At times, members of even the best-run organisation cannot escape moments of profound crises, when they must break faith either with the team or with themselves.
These crises occur when the leadership of an institution suddenly embarks on a course of action that is incompatible with members' ethical standards or judgment. In the Action Congress (AC), it has taken about two years to arrive at this crucial point, where it has become still more difficult to reconcile some of our actions with prudence or even with sanity.
Apparently, the most abused word in today's political lexicon in Nigeria is "godfatherism". Perhaps unknown to many, there is a sociological concept, which holds that a man can change his under-wears; he can change his toothpaste, particularly in the face of the various varieties in today's market; he can change his children's schools BUT he cannot change his ancestry. In other words, we are all sons of our fathers, not by choice but by Divine arrangement. Interestingly, though, given a choice, many good children would still jump at the opportunity to be born by the same fathers that God gave them originally. After all, God makes no mistakes.
Everyone must plan and prepare for the type of life he wants for himself and his children. Failing to plan is planning to fail. It is not any different in politics, where leadership demands real preparation and apprenticeship. No one burns out his life and suddenly wakes up, wanting to become the President of the country. Rather, it is through the process of involvement in the political arena that people become identified for serious responsibilities.
Godfatherism has not always connoted evil. It has not always been viewed with sinister motives. Webster's Third New International Dictionary refers to a godfather as one primarily responsible for the care and development of someone or something. In recent times, the boldest attempt at truly defining the godfather comes from Okey Ikechukwu who in his piece titled "Thus Spoke The Sultan", makes it clear that "The godfather is your earthly guardian angel who takes trouble to ensure that the best in you is actualized for your own good and for the good of the world around you". (THISDAY, Thursday, December 11, 2008, P.72).
We agree with Ikechukwu that godfatherism in its true sense involves mentoring. And where mentoring is absent, upstarts take over the stage and, lacking paradigms and any sense of history, become the law and the state. Ikechukwu further tells us that Nigeria certainly witnessed a serious sense of political mentoring in the First and Second Republics when the founding fathers were part of a conscious sifting political process that became a veritable recruitment machine for political and other forms of leadership. At that time, the concept of political godfather was understood in its positive sense as against its present day completely negative form in which it has been hopelessly bastardized and vandalized. In Nigeria today, godfatherism has become synonymous with, and a justification for, the system where thugs, mediocres and outright nitwits have assumed full national prominence as political leaders simply because someone (now called godfather) has short-circuited the political process on his behalf. Godfatherism has now become a curse and a plague and everyone must run away from it.
This played out in a recent exercise in my home Local Government, Uhunmwode. The leaders of the Action Congress in the Local Government were asked to nominate three persons from who one would be picked as a Commissioner. The leaders went home, did a thorough groundwork and produced eminently qualified candidates, as it were, their very first eleven; candidates who could stand out on their own, anywhere, any time. The State Screening Committee was quite honest in their assessment -- they were the best and simply faultless. The only sin attached to them is that their fathers are politicians and are still alive. To give a dog a bad name in order to facilitate its hanging, the biological fathers of the two very good candidates were quickly dubbed godfathers and thenceforth, the extremely good candidates having had the plague-like status ascribed on them, lost their rating. They are still grappling with the odd idea that if having a living father is the only ground for disqualification, why the appointing authorities did not proceed to the orphanages, where orphans are surely not in short supply.
What options does this wrong application of godfatherism leave with its victims, the innocent ones growing into the world of oddities, where a bright boy would be made to regret having bright parents in just the same way that Nigeria makes her citizens to weep each time the price of its only product, crude oil, goes up? Ironies will never end.
For the parents of excellence, what option is open to their children of excellence? As soon as it becomes clear that the parents constitute a cog in their wheels of progress as far as appointment to offices is concerned, two options are readily open - either to "knock them off" completely or shield them from public view. First, do these children want government patronage by all means and at all cost? The obvious answer to this is a categorical NO.
Shall the children kill their parents as a way of earning eligibility for government patronage? God forbid! Shakespeare was essentially right, when he asserted unequivocally, "If fortune would have me king; let fortune crown me without my stir".
Secondly, what of the idea of hiding the parents of excellence? Even granting that the children could hide their parents so as to attract initial public offer, they would not even do that. Among other things, to hide such parents of excellence would be a disservice to the entire system and humanity at large. These parents tower very high and very tall and they are extremely useful to their community and the human race, even more so than those seeking to have government appointments. What would the system do without a man who is a Senator-emeritus; a man who had a successful stint in the academia; in politics and in business; a founding father of the Action Congress; and one man without who national and local politics would continually be on the sprawl? On the other hand, we are looking at another parent of excellence who has distinguished himself both locally, nationally and internationally; one man who has single-handedly prosecuted the war against oppression through his weekly columns in national and international newspapers and magazines, without counting the cost. The Action Congress cannot pretend that it is not a major beneficiary from this man's invaluable contributions to the course of the total emancipation of the people from the stronghold of the PDP. In any case, should these parents be put in a position to begin to blame themselves for investing in good education for their children? Should they also be blamed that the children have opted for practical politics instead of sticking to greener pastures in Abuja, Lagos and other world capitals where their counterparts with lesser educational attainment and other cognate experience are making waves in Banking, Commerce and Industry?
Brutus could easily have described Adams Oshiomhole, with a high degree of justification, as over-ambitious. A man agrees that "I presided over the NLC meeting where the decision was taken to form the Labour Party " but he soon jumps boat to take advantage of the AC structure since the Labour Party did not have a structure (DAILY SUN, Tuesday, December 30, 2008, P.26). If this is not over-ambition, what is?
However, the AC quickly adopts this son and by working 25 hours a day under the most difficult conditions, pilots this man through a difficult election, a more difficult Tribunal, and a most difficult Appeal Court process. Soon after that, like in the tradition of the child, who as soon as he is carried across the hill begins to cry that he must wait for the mother, Oshiomhole announces to the entire world, "I am running a Labour government". If this is not over-ambition, what is?
In the spirit of over-ambition, he must now pull the cotton wool across everybody's face. The AC must submit three names per Local Government from across the State. The 54 nominees must be screened by the highest committee ever formed in the Party. Behold, the names were thrown overboard. In their places, nominees from one of the warring factions of the PDP plagued the entire list. If this is not over-ambition, what is? But could Comrade Adams Oshiomohoel not have spared the AC the insult of having to submit and screen those nominees when he already knew what he had in mind?
If Comrade Adams Oshiomhole could wrap up the AC, seal and deliver same to a faction of the PDP, it was a grievous fault and so grievously has AC answered it. Yes, we have maintained with monotonous regularity that in politics, what people say is usually different from what they bring about. While you shout so much about the need to engage technocrats, you are facing the world with a list predominated virtually by discredited politicians and other foreign elements. While you shout so much against godfatherism, you are now one godson with a multiplicity of godfathers. This is the very stuff of which over-ambition is made.
We know the government you are not running but we do not know the government you are running. Comrade, which government are you really running, Labour or PDP? It is certainly not AC. It is also instructive that your ground floor, the third tier, is occupied exclusively by your PDP. It is perhaps too early in the day to remind you of the obvious imbalance created by a situation where the Governor, Speaker, Secretary to Government, Head of Service, all come from a single Senatorial District. In times of strict protocol, our 'middle belt' brothers could feel alienated if they have to count at a distant seventeenth position. That is hardly how to "let the people lead".
