UDO AKATA
The recent callous incarceration of a prominent and respected son of Akwa Ibom State, the outspoken Minority Leader of the Federal House of Representative in the second Republic, Chief (Hon.) Effiong Ononokpono, by the government of Barrister Godswill Akpabio (see Sunday Punch 28/3/10) for daring to ask a few pertinent questions of the governor in public – such questions as have for sometime agitated the minds of most Akwa Ibomites – speaks volumes of the ominous shadow that Stalinism has cast over the State.
Even when generous allowance is made for the propaganda demands of re-election politics, there is still something decidedly sinister about the cult of personality that is being erected in Akwa Ibom State around Governor Godswill Akpabio. I can hear the incredulous questions: Personality cult? Akwa Ibom State? Chief (Dr.) Barrister Akpabio? It probably all sounds somewhat far-fetched to those who have not visited Akwa Ibom lately or paid close attention to what has been happening in the State. But make no mistake about it; Governor Akpabio and the sundry mendicants he has surrounded himself with, have borrowed a leaf or two from none other than Joseph Stalin himself.
If his propagandists are to be believed, Godswill Akpabio can walk on water. Almost every junction and street corner in Uyo, the state capital, now boasts a billboard with the man’s visage and loud proclamations of his wondrous deeds. Commercials and advertisements in government-owned information organs have but one theme; the miracle of development and progress wrought by Akpabio. There exists continuous and rapid birth of faceless, but obviously generously funded associations dedicated to nothing but the adulation of Barrister Godswill Akpabio. In fact, this has become something of a growth industry (and why not, in the absence of real industries). Rather than float companies, the real enterprising people amongst young men and women in Akwa Ibom State now find it more profitable to establish political organizations and groups in the sure knowledge of massive government patronage.
In addition, informed source has put the number of groups and organizations that have sprung up literally overnight to proclaim support and undying affection for Governor Akpabio, at nothing less than 200. Moreover, each seems to have access to huge sums of money with which to purchase vehicles. Between them, just two or three of the more prominent groups have acquired minibuses than the state-owned Akwa Ibom Transport Company, which has been farmed out to be run as a private franchise. Leaving aside, for now, the very germane subject of how these groups are funded, can there be a worse misdirection of the energies of Akwa Ibom youth than such mobilization for the glorification of one man and to the detriment of genuine development?
If one is inclined to be charitable, young Akwa Ibom men and women can perhaps be forgiven for signing up as foot soldiers in the unholy war to keep one man and his family in power. In the absence of decent employment opportunities, perhaps we should expect no less. But what are we to make of the spectacle of grown, even old, men who got together recently under the aegis of something called the “Ibibio nation” to anoint the governor for a second term? Perhaps we should look for an answer to the inscription often found on the hand carts that are so popular for moving goods in and around Onitsha market: “Man must Wack”. All these and more of what is happening in Akwa Ibom and what Godswill Akpabio is doing, point clearly to the creation of Stalinist personality cult.
Political historians generally attribute the term “cult of personality” to Nikita Khrushchev who employed it in his famous denunciation of Joseph Stalin in a “secret speech” to the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in 1956. (Khrushchev, by the way, had paraphrased Marx who, in one of his correspondences, spoke of his aversion to the “cult of the individual”). Cults of personality are generally associated with dictatorships and Stalinist governments. The list of historical figures who erected cults around their personalities is nothing but a roll call of some of the most terrible totalitarian rulers the world has known in recent times; Joe Stalin (himself), Sani Abacha, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Nicolae Ceausescu, Ferdinand Marcos, Mao Zedong, Kim II-Sung, Mobuto Sese Seko, Saddam Hussein, etc.
It cannot be entirely a coincidence that each time the conduct of Governor Akpabio as a leader is placed in historical perspective, a parallel keeps emerging with people like Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein. It may be recalled that former Governor Obong Victor Attah has had cause to point out that Akpabio’s penchant for gigantic white elephant projects closely mirrors the inclination of the Saddam Husseins of this world whose megalomania led them to embark on the erection of self-glorifying monuments and wasteful civil projects. It is particularly instructive that such leaders are precisely those who indulged most in the cult of personality. Some are inclined to dismissing what is happening in Akwa Ibom as a mere politics. The more simple-minded may even be tempted to wonder what can be wrong about a politician orchestrating such apparent adulation. Such naiveté is not borne out by the lessons of history; in fact, it is downright dangerous.
The erection of personality cults has a direct material cost on the public treasury. Even if all the hundreds of billboards, the fawning commercials and advertisements, websites advertorials, congratulatory messages; the state-managed awards, honorary degrees and recognition events with the attendant lavish celebrations and parties, were to be paid for from private sources, there would still be a legitimate concern about how those sources expect to recoup such massive outlays. And massive they truly are. Who is paying for the offices, uniforms and the fleets of hundred of vehicles that the AKPFs and ADVs of this world are using to trumpet the infallibility of one man; who, if not ultimately, the impoverished masses of Akwa Ibom?
The practice of personality cult is very undemocratic. Indeed precisely, because its main purpose is to perpetuate someone of dubious suitability in office, contending forces are crowded out of the political space, so that one man can dominate it. Everywhere, personality cults are accompanied by the intimidation and deliberate emasculation of the opposition. Such emasculation frequently assumes the form of physical elimination. And of course, the policy of impoverishment of the broad mass of the people by willfully concentrating government patronage within a narrow circuit of close associates and family members; all of which we have seen playing out in Akwa Ibom today, remains a major defining feature of the wicked practice.
Speaking of impoverishment as a state policy, this explains why even yesterday’s men of power have become shameless sycophants and so-called men of god (note the small “g”) have been driven to the brink of blasphemy by declaring that it is god’s will for the regime of Godswill Akpabio to toy with our collective destiny. You also have to wonder what manner of man can stomach the sycophancy running rampant in Akwa Ibom State today. How does Akpabio feel seeing his pictures everywhere; reading the false proclamations of his divinity, in paid advertisement and orchestrated tributes? Isn’t he nauseated by it all? The absence of an elementary sense of modesty is also the mark of the practice of the cult of personality. So perhaps we should not be entirely surprised that Governor Akpabio has such an infinite capacity for flattery, sycophancy and self-glorification. After all Stalinism now reigns over what was once the land of promise.
No comments:
Post a Comment