Akpabio as Jagaba of Niger Delta By Tahir Tahir

The Nigerian political weather has been torrential with downpours of defections and counter defections, and then witnessing re-defections at about the same time. A very eventful season of political intrigues that stands out to be the most melodramatic and rancorous one, that Nigeria has ever witnessed, especially in the last sixteen years since the beginning of the 4th Republic democracy.
The movement of 3 governors from the APC to the PDP or rather, back to the PDP, as well as the decamping of about 15 senators and 34 members of the House of Representatives to or back to the PDP had bored a huge hole and created a wide vacuum in the APC’s political and legislative arsenal especially at such a crucial time; that the tussle for the control of the leadership seats of the National Assembly due to the unusual friction between the Executive and the Legislature.
The PDP had suddenly bounced back from oblivion and incohesion after having a very patchy period of 16 years of ‘patch-patch’ leadership for which it had apologised to Nigerians, in a bid that is seen as a cunny quick fix image laundering tactic that stopped short of actually pacifying Nigerians for devastating their otherwise prosperous future.
Evidently, the gale of defections were driven by personal ambitions or internal wranglings that were ignited by the kick off of the congresses of the APC.
This had produced a new leadership that invoked the proverbial APC broom powers to sweep out the rotten eggs and their broken shells that had constituted a litter on the grounds of the change complex.
3 to 4 major decampees are all presidential aspirants, not necessarily presidential material, and so their endeavours are mutually exclusive.
The PDP was already struggling to reinvent itself including a change of name, among other things, adopted in the re-grouping agenda.
The influx of the defectees had brought along with it a more puzzling and destabilising x-factor that further compounded the equations for the rebirth of the PDP.
This added more salt to existing injuries which caused the bubble to burst and present PDP’s own version of wranglings and manoeuvres that had plagued the it, just before the 2015 polls.
In the wake of the APC’s recovery from the loss of its weapons for the ‘amassing’ of votes; the PDP readily produced substitutes to the APC which the party would happily adopt, to revamp its camp.
As God willed, Godswill Akpabio decamped, and his was that of a heavy weight (with combined titles) that has proved to not only be an equivalent to the might of the APC decampees, but to be mightier, more influential, more swerve, more local (as all politics is local) and of greater political oratory than anyone could have guessed.
The rally/ reception that welcomed and celebrated his move to the APC along with about 15 PDP members of the assembly, 17 PDP local government chairmen and lots other more is the most tectonic so far and has not only regaled APC faithful, but has invigorated and empowered the change train to surge on, unperturbed, just the way Baba moved onto his vacation in the UK, as if in a gesture to dismiss the supposed euphoria of the PDP CUPP.
“When you invite rain, it will come and beat you mercilessly” is a Hausa proverb that has manifested in this saga and it turns out PDP has called up the ‘rain’ that has beaten and weakened it.
APC has been rather lop sided in its followership and geographical spread; lacking presence in the South-south and South-east axis.
It seemed to also be antagonised by Christian politicians and other pressure groups, a deficiency which, in one fell swoop, Godswill has resolved and reinvented.
Boss and Godswill (SGF & Senator) took to the stage to preach a politics of fairness and egalitarianism, rubbishing the notion that Baba is Islamising Nigeria with appointments and policies.
The regional politics adopted by the Ndi-Igbo and the good people of the South-south which has been haunting them before, now has a wild card to fuse it with the modern day Nigerian politics which has been embracive of our diversity.
The region now has a Jagaban! (Front runner/ front leader).
The Jagaban Borgu (Tinubu) and the Jagaban Niger Delta (Akpabio) are two weapons of politically annihilative firepower at Baba’s disposal to be unleashed in a combined effort for the consolidation of the APC’s victory from 2015.
He who laughs last laughs best, laughs the longest and laughs the loudest.
The Jagaban of Delta has spoken loudly and his people have responded resoundingly.
That mammoth crowd has wiped away the losses from the defection suffered by the APC, and the stains on the APC led government from the saga of the DSS siege of the Assembly complex.
Sneers from Akpabio’s former colleagues in the PDP, calling up the EFCC on him is sorely in bad taste because the people they recently and readily embraced have a litany of EFCC matters as well.
So the insipid voice of a pot calling a kettle black doesn’t make the pot any lighter does it? Tahir writes from Bauchi