for muscle flexing. It is also the reasons why the convention was not followed. Governor Peter Obi of Anambra State, who claims to be the oldest member of the forum said the choice of the forum’s chairman years past had been by consensus and not election. This point is now drowned in the resultant cacophony. There is also the issue of a new constitution that was purportedly registered together with the forum’s name by Governor Amaechi at the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), but which was largely unknown to members because no general session of the forum was held to adopt the document for operation.

It was this same constitution that was used to conduct the election because an article in it says an incumbent chairman could seek re-election. One side is saying the provision was smuggled into the document to serve a pre-determined purpose of getting Amaechi re-elected as chairman. They say what the new constitution contains instead, is a provision to move the chairmanship between the North and South and to make the office run for a non-renewable tenure of two years. Based on this understanding, Governor Jonah Jang was sourced and presented for adoption as a consensus candidate of the North after two other contestants from the region, Governors Ibrahim Shema and Isa Yuguda of Katsina and Bauchi States were advised to step down.

That agreement on the surface offered Jonah Jang a head-start advantage of 18 Northern governors minus Ibrahim Gaidam of Yobe State, who was absent. How did he then come so short of glory to earn only 16 votes against Amaechi’s 19? The Jang camp explained that Amaechi, who presided over his own election manipulated the process to advantage. The truth nevertheless is that the Jonah Jang group was complacent and even naive. While they took the NGF election for a routine exercise where members would choose the next chairman by a voice vote or some form of agreement that would be devoid of vote casting and the attendant rancour, Amaechi came fully prepared to win the raging cold battle between him and President Jonathan.

He carefully calculated every step to achieve that purpose. The governors of the opposition parties suddenly became more supportive of Amaechi than their PDP counterparts. He did everything to win and he won. Now having won the battle, it is proving even more difficult for Amaechi to survive the peace. Suddenly, there is no Governors’ Forum to chairman. We can safely say this was the intention of the presidency; to cast spanner into the works so that Amaechi does not continue to walk tall as governor of governors. In which case, neither Amaechi nor Jang is a winner; the real winner is Jonathan, who is now greatly relieved that the burdensome NGF is off his back.

An option is to accept the two factions and their chairmen so that instead of just a forum, it can become forums of Nigerian governors. Whichever way, the presidency is a key beneficiary. Even the other regional forums are beginning to cough from the ripple effects of the failed NGF. A meeting of the Northern Governors Forum last week could not hold because Jang and 13 others refused to attend. It goes to show that some of the Northern governors who had earlier endorsed Jang as consensus candidate did not do so of their free will and when the opportunity came for them to vote secretly, they moved against Jang to spite President Jonathan who is said to be behind Jang. It is also doubtful if the Liyel Imoke headed South-South Governors Forum and the so-called BRACED (Bayelsa, Rivers, Akwa-Ibom, Cross River, Edo and Delta) Commission are still standing firm in the face of the crisis.

Still, the factions are digging deeper. Two different secretariats of the forum have been inaugurated in Abuja. Governor Amaechi has asked the director-general of the NGF and other workers to remain steadfast, assuring the thick dark cloud will soon leave the sky for the sun shall shine again. He can afford to sound big because he has oil money to fund the secretariat if subventions from the governors stop coming. Same cannot be said of Jonah Jang, who has a crisis ridden Plateau State to manage through with very lean resources.

But let’s pause and do a post-mortem. When it all started, quarters that saw tomorrow, including this column had advised Amaechi to lie low, that in Nigeria, not too many people go into battle with a sitting president and return to tell a good story. Many of his colleagues had reportedly told him to drop the NGF chairmanship renewal bid since the position with all the attendant trouble was not going to add a kobo extra to the monthly allocation of Rivers State from the federation account. He chose to follow his mind. Now, he is all over town beating drums like a confused town crier, even as the PDP closes in on him and others it has accused of anti-party activities. He has threatened to defend the NGF mandate with the last drop of his blood.

It sounds funny. Which mandate is he talking about? Is the mandate going to empower him to build roads and hospitals in Rivers State? It is like President Jonathan threatening to lay down his life in defence of a mandate to lead ECOWAS or the AU that is being scuttled by other heads of state. How does that kind of mandate help to fix the epileptic power supply in Nigeria?

Governor Amaechi does not need to go to that fatal extreme to make any good point. I mean, someone should forcefully and quickly note the point that the NGF mandate is not another June 12 mandate that was defended with human lives and that if he, Amaechi, by mistake dies defending it (God forbid), he will die, as they say in local parlance, for nothing sake. Not even a primary school, not to talk of a university will be named after him. His beautiful wife, Judith and their children as well as his kinsmen at Ubima in Ikwerre local government area are going to be very angry with him.

Fighting to reclaim an NGF’s chairmanship mandate is a misadventure, to say the least. Amaechi is on a wrong path and he should be reminded that no matter how fast a traveller moves in the wrong direction, he never gets to destination. It can only be added that it is never too late to retrace from a road that leads nowhere.