After several postponements, last Wednesday’s homecoming of former Governor Joshua Dariye of Plateau State, since his release from prison, was girded by intrigue and manoeuvre as part of the actions preceding the next political dispensation in 2023, UKANDI ODEY writes
For many who are fans and well-wishers of former Governor of Plateau State and two-time member of the Senate, Joshua Dariye, his arrival was too long in coming. For those with vested interests, particularly in the political build up and shaping of the dawning political dispensation, it was a day to wish away; a day that was bearing uncanny trends and tendencies with a huge potential to alter their fortunes and calculations towards 2023. It was also a day they could not avoid but only work to frustrate and defy as much as possible.
The prospect of the day showed early at the Yakubu Gowon Airport, Heipang, as Dariye was expected to arrive in luxuriant and luxurious fashion by flight from Abuja where he has been since regaining freedom last month. Throngs and droves of supporters, former aides, journalists, freelance photographers and sundry groups made it early to the airport to witness the return of a worthy and worthwhile son of the state who remains illustrious by popular reckoning, and whose imprisonment is viewed by many as a price paid for the Plateau heritage and identity against the politico-economic subjugation and onslaught of a predatory Northern establishment.
As the number of people at the airport garnered and thickened to the thrill of the organising committee particularly, in what he explained as not a decoy but necessitated by the university students’ blockade at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja, Dariye stunned those waiting and gazing at the air by arriving at the airport by road to savour and embrace a jubilant and jubilating crowd who didn’t really care whether he arrived by air, road, or sea transport.
By this time, it was already clear and unmistakeable to the organising committee that the Plateau State Government of Simon Bako Lalong, with whom it agreed to a partnership to make the reception event grand, grandiose, and resounding, was actually working in the opposite direction, ostensibly to deflate the event of pomp and pageantry and rob it of colour and panache so that it does not lend strength to the menacing governorship gamble of the arrowhead of the reception event who is raising the stakes on the Labour Party platform.
On the eve of arrival or return of the native, the organizing committee was already frustrated: the main partner for the show, the State Government, turned its back on the committee, withheld counterpart funding, worked at cross purposes to frustrate the committee, its preparations, and, ultimately, the event.
First, the committee had to source alternative venue at the Langsfield Park, about three hundred meters away from Government House, Little Rayfield, where Dariye was grudgingly received by the Secretary to the Government of the State, Danladi Atu, as Governor Lalong was strategically absent from the State.The Dariye reception committee had been denied the preferred Rwang Pam Township Stadium on framed grounds that the State APC had earlier booked the same venue to unveil its curious choice of campaign director general, Professor Sabastine Maimako, in a seeming grand slam of a political show. However sources familiar with the reactionary politics of Lalong and the State APC said the Dariye reception event forced the APC to cut short its thank-you tour of the Plateau South senatorial zone; and that the Rwang Pam Stadium was denied the reception committee because the State Government was afraid and uncomfortable that the centrality of the venue and impact of the Dariye motorcade all the way from Heipang Airport in to the main bowl of Jos town could raise public perception and approval of the Labour Party and its Gubernatorial contender, Patrick Dakum, a protesting and aggrieved aspirant from the APC who is feared to be on a mission to drown the APC and liquidate its electoral chances.
Although at the Government House and the Gbong Gwom Jos Palace, and at the reception ground, Dariye waisted no time in reiterating his membership of the APC and pledging his loyalty to it, the reception was a political rendevouz of the troubled Plateau State Labour Party, especially by the incendiary faction led by Dr Patrick Dakum, a former commissioner in Darye’s cabinet. Whatever were the calculations of the State APC against the reception and for avoiding the event, it gained only handful, such as starving the committee of funds and stifling the scope of the celebration such as reducing the publicity stunt. The fractured Labour Party on the other hand gained bountifully as it dominated the reception, turned it into a veritable political rally, and used it to send intimidating political messages to its opponents, particularly the APC with its disconcerted body chemistry and unsettling physiognomy, that it is unstoppable and really on the way.
The attitude of the Lalong administration towards the reception and the conduct of the State APC before, during, and after the reception have rekindled talks, or initiated a post mortem of why, after the pronouncement of presidential pardon for Dariye and others on April 14, a conspiracy of forces and a labirynth of intrigues ensured that Dariye and others were not released till 115 days later.
The same Gubernatorial party primary that was cited as reason for Lalong’s possible complicity in the high-wire abuse of power that flouted the presidential pardon illegally, is still being disputed and haunting the APC as it is currently panting in Court, and looking vulnerable as elections approach.
From food vendors to hawkers and owners of other lines of small scale businesses, last Wednesday that bore Dariye’s reception was a day to remember; and one out of several days of a local economy in stress, distressed, distraught, and bearing acute poverty and severe hunger. And for Dariye and his traducers, it was a super Wednesday that came with full political splendour of some thesis and antithesis of Plateau State come 2023.
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