MANY ARE CALLED, ONE IS CHOSEN

Umo Eno has the attributes needed in a governor, writes Fred Ime Etuk

We are in a time of political ferment. It is time for candidates and aspirants, a time to dream and to be dreamed about. A time for true ambitions and megalomaniacs. A time to connect to the streets while calling the name of God and Allah. A time also for massive disappointment, for demystification, for the one who thought himself a big and mighty Iroko to come crashing through the forest with reverberations everywhere, the birds flying away in panic and squirrels scampering and shrieking in terror.

But it is now that when those who want to be governors, especially those who want the nod of their governors, to hope that they are the chosen ones. When the governor picks you, he is right. He has confirmed what you have always known as the voice of God and finger of the Almighty in your life.

But if it does not happen, then you know immediately that the Holy Spirit has departed from the man on the throne. The man you eulogised just a few months ago as the alpha and omega on earth suddenly turns foe. It is now between your God and his God. The die is cast.

We are witnessing the politics of envy in Akwa Ibom State. The gentleman governor who turned a state of mayhem and bloodshed into a place of peace and development did away with hypocrisy and suggested his pick to the people as successor. The envy among those who did not like it is palpable. But it is a minority. When the majority are at peace, a vocal and viscerally bilious minority can flutter the dovecotes. They send their big and buxom cat among the pigeons. They can bring hell and wildfire to a place where all want peace and plenty.

Governor Udom Emmanuel did what is rare in Nigerian politics: come out and name his presumptive successor. Most governors shy away from it. They merely set the machinery in favour of a person and deny that they have chosen a person. The consequence is that the mouse is fighting an elephant but he thinks himself the elephant. The chosen one is riding high, but he believes he is the chosen one because the governor has told him he, too, can run. It becomes even more bitter when they come to the election primary, and the fellow for whom the governor has shed his grace of power and support slugs it out with the others in a monumental beating.

Their eyes of understanding open, and they begin to turn things upside.

Few have done this same thing in this era. Bola Tinubu did it for Babatunde Raji Fashola when he was rounding off his second term as governor. He held a meeting and said his chief of staff was the man for the job. The uproar in Lagos makes mincemeat of what we are seeing now in Akwa Ibom. In fact, it is calm in that state. The cabinet is largely at peace with the decision. The case of Lagos saw very few associates of Tinubu then turn the cabinet upside down.

The governor did not relent. His associates wanted to pick their own choice and make the governor a minority. But it did not work that way. He prevailed and Fashola turned out to be one of the models of governance in this republic and history of the state. He was the right man to build on the vision and template of the Asiwaju.

Governor Emmanuel must be thinking of his legacy as he picked Umo Eno, the staunch ally, who combines the ecclesiastical mind with that of technocrat. He must be thinking of his many legacies in education with flourishing schools and their glorious menaces, the big magnet for the corporate world to make Uyo and the state their domicile after years of shying, the toast of the airspace known as Ibom Air, the various entrepreneurial initiatives like the toothpick factory and the coconut refinery. The list goes on. He has had a stake in the past. With his legacy, he now has a stake in the future.

He does not want to pretend about it. If some think neutrality in the public and partiality in secret is the way of morality, Gov. Emmanuel thinks it is hypocrisy, the cardinal sin that Jesus condemned in the Gospels.

But the politics of envy must have its way. The word is out there that some want to invoke a surly past in pursuit of their frustrations. They want to brandish violence. If they cannot get it, they want others not to get it. They forget that by such position, they have admitted that they have lost the argument. They say it is not right for the governor to state his pick. In all democracies, prime minister and presidents have their preferences. There is no hypocrisy about this in the United States.

Obama did not hide his preference for Hilary. He did not hide his preference for Biden. If they want someone else they are at liberty to do so.

But his pick is not dictatorship, it is a choice, a suggestion, an opinion. He is staking his choice in the conscience of his people. The matter will go back to the primary, and it is called democracy. Those who fail can try again. It is the beauty of the system as an ideology of popular persuasion.

If what happens is that the ones who fail decide to launch a campaign of calumny, they will have to contend with the facts of the biography of Eno, and his gifts from God. They will have to contend with his loyalty to the Akwa Ibom people. They will contend with his education, his performance as a commissioner, his ideas in cabinet meetings, his composure, his charisma.

The poet and playwright Goethe said “there is but one step from envy to hate.”

The state has had an era of violence. This is no time to resurrect it. This is no time to slaughter people in the bushes or on the streets, or to consecrate murder in the cathedral or campaign rallies, all because one man was chosen. As the good book says, many are called but a few are chosen. In this case, only one can be chosen. Only David has to be chosen for the throne, in spite of the envy of the Sauls of this world.