By Adagbo Onoja
Over the weekend, (22/07/2023), Senator George Akume, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, issued a statement that offers insight into the mind of the Government. Although most if not all of the several items he listed in terms of how the Government hopes to address the current level of mass misery triggered by its fuel subsidy policy are neoliberal in character or point to that, the statement itself retains its significance in terms of indication of awareness of what people are going through. Secondly, it is the second time he, Akume, is making a de-escalating move. The first was when he pleaded with Cardinal Onaiyekan, Archbishop Emeritus of Abuja to reconsider his stand on the legitimacy of the Tinubu administration.
At a time when government officials speak zero sum language of ‘no going back’ on this or that or use threatening remarks, Akume could suggest a sober and (re)conciliatory face of the new Government. Nigeria is where it needs that skill and disposition of conciliatory elements because, in the age of entanglement in which we have found ourselves, anybody pursuing a zero sum game – our area is the best, our ethnic group is the best, our university is the best, our religion is the best, our region is the best – has lost his way. In an entangled world where everything is connected to everything else, there is no escaping the Other, the stranger, the enemy, the different and the one ‘who is not like us.’ Even if only for that, Akume may be needed at the federal level.
However, there is a challenge for which Akume is also needed at home, home being Benue State. Happily, it is a challenge he can carry together.
Seated 3rd from right is the late Nelson Mandela, the global icon of forgiveness, reconciliation and building a ‘rainbow coalition’ nation. Could he be calling on an Akume?
The challenge is this. Benue State has almost gained nothing from democracy since 1999. And the key reason is because the very echelon of the elite, particularly the governors since 1999, have always ended in battle. It is not every conflict that is bad. Conflicts can be actually productive. But the conflicts in Benue State have not been productive. The attempts that could have made it so have not been successful. Akume himself reigned from 1999 – 2007. Gabriel Suswam took over from 2027 to 2015, then Samuel Ortom from 2015 to 2023 and now Fr Hyacinth Alia. Although the members of the elite know how to relate to each other even when they are at war, the point is that the quarrel involving these gentlemen is beyond how they relate to each other but has implications for how the state is governed.
It is about elite fragmentation. If elite fragmentation everywhere is bad, it must also be bad for Benue State if not worse, Benue being a hopelessly agrarian state with the least benefits of commercial vibrance. Even the level of agriculture is simply nothing to write home about as it is at the level of cutlass and hoe. The Aper Aku experimentation with agro-industrial strategy did not survive him as nobody went back to that model after the overthrow of the government in the coup that terminated the Second Republic in December 1983.
It would be interesting to investigate why nobody went back to that blueprint but the distance between then and now makes it potentially unrewarding. Much of the records and details must have been lost, key actors involved are either dead or no longer central actors and this is not to talk of policy succession. In that case, the situation at hand is not one of finding out who is guilty, innocent, winner or loser.
Instead, the challenge would seem to be the case for a new beginning. That is, a new beginning in terms of moving the state “From Poverty to Plenty”, to borrow the catchy, transformative campaign slogan of a senior citizen of Benue State who wanted to be a governor of the state some years back. The state has everything to make that rapid developmental shift. But it has to be a new beginning or it would be better if the new beginning were built on the collective national visibility of the individuals who have been most prominent in the affairs of the state. And who have gathered a certain name/status recognition that position them to lead a team which can penetrate Abuja bureaucratic and political machine, Lagos financial hub, Port Harcourt, Kano and either Aba or Onitsha in relation to getting whatever items that might have been identified as crucial to the transformation. How can this collective visibility happen if all the four former/incumbent governors are at war?
Tarka is more relevant to Akume when we discuss disentangling the spectre of violence in the Middle Belt but he can also be a referent in how the elite can unite to transform Benue State
Yet, Benue State is that state which cannot afford its own variant of elite fragmentation. Kano State can probably afford it. Lagos too because, in each of these places, there is something that the head of a family can do to earn something to give his family food daily. It may be back breaking but a desperate head of the family straying around WAPA or Kantin Kwari in Kano or Apapa Wharf, Eko or Oshodi in Lagos can go home with something his family can buy vegetable and eat a balanced meal of garri. What does a head of the family get anywhere in Makurdi, the Benue State capital or any of the other major towns? The state is awash with fruits but ‘our people’ do not classify fruits as food. Food is pounded yam. This is partly a joke but partly factual. It is part of the conscientisation on nutrition to be embarked upon although, in truth, grains and other tubers form part of the diet package. The nutritional package available is rich but the management is poor, partly because of the culture of food that have been internalised. This is not peculiar to Benue but the Benue situation is our concern here because of the spatial character of poverty here.
In the absence of well-structured political parties which takes up party work on key issues in modernisation such as nutrition and food culture, the collective agency of certain actors becomes very strategic in moving an agrarian formation from extreme poverty to relatively higher level of living. Each of the former governors has one area or another in which he can make an input. As such, it would seem that there can be nothing objectionable to a coming together of players with such agency in relation to the objective the taking the state from where it is to where it should be.
The only question is who can make it happen? Senator Akume is a conflict party in these cycle of tussles but now, he is the one Providence has handed the umbrella to cover everyone. This is the reason Senator George Akume should set in motion a Benue Oneness agenda along with his federal assignment. It is possible that this is already on his mind. Should that be the case, then this is a reinforcement of such a direction. If it is not already there, perhaps because of the bitterness of the past, then let it begin to form as an agenda.
Akume is not the president of Nigeria but what is said about the Office of the President of Nigeria can also apply to the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation if the issue at stake is Benue Oneness and if the SGF is from Benue State. The “joke” about the Office of the President is that the occupant cannot have an enemy. The preponderance of structural, institutional, productive and coercive power at the disposal of a sitting president excludes him from having an enemy because there will be an ethical issue in a fight between him and any other enemy. It is needless saying that the Secretary to the Government of the Federation benefits from that power and he does not need to have enemies too. And the only way he will not have enemies is if he sets on a course of reconciliation. But reconciliation in this case because the state itself has been rendered comatose, partly because all who have governed it before are not putting heads together and trying to convert collective agency into an instrument of mobilisation for development, followed by operationalisation of any development strategy. One implication is that payment of monthly salary is held up as a novelty in the state. In the 21st century, that should be depressing to anyone who has anything to do with Benue State. That state should be above that level, development wise, by now. What it requires are just an appropriate development strategy instead of scattered 12th century infrastructural facilities in the name of development, followed by the conscientisation of the people on what such a strategy requires of them. Developing such a strategy (not a wish washy shopping list, useless Roundabouts and so on) and managing the conscientisation are what only the leadership can do in the absence of well rooted political parties.
As the first of the series of governors of the state since 1999 and the incumbent Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the lot falls on Senator George Akume to enact a Mandela on a smaller scale. Luckily, he has seen the president himself closing the gap recently with one of those with whom he fell out previously. That can serve as a model of what is being suggested here. It can look difficult if not impossible but it is doable. Every progressive mind will approve of this move because Benue State has all the potentials to show other agrarian states an image of their future. Elite quarrels is a major hinderance.
