A Year of Governors

Anthony Kila writes that current and former governors were very influential in charting the political direction of Nigeria in year 2022

Dear Readers This is the last epistle of the year 2022 and I really want to wish all our readers a very happy new year.

My hope and prayer for you is that your new year be a year of fulfilment, joy (the positive inner feeling, independent of events and circumstances) and happiness (the outward explainable feeling dependent on events and circumstances) in good health.

My tip for the year is that we all become more proactive and committed to our desire and principles.

Expectedly, the last epistle of the year is a reflection about the fading year and perhaps on the incoming year.

My original idea was to do a piece on the history, philosophy and psychology of living and celebrating the end of the year.

Things did not go as planned though and the change was induced by some very militant readers of this page who through their unsolicited but very welcomed interventions have more than my editors insisted that this end of the year notes must be about the state of affairs of the country. As one reader, who has elected herself as an editor of this page, put it when she contacted me to find out what I intended to write about: “No, don’t do philosophy or psychology, don’t teach us history this weekend, let us read your views on something that has defined this year…”

So here we are to deliberate on this year that in my view can be termed “a year of governors” based on the political and economic chronicles of the year. Yes, it is not a new thing, governors have been for long extremely influential and powerful in this fourth republic (and specifically from 2001 onwards).

This year, a year of electioneering, a quick look at the four major and leading parties competing for power will help clarify things. A still picture of the leading contestants for the office of the president in the 2023 election shows us that the four major parties have at least a present or past governor on their tickets.

In alphabetical order, the APC ticket has two governors, Tinubu (Lagos) and Shetimma (Borno), Labour Party has one Obi (Anambra), NNPP too has one Kwakwanso (Kano), PDP has one Okowa (Delta) although one can even argue that presidential candidate here AtikuAbubakar is also a former governor too though he did not serve. Those are the names on the official tickets as certified by INEC.

Before we got to the phase of these official tickets as certified by INEC, events show that governors were conscious of their influence and were willing to use it. Early in the year, in a somewhat peculiar, not to say bizarre move, that made some people predict that a party of governors was probably in the making, southern governors of the country got together and irrespective of their partisan political and ethnic differences, declared that the next president must come from the south.

Noble as that might sound to some, I argue that the move was littered with contradictions and it was an alien growth in the corpus of the best practice of thriving democratic systems.

That move did not consider the dynamics in internal parties, the move ignored the differences in the various states and region that make up the south, it ignored the interests of individual governors.

Suffice to say that the south is made up of three distinct and defined regions with unique perception of Nigerian history and projection of the country’s future.

Towards the 2022 primaries, some of the governors decided to run for president but interestingly (and predictably) not all the governors supported their fellow governors. At the primaries however the governors remained major characters and even though none of the sitting governors won a presidential ticket, 2022 must be remembered as the year in which governors decided who ran for president and perhaps who will rule Nigeria come 2023.

After the primaries, our governors continue to be relevant for various reasons that goes from understandable to ridiculous to bizarre.

As we read this epistle there is a group of rebels led by five PDP governors referred to as the Integrity Group (a misnomer in my view) who are acting like a fringe political party would do in proportional parliamentary system of government or leaders of an interest group representing voters with specific interest within a presidential system with an uninominal voting system.

Mind you the binding element that holds these rebels together is neither ideological nor that of lack of confidence in their presidential candidate. They are saying they have no issue with their presidential candidate that they have supported in the past but that they will not support that same person unless the chairman of the party is removed because he is a northerner like the presidential candidate. To each its own, we are not in the rooms where they have these conversations or make these decisions, in fact 2022 is also the year Nigerian governors leave Nigeria, to go abroad to make decisions about Nigeria. One wonders if they have to travel to avoid noise, mosquitos or prying eyes of Nigerian voters.

One wonders why no one present in their decision-making trips and rooms has been able to convincingly point out that the position of party chairman is a symbolic close to nominal position in an election year.

Real power in partisan politics lies in the hand of Director General (DG) of the campaign in an election year and since we are in the year of governors, it is worth noting here that the two major political parties have chosen governors to be their DG. In that role, PDP is fielding Tambuwal (Sokoto) we are told for merit, given his role in the primaries and his following in his party and in the country. APC is fielding Lalong (Plateau) we are told for political and other reasons outside merit and grit. The other parties don’t have governors in the fold so they can’t field governors if even they wanted to. All these are elected governors, there is another governor that was not elected but appointed by one president and inherited then confirmed by another president. His name is Godwin Emefele, he is the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. He is a man that has earned a mention and place for himself at the table of the notable governors in 2022. He earned his position through policies, politics as well as pronouncements.

C’est la vie when you are notable. Once again, a very happy new year to all and please try to make the new year a year you will be proud of.

Join me if you can @anthonykila to continue these conversations.

-Kila is Centre Director at CIAPS Lagos. www.ciaps.org.