2022 has arrived with the expected political declarations to take power next year, and aspirants are all hitting the roads and combing the rusty clefts they abandoned in the last four years and oiling them for power grab. The people too are making a kill, feasting from the spoils of the quadrennial rendezvous of their cap-in-hand expectations which they must remit, every year preceding election.
The casualty of this melodious reunion is governance. It will come to a stand still. All over the country, the table has turned. It will all be politics until the end of the 503 days remaining. Even when this moment hadn’t come, it wasn’t as if anyone was governing us. What will now change is that, even the skeletal public services that can still be accessible now, will all be diverted into how to grab power come 2023.
In Cross River State, which is my specific interest, Governor Ayade’s tenure as far as governance is concerned, has effectively ended. It is election and handover date that are remaining. Let me be clear that even the governor does not realize what I am saying now and will not agree with me either. He will read this and laugh at me but I will explain. It will not be his will to abandon governance, if he was ever governing, but the sequence of events henceforth will so distract him that he won’t even be able to remember his regular work schedules.
You see the same way the tussle by Governor Imoke in 2014 to plant either Legor Idagbo as governor or allow Jedy Agba have his way or find an Ayade to later replace Legor, distracted Imoke to the point where even garbage could not be evacuated from Calabar, that is how the horse trading, intrigues, and politicking in the months ahead will distract Governor Ayade. Both from the opposition PDP and from within his own party, the APC, the contending interests will ensure every of his remaining days and nights are filled with scheming over who will get what in 2023 and nothing else. While the PDP will keep him busy in the State, some of his own party members who will be opposed to his choice and will want to lobby for the governorship ticket from their national headquarters, will force him to relocate to Abuja to fight for his political future.
Don’t also forget that the Ogoja/Yala federal constituency by-election, a very crucial win-or-mar election for the Governor, is still underway, later this year. And the worst of it all is Governor Ayade’s Presidential ambition. That is not just a major major project and final distraction from governance, it will be a primary conduit to fritter the little resources of our State by an excited governor. His exco, his legion of appointees, the entire government will collapse into that ambition. He is just waiting for the APC National Convention to hold before he joins the fray.
All the talk about completing the airport, super highway, deep sea port, cala this and cala that, rice mill and chocolate factory and all that long list, have all gone into voice mail. He will continue to mouth them and continually refer to them in his public speeches and that’s where it will end. They will window dress them periodically to score political points like they did with calachika during the Yuletide season and when the primaries come in August or thereabout, officials will start telling you government is a continuum, so the next governor will do the needful.
This will not only happen to Governor Ayade. Even our national and state assembly members will suffer same fate as well as the LG chairmen. They will put governance in the limbo. They will stand akimbo. Interestingly, the people won’t bother. Because the politicians are busting bundles this season. The people will think the bundles are good governance and as far as the bundles continue to rain in the various marathon political meetings that will be holding, it will suffice for the people as good governance.
I thought it was important to let you know this. That in the remaining 503 days to May 29, 2023, it is bye bye to governance and welcome to politics. Cut your expectations if you still had any, and save yourself a heart.
Yours sincerely,
Citizen Agba Jalingo.
