By Ebere Wabara
LAST week, a newsmagazine reporter sent an SMS to me in his professional search for elucidation on the prospects of the Senate Chief Whip and former governor of Abia State, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, becoming the 10th Senate President. I swiftly called the reporter and made profound explications on why Kalu is eminently qualified to assume that elated position. Indeed, he is the most suited in the current geopolitical circumstances and configurations underscored by Senate traditions and Kalu’s supersonic political profile.
In line with the country’s federal character principle and Senate rules, the APC should consider zoning the senate presidency to the South East in enthronement of national equity, fairness and justice. By virtue of Kalu’s position in the red chamber as the fourth highest-ranking senator, the mandate should incontestably be bestowed on him on merit grounds, his transformational capacities and multifarious competencies in and outside politics. Kalu has optimal legislative and entrepreneurial pedigrees.
In dispassionate circumstances, Kalu should not be in any contest with anybody for the senate presidency for reasons already adduced. It is a divine mandate in recognition of his global antecedents and knowledge of Nigeria’s diversity. Also, taking cognition of senate conventions, rooky members are excluded from holding offices because of inexperience and relational challenges arising from ignorance about the chemistry of the upper chamber. In summation, Kalu has the cognate and requisite experiences to function as the Senate president more than any returning or new senator from the Igbo extraction.
Kalu’s avowals on this matter: “I will like the party to zone it to my zone, to my village in Igbere, because President-elect Tinubu needs people of high character to turn around the economy and work for the masses, make laws that will enable him turn around the economy because I am an economic person, an entrepreneur,” the chief whip enthuses.
As should be expected, the Kalu haters who mushroomed from his beneficence have relapsed to amnesia and are declaring that Kalu will conventionally “chicken” out of the senatorial leadership contest for “fear of being humiliated”! For Kalu’s vanishing detractors, capital must be made out of everything—both imaginary and real. Such is the height of deviancy by the opposition.
As I hinted last week, the truth of the matter is that Kalu dropped his initial senatorial ambition on tactical grounds. He plays politics with a measure of strategy and contemporaneous realities. A sensible man cannot with clear eyes and sound state of mind walk on political landmines. His strategic withdrawal from the senatorial race was the best decision for reasons that are manifesting now, gloriously!
It becomes vexatious when clowns embark on their incognito buffoonery by speciously “analyzing” the context of what they do not have the cerebral capacity and competence for political ecology to pontificate. The irony is that those who may be opposed to Kalu’s latest quest know that their adversarial conduct borders on lie blatancy, crass mischief and psychotic brazenness. In the farcical days of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in the second republic there never existed this kind of traitorous behaviour on needless and unjustifiable political expediency that alienates some key members. Such sacrificial altars should be left for fledgling party subscribers, not a global brand like Kalu whose unflinching and resolute commitment and loyalty to the All Progressives Congress (APC) are unparalleled. Who does not know about this fact?
There is no suddenness in Kalu’s desire to be the Senate President. His timely appreciation of the possible subterfuge and unconventional punctuation of it is demonstrative of his acclaimed political sagacity. In these matters, time is of essence lest the wiles of the enemy camp encircle and constrict you irredeemably. Why procrastinate when you are dealing with devilish foes, murderous antagonists and governmental principalities? Hesitation could be inimical. You need to always be ahead of your traducers and detractors! Keep them perpetually busy with your masterstrokes since they are averse to good governance institutionalized in senate presidency.
The senate does not belong to individuals. Individuals—stakeholders or whatever name they bear—belong to associations. Nobody has the right to disallow anyone from senatorial leadership. Organizational or group constitutions and, indeed, any other constitution are inferior to a country’s Constitution. If you cannot be accommodative and tolerant of other people’s idiosyncrasies, it squarely rests on you to quit and not try to muscle out potential threats to your grassroots political fiefdom. This, more than any other suspicion, is the choking albatross for Kalu, who is rightly seen as a domineering and dominant person not pliable—or submissive to a tribe of harebrained elders and anaemic stakeholders and other nondescript clan of political jobbers on the fringes of political survivalist descent.
Photo-shop deceitful manipulations, robotic advertorials, sponsored interview raves, facile supplements and ad hoc media insurgency cannot stop the onward march of Kalu to Senate presidency.
For Kalu and his exponential followers, there is a better life inside and outside the senate presidency. I wish my amiable boss good luck in whatever it takes to become the next Senate President! And so shall it be.