Not
quite long ago I got to know about Udoedehe’s 2015 governorship ambition during
an informal chat with a highly placed source. Depending on the outcome of
certain calculations, I was also told he will reserve the right of first
refusal. I was told in confidence. I didn’t have to make it a media affair. Now
the man has spoken, he has given a clue to it, it is in the public domain.
I
was also to know that his aspiration, nevertheless, is tied to the unfolding of
three key events. One was the successful merger of opposition parties into a
common, strong front. With the solving of the merger conundrum – the registration
by INEC of the All Progressive Congress (APC) as a political party, one of the
expected events that will shape his political decision for 2015 has played out.
The other two, I will keep observing.
Therefore
it was no news when Udo tacitly informed us through an interview he recently
granted a local tabloid that he is not done yet with his Hiltop Mansion
ambition. The message though it hovers in circumvention was sent without error.
Not
my kind of a hero and probably will never be, I admire his guts. And sometimes
he is just too smart for his own good. Perhaps, it is what adds to his
charisma. If it is, then he has a fairly justifiable reason for being who he
is. Apparently, he is quite comfortable with his identity, hence, he makes no
excuse for being who he is. At the end, he succeeds in compelling society to
see him in his definition of himself – a definition that isn’t fixed but
rotates to suit every purpose and time. And it works like he’s got a spell. He
is a political maverick, clearly in a class of his own – envied and loved. That
is the man who till today, still cling with amazing tenacity to the claim that
he made Godswill Akpabio, the governor in 2007 even though he failed to
replicate the same magic in his favour in 2011. A case of a godfather being
outwitted by his (former) godson. Not to doubt his claim though.
That
said, it isn’t to extinguish or diminish his worth politically; Udoedehe has
got quite an average of it – significant enough to raise a scare. 2011 is too
recent a history not to remember. When every other opposite guber aspiration to
the incumbent’s was overwhelmed and subdued, Udoedehe was the beauty of
opposition – the option of an alternative. He was outstanding in that line of
responsibility, far better than his tenures as Uyo Local Government Chairman
and as senator. He was a real scare to the re-election of Governor Akpabio.
His
candidacy offered soothing relief and ensured Akpabio was introduced to the
numerous insincerities of his men who had all along fed him full with
whited-tomb truths using their level of comfort as the sole gauge of the
situation on the streets. But my thinking is that if the former junior FCT
minister had employed half that vigour and enthusiasm towards the interest of
the people in his times in public office, he would have had more credibility to
his ambition beyond Uyo, its suburbs, and neighbours. There would have been a
more spectacular guber contest debut for him.
In
the course of it, Udoedehe raised conjectures over his claim of fighting for
the unshackling of the masses. Fortunately for him, his army of supporters were
too engrossed with the chanting of their ‘positive change’ mantra to even
notice and then care about any negative in one they had come to see as their
hope-bearer. At the end of it, he left many more wondering if he was truly as
concerned about them as he postured.
A
few smart guys like Enefiok Ekefre, after he was schemed out from the ACN
tickets suddenly discovered the monster in ACN. He screamed it! Funny, wasn’t
it? Ekefre was to find.
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