UOU: The Paradox of a Captain Armband

Addressing Newsmen sometime ago is his G-Line Ewet Housing Hiltop Mansion residence, sacked secretary to State Government Obong Umana Umana in a justification of why Governor Akpabio should hand over the reins of power to him by 2015 had gone paradoxical on who should be handed the captain armband in the event of a team captain being substituted in the course of a match.

Obong Umana in his attempt to mock the former Deputy Governor Mr. Nsima Ekere who had earlier resigned his position as Akpabio’s Deputy Governor had said the captain armband can only be handed over to the most experienced player in the field. And not to a player standing outside.

Well, our former SSG must have displayed complete ignorance to the position he made. An explanation with this illustration will do. In one of the Nation’s cup matches played between Nigeria and another African team sometimes in the year 2000, Nigeria’s coach then had pulled out the team captain then Sunday Oliseh for Mutiu Adepoju. Oliseh had players like Jay Jay Okocha, Kanu Nwankwo, Finidi George who were quite experienced still in the field, but captain Oliseh handed the armband to Adepoju to lead the team till the end of the match. Incidentally the opposing team coach had also pulled out his own captain for another player at the same time.

The opposing team captain upon coming out handed the captain band to the player who was on the sideline waiting to replace him. Maybe our most high SSG did not watch this tournament. The Ex-SSG Obong Umana Umana’s position on this to an extent was mockery and it really exposed our Ex-SSG as not being politically alive to the explanations he gave.

Now may be Obong Umana Umana had thought that he was going to vie for the 2015 governorship position of Akwa Ibom State as a sitting SSG, how blind this thinking was. Judging by UOU’s captain armband policy and the paradox, it will not be out-of-place to inform our longest serving SSG to “shut down” his ambition since according to him Akpabio cannot come out from the field to handover the captain armband to someone outside the field.

But come to think this, can Obong Umana believe that he will get the victory to superintend over the affairs of Akwa Ibom State by 2015. I strongly doubt. The point is that people who knows power understands how to use it. Governor Akpabio belongs to this class. In the long and short term power is not always handed over to a friend, power is not always handed over to him who knows all. It is a paradox of a belief and the captain armband will not get to our Obong Umana after all.