By Udo Silas
Without any doubt, dance and songs are ingrained elements of Godswill Akpabio’s soapbox retinue. As I watched him strut his stuff at the Eket solidarity rally for President Muhammad Buhari and Obong Nsima Ekere, Tuesday, 11th, September, what immediately came into my mind was George Balanchine.
Born 22 January 1904, Balanchine died 30th April 1983. He was a choreographer. ‘Styled as the father of American Ballet, he Co-founded the New York City Ballet and remained its Artistic Director for more than 35 years’.
There is no way he could have known or met Godswill Akpabio. But he may just have been describing Akpabio when he said in one of his often reported quotes that ‘I don’t want people who want to dance; I want people who have to dance’.
Akpabio just must dance. He uses dance at two levels. At one level, he understands ‘dance is an art because with dance you are able to tell a story without using your mouth, and at another level he triggers the dance repertoire as a communion, a coming together with the audience.
He is familiar with modern dance forms. But he is also adept at combining this with the sudden stoppage and movement common with the traditional dance of his people. He employed this to the optimum at the now famous Ikot Ekpene declaration.
The final communion is when he dances through the crowd in the jugging mode. They just go crazy. He is one of them. Hear what Heath Ledger said about this.
“The reason that you dance and sing is to make the audience feel like they’re dancing and singing. As long as you’re having fun with it and giving it 100 percent, they’re gonna feel that”
So what the people feel and see is a man who is not only happy with himself but happier being with them. There is empathy, not just a meeting of emotions but also a smile of kindred recognition.
But there is something not said in his dance. It is akin to what the great boxer Muhammad Ali said, in describing his own dance of victory.
“The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses-behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights”
It is clear what those fights may have been, before the dance at Q1C Primary School in Eket that Tuesday. The questions were as rampant as the answers were silent. Would a new occupant at the Hill-Top Mansion not demand an eight-year, two-term tenure? Would such a demand not truncate the desire of the Uyo Senatorial District to take her turn in 2023?
It was Akpabio who broached the discourse. And then he concluded by saying…”I don’t know what Nsima Ekere has to say….”
Akapbio thereafter went ahead to ask the people to go buy more gubernatorial forms. He reminded the people that when he ran for governor in 2007, his then party had zoned the seat to his Ikot Ekpene senatorial district, but this fact didn’t stop people in his party from other senatorial districts from buying forms and running against him.
But Akpabio was not just speaking to the party. He was also speaking to critical tendencies within the party. Having fought behind the lines to secure a contract of faith between his party’s leading aspirant and the Akwa Ibom people, it was time to speak truth to various locus of power within his party.
His thinking appears quite powerful. It would be easier for Uyo Senatorial District to assume power in 2023 if the APC wins the seat in 2019. That is because the 2023 quest would serve as a consolidation of what she already has. It would be unfair for Uyo Senatorial District to work to assume power in 2019 within the APC. He didn’t put it across as a fait accompli but as plea to reason.
Even where he didn’t call any names, it is clear whom the plea was directed at. My friend and brother whom I hold in high regard said this at an interview published in the Vanguard newspaper of September 8, 2018; “… If you insist on Eket Senatorial District, then why are we in APC? All of us should have moved to the PDP where there is zoning…”
I have said it elsewhere but would say it again; Senator James John Akpanudoedehe is a juggernaut. Uyo Senatorial District is his playground. The people there love him. They adore him, whether he swims with or against the tide. But there is something else he said in that interview. “I don’t have any inferiority complex so, I say the truth as it is. Is Akpabio strong? Yes! My joining with Akpabio if both of us are sincere, then Udom is as good as gone”. And that is precisely what the APC in Akwa Ibom people want. They want Udom Emmanuel out in 2019.
So quite clearly, the APC in Akwa Ibom, including Akpabio and Ekere must work to convince critical tendencies that they are sincere. Those who know Ekere say he is a man of his words. Those who know him say he abhors lies and deceit. It is his conviction that a four-year tenure is enough to cause the difference. He has done his mathematics. By making a public declaration of the one term tenure, Akwa Ibom people appear convinced of his sincerity. The public affirmation has become a contract with the people.
Going forward, it is heartwarming that Udoedehe on his part realizes that victory is imminent where he pitches with Akpabio. But there is something else that should be crucial to Udoedehe’s politics. That 2023 gubernatorial seat would be easier for the APC if it clinches the 2019 contest. Akapabio knows that Udoedehe knows this. His words on that Eket podium were a poem, an ode if you care to Udoedehe.
It is as Mata Hari says that ‘The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word’. Godswill’s dance should be a word that Udoedehe hears in sound and rhythm. A call to unity of intent.
*Udo Silas, a journalist, writes from Lagos
