PDP and the blood of Okon Uwah: Matters Arising

BY DAN ETOKIDEM

-You can discover what your enemies fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you - Eric Hoffer

No man has the privilege of choosing  how and when he would die. If men         had such a privilege, Rt HON Okon Uwah, former member representing Ukanafun State Constituency and former Deputy Speaker of the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly would not have chosen Wednesday March 18th 2015. He would have loved to stay beyond this month,at least, to see how the general elections will play out, an election in which he himself was a candidate of the APC for the Ukanafun State Constituency Seat, an office he once occupied.

That Okon Uwah was last week murdered by psychotic hooligans from the PPD on a lower scale of evolution whose hierarchy of needs cannot be higher than that of animals is no longer news.  His elimination may no doubt turn out to be a mere dress rehearsal for something more potent and destabilising. Too bad that we have been reduced to the status of a willing cast in a traveling theatre of torrid absurdities.  Who could have believed that this was ever possible in Akwa Ibom State? But here we are! Welcome to our moral desert and political jungle where the law has been turned into a limbless ass, where order has gone under, where the criminal is hero, and where crime pays.

I read Don Etiebets release on the incidence. I feel his pain. I understand his sorrow.  How does it feels writing the obituary of your younger siblings?  It is a stark reversal of the evolution process. Frozen for posterity were the look of quizzical horror and tormented bewilderment.  What have i done to deserve this, Okon Uwah seems to be asking his sadistic executors.

On the day of his death, the State Governor;Godswill Akpabio, sorry i keep forgetting the prefix, His Excellency, you may wish to put it before the name too- through the Information Commissioner, Mr Aniekan Umanah issued a statement saying the Governor regrets the unfortunate incidence and has given express directive that those responsible be arrested and brought to book. This is good news. At least it should be. But on the other hand we must have our heads examined if we are hoping that the perpetrators of this uncommon act of barbarity will ever be brought to justice under any PDP led government.

The brutal murder of Okon Uwah is most painful and highly provocative to put things diplomatically. All those who met and interacted with him will attest of his being a quiet and reticent fellow, devoted to duty and hard work and given to stoic fortitude and Christian forbearance.  He was a man of immense personal generosity, lavishing kindness and affection on all who came his way without ethnic or political bias. He was the model politician and Akwa Ibom man- patriotic and detribalised.

By all account, Okom Uwah was a life of humility, piety and studied self effacement. Even as Deputy Speaker, he was still available, affordable and accessible to people. He was a righteously stubborn politician who will never compromise on issues that concerns his people and Abak 5 in general. Knowing that the PDP has become a cocktail of irregularities and realizing you cannot supplement a doomed venture, he left the ruining PDP for the APC where he emerged as the party’s candidate for his state constituency seat. He knew what his people wanted from the government of the day was not what they are receiving and to ignore the alarming views of his people for long would be unacceptable if not unpardonable. He knew the PDP is a bad precedent for all that is abominable in leadership.  He knew that the age of active or passive neutrality had long passed. He knew the era of allowing the PDP play poker with the destiny of the state is over. He knew that under the present regime; the social fabric that binds a people together had since collapsed.

His swift defection blew open the rotting innards of the ruling party, exposing the political putrefaction of it’s stalwarts for the world to see. This is how he became a marked man.  His executors played their role as scripted by the initiators with crude and barbaric efficiency. The ruling party may boast of killing him but his ghost will walk the landscape and cry to us every night.  Is this how barbarously low we have sunk? This is certainly not the transformation the people voted for in 2007. The people voted for geographical and ethnic change that has today proved fatal. Fear stalks the land. There is trepidation everywhere. Uncertainty and a sense of foreboding, of an approaching apocalyptic meltdown grips the citizenry. It is no longer possible to sustain our dear state under it’s current configuration.  Political terrorists are using the power of political ascendancy and incumbency to unleash a reign of terror on the rest of us in order to secure and safeguard their temporary and transient advantage.  They have broken all the rules of sober and civilized governance. They constitute the gravest nuisance to the future of our state. 

Okon Uwahs murder should provoke in his people the urge to take their destiny in their hands.  Let his death instigate in them the desire to use their votes to ensure that some people crash politically with the same gracelessness that has animated their stay in power. When political battles are cast in military terms and symbols much as the PDP have done, it portends danger for both the future of the state and the combatants. 

So the choice before us is to brace ourselves for the worst or join forces to reclaim our democracy or what is left of it from the hands of charlatans as the darkest period of the night also marks then gradual  transition to dawn.
The PDP on it’s part must realise that it owes the people the obligation not to turn the state into a theatre of blood in the name of ambition. Presently the priests of war have gathered at their highest altars, preparing to sacrifice truth so that the clouds of war might once more gather over the state. This ground has seen too much blood since 2007 and should be allowed to recover and see no more. The regime should stop turning a ritual of democracy into a rite of blood.

To the people of Ukanafun in particular and Abak 5 in general,  Uwahs blood should serve as the inspirational seed towards forcing them to wake up and propel them to elect new leaders that will chart a course that departs from the present. His death should propel them to project that deference, that implacable force and power that would make it unattractive for anyone to marginalize them again.

While his killers will surely shed crocodile tears at his funeral, and possibly cry more than the bereaved, many will pray that his soul rest in peace.  I entertain no such nonsense.  Okon Uwah, I know you can hear me- My own prayer is that you do not rest in peace until all those responsible for your death directly or indirectly pay for their crime.