By Dare Babarinsa
It was a good thing that Willie Obiano, the former governor of Anambra State, had his baptism of fire early. Obiano was on his way to the United States for a well-deserved holiday when operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) accosted him at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, and asked him to step aside.
After a few days at the EFCC pen, he was released on bail. He has joined the list of distinguished men and women who have marked their register with the EFCC. What has become the pattern is that after such experience, they usually find themselves in the Senate.
For eight interesting years, Obiano was the governor of Anambra while his vivacious wife, Ebele, was in power. Few minutes after Obiano ceased being the governor, what the ancient Romans would have considered a worrisome omen happened to his wife.
In the glare of television and modern cameras, she received a non-diplomatic slap from Mrs. Bianca Ojukwu, a former ambassador and wife of Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. Mrs. Ojukwu, a former beauty queen, was also the daughter of a former governor of old Anambra State, Chief Christian Onoh. Though she may not have ample experience in the subject of slapping, she was not a stranger to the uneven temper of power. That slap was ominous, therefore, for Obiano’s new career as a former governor. He should have learnt a lot from the career of Ojukwu as a man out of power.
In 1992, I had gone to see Ojukwu in his Villaska Lodge, Ikoyi, in the company of my friend and colleague, Ademola Oyinlola. After his return from exile in Cote d’Ivoire, Ojukwu discovered that many of his father’s landed properties in Lagos had been appropriated by the government and special interests. The house was later returned to him by the General Ibrahim Babangida’s government after a lot of protest.
By the time we met with Ojukwu in 1992, the era of protest was past. The mistress of the house was now Bianca. While we were with the former Biafran warlord, Bianca came to announce that she was going out. She was dressed in a tight-fitting gown with glittering accessories. Her husband looked at her alluringly, tucking at his luxuriating beard. “Take care!” he said.
Power was never to return to the Ojukwu household, but influence never departed. After Ojukwu’s death, I had gone to Enugu and was pleasantly surprised that Ojukwu’s residence in the town was named VillaBianca, in honour of his young wife. Perhaps, as much as the children, if not more, Bianca considered it her duty to defend and uphold Ojukwu’s legacies. One of his legacy institutions is the phenomenal All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), which Ojukwu founded to engage the Nigerian state.
That institution is now part of the Nigerian power structure and it is on its platform that we have the new governor of Anambra State, Charles Soludo, the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. Soludo was the young man who succeeded Chief Joseph Sanusi at the CBN and continued to carry out the comprehensive reforms of the Nigerian banking sector. That assignment gave Soludo great influence and visibility. Today, he is one of the old Obasanjo boys who has returned to power.
Many of those who served during the Obasanjo era are still consequential in the present dispensation. The new chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Alhaji Abdullahi Adamu, was then the Governor of Nasarawa State for eight years on the platform of the then formidable Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The new National Secretary of the APC, Iyiola Omisore, was the Deputy Governor of Osun State on the platform of the opposition Alliance for Democracy (AD), until he was impeached. Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, now the National Leader of the APC and an aspirant for the office of president, was the governor of Lagos State for eight years until 2007, when he handed over power to his anointed successor, Babatunde Raji Fashola.
The truth is that those leaders who served with Obasanjo between 1999 and 2007 have continued to be largely in charge of our country and our treasury. Many of our people believe there is a nexus between the performance of these people and what has become of our country. They see a connection between terrorists bombing a railway track in a modern country and the performance of their leaders. They feel that effective and competent leadership would not allow this kind of mindless terrorism. Many Nigerians blame corruption for what has become of us and they are confused by the performance of institutions set up to fight this monster.
In addition to the normal powers of the…
