Perspectives on Tony Anenih

By Okey Ikechukwu

The response of my friend and colleague, Akin Osuntokun, to my piece, “Because PDP Lacks a Tony Anenih Today”, which appeared on this page on the 3^rd January presents an alternative perspective on the role and impact of Chief Tony Anenih as a political variable of confirmed significance and value in the life of the party. I speak of alternative perspectives because everyone’s point of view on any matter will always be coloured by his interests, values, experiences, expectations, the information available to him, and his stakeholder preferences. 

As writers, commentators and perhaps advocates, we stand under the perpetual scrutiny of Herodotus, the acclaimed Father of Modern History, who said that every writer presents events according to how the he, (1) actually witnessed them happening at the time, (2) how he rightly or wrongly remembered and interpreted them, (3) what he heard and believed from others, or (4) how “partiality” swayed him to write.

While Akin and I may or may not have been swayed by our respective partialities, I believe that we both set out to present a point view we believe did justice to the matter in question. What is open to argument for me, however, is his attempt to put the stamp of truth, or “superior correctness” on his own perspective.

He submits in his response titled, A “Misrepresentation of Tony Anenih”, that my position on both Anenih’s significance and the condition of the PDP today is “…a total misreading of the evolution of the Nigerian political party system and its culmination into the repetitive trend towards one party dictatorship”. This may well be true, but the essential point is to establish that it is so.

In addition, I did not go into the matter of our political evolution. Even then, he could have presented the universally accepted finding about “the evolution of the Nigerian political party system and its culmination into the repetitive trend towards one party dictatorship”. Professional historians are still at daggers drawn on the matter. I won’t join them.

Akin admitted that Chief Anenih, was “a politically astute former police officer”. He stated, further, that the man “…leveraged his career to forge a national network of connections, effectively using the police force as a means to navigate the political sphere”. Then he added this: “His pedigree in the police institution provided a fertile ground for keeping tabs on influential or potentially influential individuals and the cultivation of a secondary career in mafia-style political racketeering”.

He moves from admitting Anenih’s pedigree, his capacity and professional discipline in keeping records he considers important to a moral judgment about a “mafia-like political racketeering”. And I state this in response: another point of view, besides the writer’s, is conceivable, possible and even justifiable regarding the issue under reference. To that extent, I have no further comment.

This is what I had to say on this page during the public exchange of divergent views about Abba Kyari, President Buhari’s former Chief of Staff: “The person you see as your class teacher is known as “husband” by another. His role as ‘class teacher’ does not exist with the person who calls him husband. The person you greet “Good morning Hon. Minister” every morning is seen as “mother” by another and called “Auntie” by others. Her school mates call by one mischievous, and possibly suggestive, nickname; while her contractor who missed a contract he had hoped for in her ministry calls her “that wicked woman.”

I went further to ask in that article, titled “Kyari: Issues in Existential Myopia”, I asked: “Does any of these titles, which are actually role-determined, tell us everything about anyone? In answering this question, we must bear in mind that the role-determined persona projected as we do one thing or the other in life does not always reflect, or even suggest, who we really are. They do not always show what moves us, our core values and the things we would get up to if we are sure that no one is watching. This explains the fact that an erudite professor of ethics, who has given world-acclaimed expositions on great ethical theories and practices, could be a terrible pervert. It also explains why the kindest parishioner, who is a doting father, loving husband and philanthropist, could also simultaneously be the leader of a murderous armed robbery gang”.

Thus, for me, when Akin my friend says that “It is a misunderstanding and exaggeration to imply that Anenih would have made a difference to the crisis that has typically buffeted the PDP, described him as a “keen and disciplined political opportunist”, and added that “his political acumen was always coupled with opportunism”” I ask: are we dealing with solid facts or personal opinion and speculation?

When the writer capped his observation here by saying that Chief Anenih “would likely have shifted allegiance to the APC in 2015 had he remained politically active”, I asked myself why pure speculation should cloth itself as truth and a valid moral judgment.

Concerning the request that we “Ask Shehu Yaradua, Ibrahim Babangida, Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Yaradua and Goodluck Jonathan”, I dare say that these men would have their views on their respective encounters with Anenih, just as other would have different accounts of the same encounters.

To categorically assert that “Without the shield and protective custody of incumbent power, he certainly would not have gone far in national political reckoning” is to discountenance his own personal capacities that must have made successive leaders to find him useful. To say “he certainly would not have gone far” is a claim I am reluctant to endorse in any way whatsoever.

My article submitted that Anenih’s life-long exposure to human affairs and deep knowledge of the country, with relationships that spanned geographical, religious and other boundaries, gave him great advantages when and where it mattered. I also said that his capacity for strategic engagement, especially from the angle of power politics, as distinct from being in political office, gave him an aura and influence that would have made a difference if it existed in today’s PDP.

Akin does not quite dispute this, but he maintains that my “fanciful declarations” about the PDP being where it is today because it did not have “men like Anenih, or individuals who can play the various roles he played for the party when it really mattered” is out of order. He insists that the success of the PDP at the 1999, 2003, 2007 and 2011 presidential elections cannot be attributed to Anenih’s leadership. He should have added that I did not say so, that no leaders, acting alone, wins a war.

When the writer said: “What is not an exaggeration was that he was an effective enforcer of whatever decisions were taken by his principals, hence the befitting sobriquet of Mr. Fix it”, and when he added “He was exercising the delegated powers and authority of superiors who were nearly all conveniently incumbent presidents”, Akin is on point. I ask: would Chief Anenih’s superiors, being incumbent presidents, finding him useful be a negative? If several incumbent presidents choose to work with the same person, and not at gun point, they must have their reasons.

It certainly wasn’t fair, in my view, to dismiss Anenih’s role in the Second Republic victory of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in the old Bendel State and attribute it to a generalised deployment of the “landslide and bandwagon” ideology of the party in the 1983 general elections to which Anenih acted as “local enforcer”.

Ditto for his role and impact in the building of what turned out at the time to be Nigeria’s first people-owned and real national party, the Social Democratic Party (SDP). While admitting that  Anenih played a significant role in the consolidation of SDP as an agent of Shehu YarÁdua his godfather at the time, he accused Anenih of being instrumental to the internal subversion of Abiola’s June 12 1993 presidential victory.

Akin did not mention how Abiola’s political reflexes contributed significantly to the post-June-12 events.  His trip to the US without telling even his Deputy, and his justification of same by saying that a bird does not warn another that the hunter’s stone is hurtling towards them before fleeing for safety did not help matters.

He also did not mention the statement of the Ooni of Ife on national television, after meeting with Babangida and the cream of the Yoruba Nation. His “We met with the man. We asked him what happened, we spent many hours with him, and the man was making a lot of sense. Yes, he was talking sense”.

The later attempt to deny this statement failed because the NTA simply replayed the recorded statement, with South West Elders surrounding the Ooni as he spoke.

Does the description of Anenih as “a connoisseur of power who knew how to position himself as indispensable to the quests of his sponsors to capture and retain political power, mostly incumbent rulers” amount to an indictment? To say that he lacked “autonomy of influence”, but “was as strong as his superiors wanted him to be” is not an indictment either.

When we are further told that “His political career reflects a dependency on the existing power structures, akin to the role of a consigliere in organized crime—strategically positioned but ultimately subordinate to those in command” I ask: is it not the absence of this that has brought the PDP to where it is today?

And would it be the better for it if it had one?

As for the evolution of the Nigerian political state and its history, that would be a matter for another day. For now and on the matter under reference here, I have this to say:

Public comments about individuals, living or dead, will always present interesting perspectives across a wide spectrum. So, whence and where does the voice of the people become “The Voice of God”? Not on matters of this nature.

Chief Tony Anenih has lived his life and gone. Let us all live ours, hopefully living for something and being remembered for something eventually.