By Fred Chukwuelobe
The first is the current governor of Rivers State. The other is the current president of the 10th senate. The latter was two-time governor of Akwa Ibom State, minister of the Niger Delta. The former was the Accountant General of Rivers State under then Governor Nyesom Ezenwo Wike with whom he is now estranged.
Both Amaopusenibo Siminalayi (Sim) Joseph Black-Fubara and Godswill Obot Akpabio met yesterday, March 9, 2024, at the funeral ceremony of late Access Bank chief, Herbert Wigwe, who died along his wife, son, and a friend in a helicopter crash in the US.
Fubara, being the governor of the late Wigwe’s State, was the chief host of the retinue of mourners at the obsequies of the Wigwes, while Akpabio who also hails from the South South geopolitical zone as the deceased and the governor, represented President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
You’d expect that protocols allowed the governor to dictate the pace of the ceremony even if the president of Nigeria or his representative was there.
I dare to say that Akpabio misrepresented the president of the federation by what he said thereafter.
Ask me how.
A grieving Fubara took to the stage to explain the vanity of life. He did it so eloquently and his speech reminded those present that this life is not worth the struggle. He wondered why we had to struggle to kill, maim, get political power, become rich only to die the way the Wigwes died.
“This one has to do with our political class. What is all this struggle about? You want to kill…, you want to bury. What is it all about,” he asked.
His speech was moving, even though it sounded too harsh on the political class to which he belonged. It moved many to tears. Those who thought they had shed enough tears since the deaths occurred cried a little bit more considering the circumstances and its connection with the governor’s speech.
But not for Akpabio. Everything to him is politics. There’s are no bounds when it comes to playing it. It does not matter whether the occasion is a burial ceremony or a church service. He must seize every opportunity to play to the gallery, and that was exactly what he did at Isiopko yesterday.
“If there’s nothing in it, don’t struggle,” he fired back at the governor. No respect for protocols. No regards to the nonagenarian father of Herbert.
He took the microphone and told Fubara to stop shedding crocodile tears. He told the state chief mourner that if he felt the struggle was not worth it, he shouldn’t get involved in it.
He didn’t understand the import of the governor’s speech. He couldn’t just as he didn’t understand that he goofed when he announced in the hallowed chambers of the Senate that money had been transferred to the accounts of the senators to enable them to celebrate Christmas. When his attention was drawn to the gaffe, he tried to correct himself in the most annoying manner possible. He gleefully announced that it wasn’t money that was sent but “prayers.”
Watching him that day, I felt like a child in a kindergarten. I wondered if he understood the harm his open microphone gaffe did to struggling Nigerians who were irked that while they were thinking about where their next meal will come from, their leaders were sharing money like children sharing cabin biscuits at a children’s end of year party.
He is known to have spoken on many occasions in a manner that is beneath the office he had occupied and the current one he occupies.
Nigerians may have gotten used to politicians’ loose talk that nobody bothers anymore. Many public officers speak in like manner when discussing serious issues ailing the nation.
But what surprised many was that at Akpabio’s level and the position he occupies, he ought to know that certain things are better left unsaid. Even if Fubara didn’t sound tough like his predecessor/godfather, FCT minister, Wike, the fact that the occasion was a funeral ceremony would have taught him to exercise restraint and leave that petulant response for another time, maybe when they meet to settle the roforofo fight between Fubara and Wike.
You see, my friends, in civilised climes, the likes of Akpabio should be in one federal correctional center, awaiting trial over corrupt allegations levelled against him while serving as governor.
Unfortunately, ours is not a sane clime or a civilised one. Therefore, no court of law has, will ever commit such characters to jail terms for what they did while holding public trust.
It is for this and other reasons that the likes of Akpabio will never learn that words have meaning and that, like the Yoruba will say, ‘it is not every cloth that is spread outside.’
Akpabio displayed a worrying behaviour in his response to the speech by the governor, and all who have his ears should whispper to him that the future generation looks up to leaders like him to show them the way. He should be told that, like Fubara said, this life is fleeting and is not worth the fights and struggles.
Here today. Gone tomorrow.
The Wigwes were here and they are now gone forever.
So shall Akpabio and all those who are privileged to hold publuc offices and who see politics as ‘door or die affair,’ and who have no qualms how it is played.
Words have meaning. Let those who use them weigh their public utterances. History does not forget.
NB: Culled from Fred Chukwuelobe’s Facebook Page
