Akpabio: Portrait Of An Archetypal Albatross
“I love leaving marks wherever I go. It is a great privilege on my part being selected to work with you, to see how we can turn around the fortunes of the Niger Delta region” – Sen. Akpabio’s Inaugural Speech, Abuja, August 2019.
Reading through Letter Two, Volume One of the novel, “Frankenstein”, by Mary Shelley, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, “The Rime of Ancient Mariner”, one perhaps for the first time came across a peculiar and exotic creature named “Albatross”. In both artistic references, this vagabond seabird serves but one metaphorical meaning: Something that causes persistent deep concern or anxiety from which you might not be able to escape or a burden that feels like a curse.
Itinerant in nature, albatross likes perching or lurking on ships during voyages, symbolizing both fortune and misfortune depending on how one treats it. At individual level, if an albatross was idiomatically on one’s shoulders, it meant that you are carrying an inevitable and inescapable yoke, overt or covert, that you can only deny in self-foolery. However, deploying euphemism to becloud the ugly attraction of having such a bird literally on one’s shoulders, Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary caricaturizes an albatross as “something that greatly hinders accomplishment”.
The miasma that the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) has been as an entity in the last two-decades of cyclical kleptocracy is no more or less than an albatross on Nigerian leadership, especially on the shoulders of those who have been sent to redeem the place but who woefully ended up in worse need of redemption from malfeasance.
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Against all the remonstrations and demonstrations, there is one superior inference we can draw from the ongoing probe of the NDDC in the present circumstances. No matter the pretentions in the corridor of power, there is something politically and administratively wrong with how the place is administered, which automatically accounts for the kind of persons who have been sent there over the years. Ideally, the NDDC was not supposed to be a war chest for desperate politicians and political errand boys.
It therefore doesn’t really matter who is sent to the NDDC, a professor or a crass nonentity, provided they are Nigerians with shared mindset, they will always be eaten up by the monster called corruption. It sometimes all depends on what level of noise can be made or the kind of drama to be scripted out of it at a given time, like it is at the moment.
Prior to now, all that the NDDC needed or what President Muhammadu Buhari actually wanted, perhaps in grandstand advocacy of his anti-corruption crusade, was someone who although being a Nigerian by birth shares some ideological ancestry with the legendary Hercules of Grecian mythology, to clean the Aegean Stables that the commission has become. In other words, the President needed a catalyst, a game-changer, and a team-player.
Read also: Who Rightly Should Supervise The NDDC?
To Aso Rock, Senator Godswill Akpabio held that promise amidst a galaxy of desperate personalities of less pedigree who, on smelling fresh opportunities and opportunism in the “Next Level” were frequenting Aso Rock, licking boots for such uncommon favour. Akpabio was seen as a mercurial utility player whom his past record as former governor of Akwa Ibom State, former Senator and a Niger Delta caterpillar fronted as a silver bullet, at least to shock and silence those who questioned his appointment.
Expectedly, on Akpabio’s assumption of office on Wednesday, August 21, 2019, his leadoff speech that launched his prognosis and diagnosis of the dismal scenario in the toxic delta did not betray his charisma and idiosyncratic steam for transformation: “Being a Niger Deltan, I will ensure that things are better for further and effective development of the region”, he had promised.
Hence, in the hysterics of his ministerial appointment, this writer who follows happenings in the Niger Delta with a hyper-sensitive nose of a researcher-chronicler, had published a divinatory article with a rather curious title: “Niger Delta – Could This Be The Finest Moment?” (August 28, 2019). A line in that forecast had pleaded, “Let’s all give the Uncommon Transformer and his train the benefit of the doubt! When and if that change he promises comes, we all shall see”. That was a statement in solidarity to a man whose aura I always admire.
It must be remembered that Akpabio’s glamorous appointment almost concurrently came with three landmark novelties in the operational protocol of the NDDC: Introduction of forensic audit of the NDDC from 2010 to 2019; the complicated delivery of a three-man Interim Management Committee (IMC); and swift and seamless migration of supervisory responsibilities from the Office of the Secretary to Government of the Federation (SGF) to the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs.
Incidentally, for what the MPs would describe as insolent affront, the day Akpabio inaugurated the IMC – Tuesday, October 29, 2019 – was the same day the Senate was in plenary deliberating for onward confirmation on a 16-member list that was to form the substantive board for the NDDC, sent to it by the Presidency, the same list later screened and confirmed on Tuesday, November 5, 2019 for President Buhari’s inauguration that never was.
Read also: NDDC Probe: If This Must Be The Right Time
That these avant-garde initiatives all took place within just about 68 days of Akpabio in office, in a curious way that contradicted President’s Buhari’s characteristic taciturnity and snail-speed disposition to issues, may have reinforced Aso Rock’s confidence in Akpabio’s courage and administrative sagacity.
Against the National Assembly’s standoff and antics to abort the IMC, Akpabio triumphed with a presidential nod that supplied more voltage to his audacious innovations. Like a COVID -19 ventilator to infuse life-giving breath and flesh on the walking skeleton that the NDDC was, Akpabio spat fire and held out a lampstand of fresh promises to clean and cleanse the labyrinth of filth.
It was not unexpected that the introduction of the forensic audit will pitch the minister against many interests and powers. And just within hours and days, the IMC dug deep and sooner stumbled upon a can of worms which it wasted no time to kick open. The IMC flaunted and stamped allegations on whoever may have had dealings with the commission, dirty or clean, in remote and immediate-past.
But sooner than expected, shocking revelations surged from within the ranks of Akpabio’s strike squad, rubbishing whatever good intention Akpabio may have had, leading the whole nation towards the mysterious Bermuda Triangle. Buffeted with regrets, President Buhari may now be fiddling with a cosmetic hope in another messiah who may be fortunate not to be infected by the leprous fingers of NDDC’s past and present.
Nevertheless, if you are close to history of the Niger Delta region, you will easily agree that for the about 20 years’ existence of the stagnated and money-wasting NDDC, the situation has never been this hot, not until Akpabio stepped into the slippery and repute-tarnishing arena. What cannot be ascertained at the moment is what would have been the situation had somebody else other than Akpabio been appointed a minister, in situ.
By and large, it is a sad commentary that the situation at the NDDC that has had three eggheads as acting managing directors in the last one year in the persons of Dr. Enyia Akwagaga, Dr. Joi Nunieh and Prof. Kemebradikumo Pondei, with a brand new minister, is still what it is. Curiously enough, none is an outsider but aborigines of the Niger Delta who have wasted a golden opportunity to perpetuate their names in the transformation agenda of the region.
Because he is the man at the centre, Akpabio needs not begrudge the scapegoat treatment he appears to be receiving. But care must be taken that he is neither pampered nor intimidated beyond the commensurate demands and expectations of the present situation. Freelance and service-free solicitors in kangaroo courts condemning or defending Akapbio may just have to hold their peace for now than put the cart before the horse.
For things to work, the NDDC must no longer be a sausage of prebendalism. Whether or not the ongoing investigation shall go beyond what Nigerians fear, it is already recorded that it is during his days as minister that this magnitude of purgative revelations came to light at the NDDC. This is the prize for being a catalyst!
