By Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo

At the recent Achebe Colloquium, a distinguished panel made up of Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu and Gov. Peter Obi discussed the upcoming election in Anambra state. Following the discussions, I asked Gov. Obi a question in which I stated openly that the governor had disappointed me.

Thereafter, I noticed the governor walking around like a chicken beaten by the rain. The smile on his face had vanished. His bones moved as if they had become brittle. I also had people, who had no idea where the rain began to beat us, come up to me to argue in defense of the governor. Decency, therefore, requires that I explain why Gov. Obi is a disappointment.

I used to believe in Peter Obi. I committed it to writing, too. I have met Peter Obi several times and have listened to him in public and in private. For a long time, I believed the words that came out of his mouth. I was convinced that he was a different kind of politician.

While most of our political actors often argue that the end justifies the means, Peter Obi always insists that, “when the premise of an argument is wrong, the conclusion is also wrong.” While Nigerian politicians believe in a ‘do-or-die’ approach to politics, Peter Obi repeatedly states a new premise. “The society we abuse today,” he says, “will take its revenge on our children.”

Little did I know that it was all talk. Yawa!

When he got his mandate back, after the Supreme Court sent Andy Uba packing, I watched to see how Peter Obi would handle himself. At first, there was a feeling of relief that the renegades were off the purse of the state. Like many observers, I relaxed. And months and months after, there were signs that Anambra state was not emerging as the hub of distinction we had hoped for. The state was not leading the renaissance we had been promised.

To be fair, after Gov. Ngige’s transformation from a member of a gang of bandits to a reformed citizen and his success in using his stolen mandate to improve the lives of the people of Anambra state, the expectations were high. Peter Obi bought into that by projecting himself as a different kind of governor. He was supposed to be the wise one, the deliberate one, and the one who would shift the paradigm.

Three years after, it was apparent that Gov. Peter Obi dropped the ball where it mattered most.

His first and greatest failure is his inability to build a political party behind him. Under Peter Obi, APGA diminished. A party that was supposed to spread its tentacles into the five eastern states lost its grip on Anambra state. Of course, Obi has a lot of excuses why he failed in this regard. Without putting such a structure in place, Obi is now like a chicken standing on one foot. Whatever achievement he made is going to be washed away by the first storm that will hit the state after his tenure.

The second failure of Gov. Obi is his ridiculous superiority complex that makes him believe that nobody in Anambra is as good as him. He is the only saint in the state. He is the only perfect individual. As a result, he must personally manage everything and oversee every detail, no matter how small. That attitude leads to gridlocks in several areas of the state’s affairs. At any time, there are more items waiting for Obi than those moving forward. Despite the sponsored articles in newsmagazines that have Obi on their cover pages, nobody dares call what he is doing a form of action. He is running a state as if it is a bank.

The third failure of Obi is his inability to live up to the expectations he created for himself. Obi is always eager to make promises in categorical statements. I heard him several times say that if he failed to transform Onitsha in his first year, he would resign. On other occasions, he promised an open government. But now Obi cannot answer simple questions; like how much he is getting as a security vote each month and what he is doing with it. When he was asked to explain the source of the money that was found in his vehicle, he said that several tribunals here on earth and in heaven have cleared him of any wrong doing. Such evasive answers on matters of public funds, from a man who once boasted of having more money than Chris Uba, is disheartening.

The fourth failure of Obi is a failure to outgrow his naivety. At Achebe’s Colloquium, Obi was called up to speak to a worldwide audience of election monitors, U.S. and European policy makers, CIA and M16 agents. And what did Obi say in his boring and rambling speech? Obi told the world that Maurice Iwu had promised that the 2010 election would be free and fair and that Vice President Goodluck had guaranteed it. Unbelievable! It was his chance to alert the world of the impending robbery.

Because Obi failed to build a party in his state and around the eastern corridor, he is now isolated. Only a club of saints descending from heaven can rescue him from a definitive flop in the upcoming election – fair or unfair. Because Obi believes he knows it all, he has alienated everyone else. He will be carrying his cross alone. Because Obi failed to live up to his own expectation, he is indistinguishable from the rogues hovering over Awka, waiting to pounce on the state treasury. Because Obi cherishes his naivety, those who have been fighting for him and for the state are running out of patience.

While answering a question at the Colloquium about why he has done nothing to bring to justice those who destroyed government properties in Awka, Obi suggested that corruption should be managed. He is not for its eradication, it now seems.

“I am not a saint,” he confessed.

It reminded me of Tiger Woods saying the day after he smashed his Escalade in an accident, “I am not perfect.” Obi has smashed his Escalade. It is a matter of time before he tells us that he has not been true to his values.

During one of his visits to America, Obi acknowledged that he was doing a bad job in the field of media outreach. Letting his personal assistant distribute newsmagazines with him on the front cover, at the Colloquium, is proof that he is bereft of ideas. No newsmagazine will answer for Obi the simple question of how much money he gets as security vote and what he does with it. In fact, it is an insult to our collective intelligence to distribute propaganda material when what we want are simple answers to simple questions.

Politicians like Obi who love to carry themselves as if they are squeaky-clean but do not want to come clean when asked by their constituents may reconsider coming abroad to parade themselves. Not everyone abroad wants to buy a home for them. Some have higher expectations. Some of us want them to simply explain the basic. If they cannot, maybe they should sit tight at home where people clap for them for paying teachers their salaries; not spending money to solve people’s problems; and for personally changing the oil in all of Anambra state government cars.

More than once, I heard Peter Obi say he would not be running for re-election and that the next title he would have was ex-governor. Unfortunately, Obi is running for re-election. Where Obi and I do agree is that his next title will be ex-governor. What is sad is that he could have gotten there without diminishing hope and without making himself look a little like Andy Uba.

Deep inside, Obi is a trader who parades himself as an intellectual. I rather have as governor an intellectual who parades himself as a trader. While they are all hypocrites, the later character will be much more at home in Anambra State.

By Okey Ndibe

Nigeria’s preeminent novelist Chinua Achebe is, in manner, soft-spoken and gentle. In fact, Achebe has been described as self-effacing. Seldom does his voice rise. But those who know him best recognize that, beneath that genteel exterior, there is a steely core to the man. Achebe is the master of economy in expression, a man who manages the magic – rare in our world – of not expending one careless or superfluous word when he speaks.

Given Achebe’s demure nature, it’s significant that a certain impatience, even stridency, has in recent years crept into his voice. In several recent interviews or statements, Achebe – who just accepted a prestigious position as the David and Mariana Fisher University Professor at Brown University – has not tried to mask a deep disappointment with the desultory way that his (nearly) fifty-year-old nation continues to carry on. Some two months ago, the author even used the word “revolution” in speaking about what it would take for Nigerians to reclaim their country.

In 2004, Achebe’s rejection of what was touted as a national honor – the bestowal of the Commander of the Federal Republic by the Olusegun Obasanjo administration – became a classic of conscientious censure. The Obasanjo government’s announcement of the award came at a time of the regime’s ill-veiled sponsorship of mayhem in Anambra, Achebe’s home state.

In a letter that was as brief as its moral force was stupendous, Achebe conveyed utter outrage. He wrote to Mr. Obasanjo: “For some time now I have watched events in Nigeria with alarm and dismay. I have watched particularly the chaos in my own state of Anambra where a small clique of renegades, openly boasting its connections in high places, seems determined to turn my homeland into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom. I am appalled by the brazenness of this clique and the silence, if not connivance, of the Presidency.”

In those few words, Achebe not only captured the remaking of his home state into a state of anarchy but also struck at a fundamental truth about the character of the Obasanjo presidency: a tragic investment, not in nation-building but nation-wrecking, and a willingness to be wedded to criminal elements and projects.

It was not, properly speaking, honor that Achebe rejected; a government that lacked honor could not confer on anybody what it didn’t have. A dishonorable regime such as Obasanjo’s was capable, in the final analysis, only of dispensing dishonor. That presidency, like the “leaders” before him, had emptied national honors of any real moral content or social prestige. I wrote a column that lauded the novelist for his principled rejection of impunity and iniquity. The column was appropriately titled “Achebe’s repudiation of horror.” For it was clear to me that, had Achebe accepted the tainted honorific, he would have left his admirers, in Nigeria and outside, horrified.

Achebe deserves more fame for what strikes me as a highly intuitive insight into his country’s political drama. The man’s antenna seem adept at detecting those moments when his nation is poised on the edge of a terrible chasm.

The publication (but not the writing) of his A Man of the People – a novel that ends with a coup d’etat and predicts a succession of other coups – almost coincided with Nigeria’s first military intervention. The closeness of the fictional “prediction” to the real coup earned Achebe the unwelcome attention of the soldiers who planned and executed a counter-coup at the end of July 1966.

In 1984, Achebe published The Trouble with Nigeria, a treatise that has since become arguably the most widely read social and political analysis of Nigeria. The book’s importance, in sheer volume of sales as well as the frequency with which it’s quoted, belies its critical reception. Some haughty social scientists, anxious to protect their professional turf, had sought to pooh-pooh Achebe’s insights. A few of them even charged him with a lack of analytic rigor.

Today, many scholars examining the factors that precipitated the collapse of the Shehu Shagari administration routinely acknowledge The Trouble with Nigeria as a vivid portrait of the time and an illuminating study of Nigeria’s enduring malady. In some way, the book x-rays the corruption, dearth of vision and depth of rot that spelt doom not only for Shagari and his cohorts, but also (on an even profounder level) for the Nigerian citizenry.

The point is that Achebe’s instincts about his troubled, troubling country are so excellent. Achebe’s decision, then, to convene an international colloquium on Nigerian elections resonated both with many Nigerians as well as Nigerianists – my term for those deeply focused on Nigeria, whether they are diplomats or scholars. The colloquium took place last Friday, December 11, at the Westin Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island – a shout away from Achebe’s new academic address.

A throng of Nigerians attended the colloquium. The familiar faces included Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, Achebe, Dim Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Governor Peter Obi, Professor A.B.C. Nwosu, Professor Abiola Irele, Senator Ken Nnamani, Senator Ben Obi, Mr. Emeka Izeze (a top executive of The Guardian), Mr. Sonala Olumhense (a columnist at The Guardian), and Sowore Omoyele (of Saharareporters.com). The team of Nigerianists included three former US ambassadors to Nigeria, Walter Carrington, John Campbell, and Princeton Lyman. Nigerians will remember Carrington for his clashes with the Sani Abacha dictatorship, often triggered by the ambassador’s identification with Nigeria’s democratic forces in their war against the bespectacled military ruler.

The colloquium achieved consensus on two linked questions. One: that the February 6, 2010 governorship election in Anambra will serve as a preview and dress rehearsal for the 2011 general elections. Two: that Nigeria may be hard put to it to survive another fraudulent polls, and certainly not one rigged on the scale of the 2007 “elections,” notoriously named as one of the worst in history.

Considering that so much rides on the Anambra governorship election, it’s nothing short of scandalous that Maurice Iwu will be permitted to conduct it. As chairman of the (misnamed) Independent National Electoral Commission, Mr. Iwu has established a distinction for incompetence, perfidy, and shamelessness. Here’s an electoral umpire who seems to think it’s up to him to award offices, to divest voters of their constitutional right to determine the outcome of polls.

The signs are there – writ large – that Iwu’s INEC is set to turn Anambra into its latest site for a tragic miscarriage of an election. Iwu has been on a media blitz lately; he’s up to his usual game of exhibiting a contrived tone of earnestness in insisting that his commission will deliver a credible election. Perhaps, he manages to believe himself. Nigerians know better. They know that he has a candidate in the race, and that candidate’s name is Nnamdi (Andy) Uba. Besides, Nigerians have seen the same empty strutting and grandstanding by Iwu just before the electoral heists in Adamawa and Ekiti. Nigerians realize that the real Iwu is not the one who makes high-minded speeches, but the one who operates crudely, in secret, only to emerge with bizarre electoral results.

Most of the men and women gathered at Achebe’s colloquium in Providence were in no doubt that the INEC headed by Iwu has an insurmountable credibility deficit. But they also realized that the time is ripe to mount a multi-pronged assault on the culture of fraud that keeps Nigeria in the grips of its least enlightened, morally bankrupt elements. Anambra will be a testing ground.

A politically naïve and confused Atiku Abubakar let INEC and the ruling party to get away with the Adamawa rig fest. The electoral umpire in Ekiti found a way to silence her conscience, and made another questionable call. Still, the mood in Nigeria and among the participants in the colloquium suggests that the days of unchallenged electoral impunity may be numbered.

Here’s my prediction: if INEC screws up the Anambra election, it’s likely to be the last election Iwu misconducts.