Dickson And Amaechi’s Hunger Game -By Pius Mordi

Seriously, I didn’t know Seriake Dickson had it in him. At the 60th birthday anniversary lecture for Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, the former Bayelsa State governor and serving senator, used bare-knuckle punches at the promoters of the ‘coalition’ to unseat President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in 2027.

“There are a number of you who are expert conspirators, who know how to assemble coalitions and then take over governments — as you did to my party in 2015, particularly targeting a so-called ‘clueless government,’” Dickson said. He was not done. “Now, 11 years down the line, we thought there would be no weaponization of poverty, and that all of Nigeria’s challenges would have been resolved. But here we are, still gathered to bemoan the fate of our country,” he added.

The audience was a stellar cast of the political elites who were once in government, but now out of favour with the ruling team. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar; Nasir el-Rufai, a one-time Minister of the Federal Capital Territory; Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, the birthday boy; Muhammadu Sanusi II, a co-Emir of Kano among others. Apart from Sanusi, a former governor of the Central Bank, the rest had one thing in common: all shared a common political platform with Tinubu and together worked to install former President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 and sustained his eight-year tenure in Aso Rock.

Until his direct and pungent hit at Amaechi’s birthday lecture in Abuja, Dickson never came across as a leader that could look his colleagues straight in their eyes and call them “professional conspirators” out at their old game. But, amazingly, he did just that. It brings back memories of the late Niger Delta leader who was the scourge of Nigerian politicians. Has a potential successor to Pa Edwin K. Clark emerged? That is too early to call, but it puts him in the frame.

The clearest picture of Amaechi that comes to mind when thoughts of Niger Delta leadership is the subject is his handling of the process for the take off of the Nigerian Maritime University at Okerenkoko. To the former Rivers governor, the location on an island in Delta State is too far removed from his perception of a worthy place.

Appearing before the Senate, Amaechi actually announced that he was killing the project even after over N13 billion had been spent on the site. He told the Senate committee on maritime that the university project was a “misplacement of priority” because there are other transport institutes in the country which could adequately fulfil the purpose of the proposed Okerenkoko university.

It took the chiding of Amaechi by Ibe Kachikwu, then the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, and South South leaders for the Senate to ignore Amaechi and pass the bill on the university.

While he was trying to shut down Okerenkoko, Amaechi regaled in telling Nigerians or sections of them how he had to defy leaders of Niger republic to construct a modern railway track from Daura, Buhari’s hometown, to Maradi, the former president’s ancestral home in the francophone country. That was after diverting the rail project to Daura for no apparent economic reasons. And he capped his chicanery by choosing Daura to build his Transport University while deeming Okerenkoko too remote an island for a maritime university.

For a man who from his younger days lived off the resources of government, from eight years as Speaker, another eight as governor and yet more right years as Minister of Transportation, Amaechi was certainly very hungry after two years out in the cold. His assertion that Nigerians are ‘hungry’ was a brilliant choice of word. It resonates with the people as some may even point to it as proof that indeed people have become poorer under Tinubu. Is Amaechi among the hungry people? I believe so. But his hunger is a different genre. At 60 which he celebrated last week, Amaechi, who has spent about 40 of those years living off public resources after his secondary school cannot understand why he should be out of office for two obviously very long years.

He can afford anything and everything he desires. But a crucial element that had been a constant in his life was missing. Power. Not necessarily to wield it for the good of the people. He wanted to be president and was prepared to pay any prize to demonstrate to the people he thought will aid him in getting it that he is loyal. He did all he could to show Buhari that he is loyal to him and that includes shutting down a maritime university in his region while promoting a transportation university in the President’s hometown. He preferred to build a railway line deep into the President’s ancestral place of origin in Niger republic while the no metre of rail was rehabilitated or build in his own South South or neighbouring South east.
With the death of the iconic Niger Delta leader, Pa Clark, there is a vacuum for a credible successor. It may require having a college of successors and there is a cream of possible leaders.

By his very long years of public service manning critical positions, Amaechi would naturally have been a logical contender. Unfortunately, his occasional sound bites are hollow, lacked conviction and had no philosophical road map in the context of Nigeria’s political realities. Nyesom Wike probably knows that, prompting him to derisively give Amaechi’s complaint of hunger a connotative interpretation. Hunger for power, the FCT minister said, is Amaechi’s problem.

For Seriake Dickson, his hit at Amaechi’s 60th birthday was uncharacteristically bold and courageous. In dubbing the coalition partners expert conspirators, he was apparently accusing them of weaponising government’s weaponisation of poverty. Noting that it was a strategy they successfully used in 2015 to oust President Goodluck Jonathan, he wondered what has changed. In admonishing them to ‘shine their eyes’, there was a warning there. Despite the pervading poverty, Nigerians may have seen through the entire scheme and it might not be business as usual in the next election cycle.

There is a certain air of freshness from Dickson. He is by all means one of them, but things cannot remain the same. In the search for a new credible voice for the Niger Delta, he might just be in the reckoning.