Opinion: Akunyili’s senate ambition

Posted by admin Anambra, Headlines, Legislature, State News Wednesday, December 29th, 2010

Given the momentum of classic drama that characterize most events in Nigeria this year, there will be no shortage of stories that will shape the outgoing year. Many of the stories are, indeed, as different and remarkable as the individuals themselves, their pain behind their fame, the scent behind their successes and failings. It is because success is essentially the ability to minimize errors, and failure perhaps the result of the opposite. Some recognize this fact, some don’t.

Opportunities exist in different spheres of life for people to exercise far-reaching influence on their society. Politics is one of such veritable turfs. But unlike many things in life that ought to be counted with a reasonable amount of precision, politics, it must be said, is not one of them. One unhinged event, an unpredictable matter, or a fatal error might just be enough to alter an entire course of events and thereby, render previous calculations useless. That makes politics a hard subject that is not given to simple theorizing. But proper timing, that precious, priceless gift, often does help in making one’s ambition come true.

As we draw closer and closer to next year’s elections, the hardest political battle will go beyond the much-anticipated bruising battle between President Goodluck Jonathan and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar in the PDP presidential primaries early next month. Make no mistake about this: the hardest fought political race we have seen in a long time may well be in Anambra Central senatorial seat.

The coming into the political fray by Prof. Dora Akunyili, former minister of Information and Communication and Director-General of NAFDAC has raised the political temperature in a state that obviously grunts and wheezes with blackmail, brinkmanship and outright lies by one contender against ****another. Prof. Akunyili had resigned from President Jonathan’s Cabinet December 15, in order to pursue a political ambition to be a senator in the next election. She will be doing this, surprisingly, not on the platform of the PDP, but on the ticket of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA). In what reporters covering the State House described as an “emotion-laden speech”, Akunyili reportedly said she was leaving a more “comfortable position” to the more difficult terrain because of the hunger to serve her people of Anambra Central Senatorial District. President Jonathan was quoted to have accepted her resignation with ‘regrets’.

On hearing her resignation and ditching the PDP, someone had quipped: “Is Akunyili about to commit political suicide? I don’t think so. This much is plain: there is something about Prof. Dora Akunyili. It is her story. It is a story that you read with flourish. It is shaped by integrity and unflappable commitment. Integrity is the first ingredient that is necessary if someone is to be successful. You can have integrity and still fail, but the opposite is not true, according to Thomas J. Neff and James M. Citron, authors of Lessons from the Top. Akunyili, it must be said, has from her days at NAFDAC been living and leading by these attributes. They are attributes that define the internal sense of right and wrong. They direct virtually everything a person – certainly a success person – does. As Elizabeth Dole of the U.S Senate would often say, if you live with integrity and lead by example, you are surely on the right path of success. Integrity builds trust. Arguably, Akunyili is the brainiest of the best and brightest among the CEOs that has ever waged a war against fake drugs and succeeded. That’s where she recorded her most capstone achievements and accomplishments in public service. That record carried her into politics. She didn’t sashay her way. Her personal integrity was the alluring perfume that clinched her a ministerial position.

But here is where she nearly lost me, particularly the role she played during the agonizing hospitalization of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. Politics does not favor subtlety. For some, the subtext is fudging the facts. But Akunyili believes you must tell the truth because politics ought to be a human enterprise and must be preoccupied with serving the people. She believed there was so much half-truths, and indeed, deceit and outright lies on the management of the late President’s health. She saw this as the handiwork of a “cabal” in the Yar’Adua presidency. I believed she was disgusted with the role she found herself playing and the demandingly frustrating pressure on her office to lie. At one point she said, (I believe in frustration), “you manage information if you have information. And in my case, I was even more handicapped than anybody else”. By this time, she had begun to criticize the government that appointed her. The main job of government spokesperson, in the words of George Stephanopoulos, is like a “air traffic controller”, a policy expert, a crisis manager, public relations adviser, a troubleshooter, and in our own case, in addition, to tell lies.

This is where I came in unsolicited. In this column, March 9, 2010, I asked her to resign. I said, among other things, that our democracy needs people like her to keep the system honest and working. But “you have to be careful”, I cautioned, because “you can’t criticize a government that appointed you and still remain there.” I believe, rightly or wrongly, that Akunyili was being used by the present government to malign the Yar’Adua presidency.

Immediately I urged her to quit, a fusillade of media attack was unleashed on my person by some “boutique journalists” and armchair columnists for daring to ask the “shining Igbo daughter” to resign. These are people who claim to love her so much, and I, supposedly, hate her. One of these columnists told me he had her permission to attack me in his column. I took the incendiary comments in my stride. But unknown to these ‘boutique writers’, a month after, precisely April 24, Akunyili called me at about 9pm. She had earlier passed a message across to me through a commissioner in Enugu state and an editor with the VANGUARD. We spoke. She wanted me to be her senior special assistant (media). I weighed the options. Not all open doors are opportunities. Some open doors are indeed traps. I rejected the offer. How can I work for someone I had asked to resign? It is all about principle and integrity. On these two, I have no apologies.

Obi Adindu was given the job. Adindu had since lost the job. May be, it could have being me. But my respect for Akunyili had since doubled. Few will doubt that Akunyili is a hard working, indeed a workaholic, according to those close to her, a decent woman with core principles she finds difficult to compromise, not even at public expense. She has an infectious drive and a contagious enthusiasm (someone says over-zealousness) in whatever she puts her heart in. These attributes might serve her well and her senatorial district if she gets elected next year. Hopefully, she will.

But the fear by some people is that she should have stayed away from politics altogether. Many insist there are people who still feel bitter she aborted their ambition and now is ‘payback time’. One of her students at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), Mr. Gabriel Akwaja, once wrote in the Daily Sun, October 28, 2008 (page 18), that her “meddling full swing into politics is another way of saying goodbye to integrity”. A good name is better than riches, he said.

I can see where Akwaja is coming from: its like saying ‘can you get into the kitchen without feeling the heat?’ That’s the same kind of advice I gave Soludo early in the year when he threw his hat into the Anambra gubernatorial ring. But I have come to realize that because people of integrity run away from politics, that is why our politics has been hijacked by charlatans. However, my worry about Akunyili’s political ambition is based on two grounds: one, whether she consulted widely with her friends, advisers and family members, especially her husband and brilliant children who should be the most important people in her life, about the expected impact her entry into our giddy politics will have on her, and by extension, her loved ones. She needs to be reminded that she must be battle ready because accusations and mudslinging will arise against her name.

Being an emotional person, having emotional intelligence might not just be enough. Grit is required. My other worry is whether she had sincerely searched deep into her soul, in the words of Colin Powell, “standing aside from the expectations and enthusiasm of others,” if indeed she has a political calling. It is a calling only her can hear and tell anybody she cares to tell. But one thing is crucial: t o pretend otherwise is to lie to oneself. But all considered, “Senator Dora Akunyili,” sounds alluring and pleasing to the ears, doesn’t it? Though she had the test of politics before as a councilor, this is the ultimate prize, the fight of her political life yet. Surely, this is not the last time we will talk about her on this page. Who says our politics is not a fun to follow?wp_posts

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Posted by admin on Dec 29 2010. Filed under Anambra, Headlines, Legislature, State News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry