Nigeria's governors annus horribilis

TOKUNBO OLAJIDE

For many Nigerian state governors, it’s a year of the locust. From the tragic death of one, to near death experiences for two, and two others reportedly battling near terminal illnesses, it’s a year to wish away.

The ghastly auto crash, yesterday, in which Governor Idris Wada of Nigeria’s central state of Kogi lost a leg, and his ADC died, came to be one accident too many.

The accident came as a rude shock to many, instantly provoking wild suggestions, including that the

rank of Nigeria’s affluent governors, nay the political class, is under some kind of spell – given the string of calamities that has dogged them of late.

Governor Wada, whose vehicle somersaulted on a highway, while returning to the state capital,

Lokoja, from an event in a part of the state, is now being treated for his injuries at a hospital in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.

Wada’s crash comes barely two months after another governor, Danbaba Suntai of Taraba State, northeast Nigeria, survived a plane crash, though with serious injuries too.

Suntai has since been confined to a bed in a German hospital, where he was flown after a small plane – a Cessna 208 5N-BMJ – which he was piloting himself crashed, 25 October, in Yola, Adamawa, a neighbouring state to his.

Nothing has since been heard, officially, about Suntai’s current state of health, fuelling various speculations. The governor has been rumoured brain dead or paralysed, given the critical injuries he sustained, and the fact that his aides, who where also involved in the crash, had since returned to Nigeria after equally been treated at a German facility.

While Suntai and Wada narrowly escaped death in their crashes, Patrick Yakowa, immediate past governor in Kaduna, north western Nigeria, was not so lucky.

On 15 December, Yakowa died in a helicopter crash in the southern Nigerian state of Bayelsa, alongside Andrew Azazi, a retired general and former National Security Adviser, and their two orderlies. The plane’s pilot and co-pilot also died.

Yakowa and Azazi were returning from the funeral of the father of Oronto Douglas, an aide to President Goodluck Jonathan, when the Navy helicopter they flew plunged into a creek in the

president’s home state.

The political class, especially the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, were still smarting from the loss of Yakowa and Azazi, two of their key members, when Wada’s crash occurred.

The PDP is also worried at the protracted illness of another member and governor in Enugu State, south-east Nigeria, Sulivan Chime, who has not been seen in public for more than three months now.

Chime, reported to have undergone a heart surgery at an Indian hospital, has been away from work since early September.

Another governor, Liyel Imoke of Cross River State, in the south of the country, is also reportedly battling ill-health which kept him away from office for weeks.

The state’s officials have though been denying the reports, same way officials in Enugu State refuted reports of Chime’s illness, before it became too obvious given the governor’s long absence.

With disasters befalling their ranks in various forms, spokesperson for the PDP, Olisa Metuh has called for prayers.

“The party has yet to recover from the shock arising from a recent similar incident; we therefore wish to direct all our members to observe minutes of prayers for Gov. Wada,” Metuh said in the wake of the latest accident involving the Kogi governor.