Okorocha, And The Political Banditry Against Deputy Governors

When last year, Senator Rochas Okorocha was paraded like a common criminal over the botched attempt in recovering properties confiscated from him by the Hope Uzodimma administration in Imo State, there were many who felt that the incumbent administration had taken to political banditry in its faceoff with  the former governor.

There were, however, many others who felt that Okorocha did not deserve mercy. Many said so because of the gravity of the allegations against him. Others for the imperiousness with which Okorocha acted when he was governor.

That imperiousness and imperialistic tendency was in the view of many seen in the botched attempt in transmitting power at the end of his eight-year rule to his son through marriage.

However, in the opinion of many, the law of retributive justice was getting back at Okorocha. Observers will not forget that the parade of the former governor took place just about a week after one of the most convoluted and devious political schemes of the Okorocha regime was laid to rest; to wit, the impeachment of Okorocha’s first deputy governor, Jude Agbaso.

Agbaso was impeached supposedly for receiving a N450 million bribe from a contractor. The spinless Imo State House of Assembly, then under the speakership of Rt. Hon Ben Uwajumogu turned its face away from the banking records that showed that the supposed bribe was actually transferred by the contractor into his own company’s account.

Off course, Okorocha did not carry out the politically heinous crime of political banditry on an innocent man alone. The Speaker of the House at that time, Uwajumogu apparently benefited from the spin off as he was lifted to the Senate. He died in mysterious circumstances six months into his term in the Senate  at the age of 51 in December 2019.

The immediate beneficiary of the devious plot, Prince Eze Madumere, a long time political associate of Okorocha’s who replaced Agbaso as deputy governor was to suffer the same fate that befell Agbaso when in 2018 he was also subjected to his own impeachment ritual.

What Okorocha did to Agbaso, nay the Agbaso political family who helped him in coming to power as governor in 2011 underlines the arrogance many governors bring to bear once they are in office. Their deputies are often the most persecuted and deprived except in very few cases.

In extreme cases governors will go out of the way to rubbish anyone and institutions to humiliate their deputies out of office.

The Wednesday impeachment of the deputy governor of Zamfara State, Mahdi Aliyu Gusau, adds to the odious collection.

Gusau was sacked simply because he refused to have an independent political opinion from that of the governor. Governor Bello Matawalle who came into office by happenstance of the crisis in the Zamfara State chapter of the All Progressives Congress, APC, became the first Peoples Democratic Party, PDP candidate to be elected governor in that state.

However, for whatever reasons, he chose to go to the APC and coerced almost the entire PDP structure to go along with him. Mahdi Aliyu Gusau, his deputy, however, chose not to follow the multitude. For his decision the House of Assembly brought him to trial and within a week he was removed from office. Mahdi Aliyu Gusau as the son of the once powerful erstwhile National Security Adviser, NSA, Gen. Aliyu Gusau would have brought his family’s immense goodwill to the ticket that brought Matawalle to power.

However, the Zamfara governor like Okorocha before him did not remember gratitude and was quick to supervise the removal of his erstwhile deputy from office.

Such acts of political banditry against deputy governors as seen in Zamfara is not strange. Who would forget the case of the Enugu deputy governor, Sunday Onyebuchi who was impeached in August 2014 by the Sullivan Chime controlled House of Assembly? His offence was that after his office was made redundant he decided to brood chicken within his Government House residence.

Onyebuchi’s impeachment was particularly ironic. About a year earlier, when Governor Chime laid between life and death and was away from the country, there were moves by the political class in Enugu to use the doctrine of necessity to remove Chime and make Onyebuchi governor. However, the deputy governor was said to have rebuffed the moves despite the fact that most of Enugu had been cut off from Chime not knowing his fate.

However, on recovering and returning to power, Chime overlooked such deference and allowed the humiliation of his submissive deputy out of office.

Another classic example of a deputy governor being booted out was the case of the erstwhile deputy governor of Kogi State, Simon Achuba who was sacked after he fell out with the governor, Alhaji Yahaya Bello.

Even politicians who are famed to be tolerant to most political followers still appear to be despiteful of their deputies. An example is the case of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu who despite much claims of being too forgiving of rebels still oversaw the impeachment of two deputy governors while he served as governor of Lagos between 1999 and 2007. The first deputy governor elected with him Kofo Bucknor, left office at the sight of an impeachment notice. His replacement, Femi Pedro was also impeached.

However, in nearly all the cases of the impeachments of the deputy governors carried out by the State House of Assembly, the actions were reversed by the judiciary including the political banditry carried out on Okorocha’s deputy

It is as such expected that the same will be done in the case of that of Aliyu Gusau in Zamfara. However, whether the consequences and damages on the rule of law are ever reversed is another thing.

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