BY JACOB BRIGHT
As the contest for the sole ticket of the ruling All Progressives Congress into Aso Rock Villa takes shape, a debate about the presidential ambition of two political power houses, Chris Ngige and Rotimi Amaechi, has continued to generate political heat and pitch Nigerians against one another.
Ngige and Amaechi are the Minister for Labour and Employment and Transportation respectively. They will slug it out with other APC bigwigs like Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and Rochas Okorocha, for the right to be the flag bearer of the APC in the general elections in 2023.
However, for the two men, recent goings on in their ministries have become a talking point for some Nigerians as a possible barometer to gauge their seriousness to paddle Nigeria’s ship to an Eldorado.
Then, there is also the knotty issue of Section 84(12) of the Electoral Act which requires government appointees to resign their post before contesting elections, and because of this, calls for them to resign have pervaded the political space. However, the ministers have continued to saunter round all the criticisms and marched forward unfazed.
In their various presidential declarations, Ngige and Amaechi leveraged on their wealth of political experience, promising to use same to fix Nigeria. Both have had stints as Governors. In fact, Ngige’s profile boasts 40 years of public service and he announced he needed two years to turn the fortunes of Nigeria around.
The former Anambra Governor, who described himself as “the round peg for the round hole of Nigeria”, also said that he would not resign his position as Minister because the 1999 constitution grants freedom to anyone to vote and be voted for, and “overrides the Electoral Act”.
On the lingering ASUU strike, Ngige reminded everyone that cared to listen that he was just a “conciliator of disputes between employers and employees” and “an arbitrator who does not have the powers to implement agreements so reached” and who does “facilitation by persuasion for the parties (employers and employees) to implement agreements”.
“You know, the tradition in the public sector is that if you are found wanting, you would be fired by your boss. But if in his own wisdom, the president isn’t bothered about all the inadequacies highlighted against Amaechi and Ngige, we should just move on with it because the buck stops on the President’s table
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According to Ngige, that is where his role (as Minister) stops.
Amaechi, in his presidential declaration on his verified Facebook page, pointed at his 23 years in public service, which he said had not only equipped him with experience in governance and public service, but also endued him with “compassion for the ordinary citizens of Nigeria”.
The former Rivers State Governor who recently came under the radar after terrorists waylaid an Abuja-Kaduna train where lives were lost and some people abducted by gun-toting terrorists, boasted about being “the most qualified to succeed Buhari”.
He explained in Ile-Ife, Osun State, that he ran round a stadium in Port Harcourt during his official declaration as a presidential aspirant to ascertain how fit he was to “carry the problems of Nigeria”.
Responding to the deluge of calls for Ngige and Amaechi to bow out of the presidential race because of the unsavory problems in their respective ministries, Moyo Jaji, a renowned political analyst and APC stalwart, said that the difficulties in Nigeria notwithstanding, everyone had a right to aspire to any office. According to Jaji, everything happening in the Ministries of Transportation and Labour and Employment should be “the headache of the president” as he was the only one who reserved the right to fire anyone not performing.
“I am a democrat, and I believe everybody has got inherent rights to aspire to any office no matter how difficult things are in our country. Ngige, Amaechi or whoever, everybody has got the right to aspire to that office. I don’t have any qualms with that.
“As for the things happening in their respective ministries, those should be the headache of the president. You know, the tradition in the public sector is that if you are found wanting, you would be fired by your boss. But if in his own wisdom, the president isn’t bothered about all the inadequacies highlighted against Amaechi and Ngige, we should just move on with it because the buck stops on the President’s table.
“The President has the power to hire and fire, and since he has not deemed it necessary to do so, we should cross our fingers and be watching events as they unfold,” he stated.
Citing German sociologist, Max Weber, Jaji disclosed that an individual and the office he or she occupied were two different entities which must be separated, and such office shouldn’t make it impossible to aspire to any office. According to him, provided that individual hasn’t been convicted of any crime by any court, he or she could vie for the highest political office in the land.
He said, “Max Weber, that’s the father of Public Relations, will tell you to separate the man from the office because they’re two different entities. So, let’s separate them from their offices. It (their offices) doesn’t preclude them from aspiring to be anything so long as a court of competent jurisdiction in the land has not found them culpable of any misdemeanor.”
Jaji, however, noted that the populace cannot remove the ministers from office, but the President who could do so, and if he (President) saw nothing wrong with their performance, there was “nothing we can do.”
Further requested to provide his candid assessment of the stewardship of Amaechi and Ngige, Jaji was of the view that their performance was a classic case of one man’s poison being another man’s delicacy.
“Your own poison may be my own delicacy. To some, they may say they’re not performing. To others, they may say they’re performing extraordinarily well. Look at Amaechi, for example. The railway revolution is his baby.
Whether he’s now successful or otherwise is another kettle of fish entirely. The same thing now applies to Ngige, who I recollect was once kidnapped in the toilet when he was Governor of Anambra State, which is neither here or there, but at the end of the day, we shall see (about their stewardship),” he said.
Continuing, Jaji disclosed that he didn’t want to say anything derogatory about the two ministers because of his political leaning. He pointed out that he didn’t want to be viewed as being partisan. “Anything I say now will be coloured by my political leaning. I’m of the APC. They’re of the APC, too. I’m of Bola Tinubu leaning, but I don’t want to say anything derogatory about them that will portray me as being partisan,” he concluded.
The state chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Osun state branch, Amos Ogunrinde, told The Point that though the question about Ngige and Amaechi’s presidential ambition came at a time when there was much uncertainties in their respective ministries, their aspirations was still justifiable. According to the Bishop, every office comes with challenges and the Bible backs those seeking higher offices.
“It’s a very big question, but I wouldn’t say that their presidential aspirations are not justifiable. Every office comes with its own challenges. The office of President has its own challenges; ministerial offices also have their own challenges. As for the two ministers, if they so wish to show their desire, which does not mean they’re already there, it is Nigerians that will judge whether they deserve it or not based on the precedents,” he said.
Speaking further, he said, “For anyone to come out for an elective office that is higher, it is a good aspiration for us who are clergy. The Bible says anyone who desires the office of an elder desires a good thing. It is now left for the people who want to elect them to say this person managed the smaller area given to him very well, then let us also support him to be in the higher office.”
Ogunrinde advised Ngige and Amaechi to follow the constitution of Nigeria by resigning their ministerial appointments so that people can take their presidential ambition seriously. According to him, “that is what people are clamouring for right now. If you are an elected officer in Nigeria and you want to contest for any office, resign the one you have so that you will not use undue advantage on people.”
He also said he hoped that in the remaining few months left in their tenure as ministers, the two political gladiators would “correct any anomaly in their ministries,” just to prove to Nigerians that “they can do better if given a higher office”.
A lecturer at the Delta State Polytechnic, Otefe – Oghara, Emuejevoke Okagbare, while answering questions whether Ngige and Amaechi performed creditably well to want to seek to contest for the office of President, said Nigerian politics was not performance-based, but “a class of people who believe that the country belongs to them and have all it takes to manipulate their ways into offices and then at the end of the day, there’s no accountability.”
Okagbare was of the view that no politician in Nigeria had done well enough. He said, “Which politician in Nigeria has done anything that merits his being in office, let alone aspiring for another office or remaining in office? None of them. They are not there on merit and so the question of whether any of them is qualified shouldn’t arise in the first place.”
He referred to a post he saw where the Minister for Labour appealed to striking lecturers to “go back to the classrooms” and said “that was an insult”. He wondered how there could be a lingering problem and the minister was compelling lecturers to go back to work.
“These people (lecturers), they have a demand which they have been making and each time you meet with them, you agree on something, and that’s the end of it (agreement). You always renege on what you agreed upon. Now, you are telling them that whether their conditions or demands are met or not they should go back to the classrooms. Are they idiots?,” he quipped.
Told that there was a school of thought which believes that the buck stops at the president’s table, Okagbare said it would seem as if the president was out of touch with happenings in the country. In his estimation, that has led to “poverty of leadership”
“You talk as if the president is an American or is from somewhere else. Is he not part of the system? That’s the problem we have here, the poverty of leadership,” he said.
Continuing, he said, “We have no leaders. What we have are political jobbers who are interested in their own welfare. In other countries, salaries and wages are re-negotiated every four years. But we are not even talking about that now. We are talking about meeting the entitlements of lecturers.”
Okagbare, who is of the Department of Art, bemoaned the state of the economy and said in spite of the skyrocketing prices of commodities, salaries and wages remained the same, yet Ngige “is telling us that he wants to become the president of this country”. He said the Minister “wants to drive the nail into the coffin of this nation and bury it finally”.
Whether he had any advice for the ministers in particular and the political class in general, Okagbare said he would not join the bandwagon of those dishing out advise because those concerned already knew what the problems were. He noted that our problem was not that of identifying what the problems are, but “it is that of genuineness of intention to get the problems solved”.
“Is it Ngige that does not know what the problems are or what he needs to do as Labour Minister or Amaechi who prefers to construct a rail to Niger Republic while there’s none in his own part of the country? If he does that as a minister, what would he do when he comes as president?” he said.
The lecturer also added that Nigerians are very susceptible to believing whatever they are told every 8 years by politicians. He observed that the minds of Nigerians were the greatest weapon in the hands of these politicians who have become their oppressors. He said things would not change under an Amaechi or Ngige presidency, and declared that as far as Nigeria was concerned, he was “filled with despondency.”
