Ojukaye Flag-Amachree must be swimming in an ocean of happiness. Few weeks into his contested tenure as the state chairman of the All Progressives Congress, he caught a big fish; a house of assembly member representing Ahoada-East Constituency 1, Hon. Martins Mannah.
It is what is expected of every new employee, to show within weeks of one being on the job that one has the ability to deliver and deliver he did, no matter how awful it looks. He just caught his first fish. How he goes about the second big fish will make the expected difference.
Theportcitynews.com believes that Mannah was an easy catch. Before he made his decision to move over to the other side of the divide, most observers knew of the game plan.
He had come out in May to say that the Rivers State House of Assembly only sits on Governor Wike’s orders. That was a grave accusation that forced the majority leader of the house to issue series of statements denying Mannah. It was an unusual stone to be thrown in a glass house where one equally inhabited. Except for misbehaving children, table manners forbids one to talk while eating.
Mannah subsequently called for the resignation of the Speaker, Hon. Ikuinyi-Owaji Ibani. What a patriot he is, many said! but every act of patriotism by an average politician has a ‘but’ to it, and before the early morning sun shunned into brightness, he was already in the APC.
As the ovation following Mr. Amachree’s performance in Ahoada where the APC’s net had caught a big fish was at the verge of dying down, he threw yet another net into the crowd at Oyigbo and caught 3000 human fishes from the PDP folds into the APC folds. He is doing a great job, a job that seemed impossible for Ikanya and social media thinks so.
While Amachree was busy harvesting PDP members everywhere he went, a baggage followed him everywhere he went too. The Magnus Abe’s faction of the party, upon the pronouncement of the Rivers State High Court, that the Congress which brought Amachree to power is null and void, gathered at freedom house to interpret what the ruling meant to those who have grown too ignorant to understand.
The interpreter in-chief was a former Attorney General of the state, Boms Worgu. Worgu regaled those who cared to listen that the congresses which brought Amachree to power have been declared null and void following a court order.
The faction, in a terse statement, disowned Amachree and his co-travelers, declaring, however, that they are open to peace processes that will bring oneness and openness to the state chapter of the party. This, it said, is pending the determination by the High Court.
It is our belief that in a democratic setting, ruling by a court of competent jurisdiction should not be blatantly disobeyed. It creates room for anarchy, chaos, and disorder.
The APC as a party will rupture from within if orders from High Courts are disobeyed with reckless abandon. Not only will the party rapture, it will take Nigeria down with it. It is not just a Rivers State problem but a national one. Personal interests have come to overshadow collective interest. Its outcome is the rancour that is currently playing out in the party’s fold nationwide.
The PDP equally seems unprepared to take advantage of APC’s disadvantages. It has been consciously sleeping. It has not yet come to terms with its role as the opposition, except for the pressure statements from the party’s national publicity secretary.
The PDP in the past was equally notorious for harvesting thousands of purported APC members. In March, they harvested the member representing Tai constituency in the state house of assembly, Hon. Mathew Dịke. Although they have been less aggressive in their chase for defectors, it is its season and the two competitors should fight for their numbers.
However, how these numbers translate to victory remains a problem for legends to solve. If anything, it creates the impression that reforming Nigeria’s version of democracy is a dream that will take a long time to come to fruition.
Those who bask in the euphoria of financially induced defections, will fall for those who do the real hard work and that has become the singular trouble with our politics, where huge sums of moneys are thrown with reckless abandon and the people jump at it without a second thought.
For Nigeria to make progress, away from the crude way that we go about issues, like disobeying court orders, and throwing unverified numbers in the air, we will have the courage to reform our politics and put enough checks and balances and restore sanity to the system.
