Former commissioner for Finance and chairman Inter-ministerial Direct Labour Cordinating committee Obong Bassey Albert has shown that he is still a kindergarten politician following his recent action of betraying his followers in haste when it mattered most. Before this time, commentators have argued that Obong Bassey Albert was not a contender in the governorship race. The reason that was averred by this school of thought was simple. He was on a roadshow, a fanfare. They argued that the composition of his campaign committee was porous with men of low weight in politics except few who were sure bets to be delegates. For this writer, ever since OBA threw his hat into the ring, I have tried to imagine how he was going to be a Governor; I tried to understand how he will look like being a Governor. I sighed.
Yours truly had believed that the ex finance commissioner had some things up his sleeves. He wanted to steal the opportunity, the chance of Eket Senatorial District to emerge the Governor. But the truth is that even if OBA did not surrender, he would have lost the election woefully. He was not a governorship material but a show boy who was busy making noise and placing sign posts everywhere in town.
I am thinking of OBA, the man his supporters now call traitor, the man his supporters now refer to as a political nightmare, a man who feels that by betraying his supporters for some plates of porridge he has scored a political credit. It is not so. He lost all things and lost scandalously. It is not possible for OBA as it is now to convince his supporters that he took whatever decision he took for the overall interest of the people who made him thick, it is also not possible for the Ibiono Ibom born man to claim that he will bounce back in politics, it appears a tall dream. This is because Akwa Ibom people are a set of people that cannot be deceived or wish away with all amount of consciousness. We are not trouble makers but we stand our grounds when the time comes.
His supporters are by now throwing all kinds of stones, bottles, spikes and all of that. They have the right to. Bassey Albert has only allow his supporters to suffer in their morning of simplicity because they thought they were dealing with a serious person, they thought he was genuine, they felt he was a man of character and competence. They did not know he was a man of joke, they did not know he was not aware of the rudiments of the office of the Governor, they did not know he was a spoiler, a negotiator, a bad one at that. His supporters failed to realize that he was a mischief maker. Oba has hanged his fate on the wire.
He wanted to be Governor then. Today he is a spoiler. They say he has picked form for the senate position of Uyo Senatorial District. Who told him he will win. Who told him the people of Uyo Senatorial District are at his beck and call. Who told him the Nigerian senate needs people like him. Few of his supporters who are hanging on feel he will get to the senate hang there for eight years and then return to contest for the Governorship when the position must have been zoned to Uyo. Bassey Albert will not be a successful senator, our voice will not be heard because he will be doing fine boy in order to get cheap popularity amongst the Northerners so that in his thinking, they will support him for Governorship. That is not possible. Eight years after 2015, the youngmen and women of Uyo Senatorial District will come of age and he may only be remembered as one of those guys that made waves between 20112007 to 2014.
I have tried to see Obong OBA in the eyes of the present reality of what he has done but it cannot still connect. One is not against Albert surrendering his ambition to Udom Emmanuel or whomever he would have so wishes to, it is just that the speed in which he acted on the script has left a lot of cracks in his integrity level. Information reaching us has it that OBA had met with the President Goodluck Jonathan courtesy of Governor Akpabio and then has decided to shut down his ambition on the orders of Mr. President. We are not sure he ever had a meeting with the president. One of his supporters is quoted to have said that Albert said, it is not easy to meet with the President and then still go ahead with a contrary opinion against that of the President. What a waterless excuse. The position of yours truly is that OBA should have consulted the pulse of his people if at all he had them in mind, he should have weigh the pros and cons of the decision he wanted to take before doing so, he should have remembered that he cost some of his supporters their jobs in government, he should not have been bereaved of the fact that he rose from bowing down to being bowed to and from ordinary to king. This should have made him understand that if he falters, he will lose his glory in the sight of men. And so he fell from grace to grass.
For instance, he deceived the people that he was fighting a war for the Ibibios, he deceived Akwa Ibomites that he was coming to salvage the state and the PDP; he deceived our Elders and today, where is he? Licking his political wounds I guess. He wants to claim he is a good person; he wants to claim he is a good party man. One cannot be a good party man when he is not a good follower. OBA is not a good follower and so he cannot be a good party man. I will explain. A good follower goes were the master direct. OBA failed to show Akpabio loyalty when it mattered most, OBA failed to reciprocate the good gestures Akpabio extended to him by making him the longest serving Finance commissioner the state has ever produced.
Rather than keep to the rules of a master to son relationship, he was busy staying in Exco and fighting the Exco until the Governor got tired of him and decided to throw him out. He was sacked. But Albert’s pussy footing and his new acquired Love now will not change what the system had already laid on for him. He has frightened Akpabio and he must wait to get his share of the Akpabiobarrassment.
But come to think of this, what could have actually triggered OBA into such mischief? That is the question on the lips of a lot of people.
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