Our governors didn’t get the memo

Apparently so many of the governors can still not fathom that a new order is in operation in the country. They still prefer to do things the old way, lording over the citizens they are leading and taking impunity to a higher level. If one is not buying condiments at a market, another in Osun State will proceed to screen civil servants even when he has been given money to offset seven-month arrears of salaries, just as one plans to spend N200 million on prayer warriors against Boko Haram in his state. The same governor, Mohammed Jibrilla of Adamawa State, has appointed 35 advisers and 50 development area administrators at a time when a barrel of oil is selling for less $50 and has not told us how he plans to fund this humongous expenditure.

But none so far, trumps Governor Umaru Al-Tanko Makura of Nasarawa State. He just elevated the art of turning governance into a farce and naturally, he is the lead actor. For those of us who witnessed the second republic when a governor told us that the best place to keep government money is the government house, how do we say to that late governor if he were to be alive that his era was still better than the clowns leading us at the state level in Nigeria? Mr. Makura’s latest show of shame was on Thursday, September 10 at Nasarawa-Eggon, a place that to him must be part of his fiefdom and where no other mortal must challenge him.

A woman, Lois Iorvihi, was travelling from Makurdi, the capital of Benue State, to Abuja, with his younger sister, Joi, and younger brother, Jerry, with her in her car. According to her account, which was well circulated in the media, a dispatch rider overtook her car and asked her to veer off the road as the governor wanted to pass, on road that if you’re familiar with, is very narrow and could make even the most confident drivers fearful driving on it. Not too long after, a Toyota Hilux pickup with policemen shoved her off the road ostensibly for not moving quick enough for their master, a governor being maintained with state resources and voted for by citizens, to pass. Subsequently, four policemen went on to vandalize Iorvihi’s car, beat her brother after dragging them out of the car. They equally destroyed her phones and other electronic gadgets since they could not understand that this is the era of citizen journalism as Iorvihi and her siblings wanted to capture the moment for the world to see.

Stunned, she went to the governor who was in his car thinking that his sense of reasoning could be appealed to and perhaps to get justice. Our dear governor suddenly remembered that he was a teacher before becoming a politician and so before the woman could even say a word said, “Young girl, you’re so rude. Look at how your are dressed like a prostitute.” But it could only have been a governor in Nigeria that prostitution comes to his mind on sighting a woman. When did Makura become a moral instructor that someone’s dressing should be a matter of governance? For someone who has presided over a state that has been a theatre of war with different nationalities killing themselves and the Ombatse cult group killing over 60 security agents including policemen and men of the Department Of State Services (DSS) in 2013, it was the dressing that concerned him.

There are other subtle meanings to this narrative. On display was the condescension against women in our society, how many times have you heard people lashing out at female drivers, “Who bought this car for you?” as though ownership of a car is exclusively male. He confirmed the stereotype of ‘a woman’s place is in the kitchen’ as most likely he was not expecting a woman driver to dare challenge him and that is a major danger in this era of change. Elected leaders do not want to be accountable or respond to citizens’ queries on how they conduct themselves in office or spend our commonwealth. Some Nigerians whose mindset on reading this story is ‘the woman should just thank God, what if she was killed’ further accentuate this danger and this is a reason why our development is still stunted. Let such people remember that a Toyota Hilux in his convoy collided with a commuter bus in September 2012 killing 19 people including two policemen. This is further seen in a supposed reaction by the press secretary to the governor on social media three days after the incident filled with ‘his excellency’ without actually explaining what happened.

Makura’s antecedents as a youth leader of the defunct National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in the then Plateau State in 1980 is well known but he would do well to remember that we are in a new era where impunity is no longer accepted. This is hoping too that Lois Iorvihi will pursue the matter to a logical conclusion just as the Inspector General of Police will discipline the policemen involved, especially the ADC, Ringim, who boasted that ‘nothing would happen’.