Frankly Speaking

Timing is crucial in political calcualtions like in everything strategic. Musonge certainly knows that. He has taken about the most outgoing move in his political career with the rally in Limbe grouping all five CPDM sections in Fako.

Besides capitalising on Dorothy Njeuma’s departure from the party political arena, Musonge may have banked on certain incapacities of the people most likely to stand in his way at this present time.

Co-patriarch Ephraim Inoni, who by right and acquired status should also be postulating as a Fako political godfather is gravely handicapped to put up a political fight at this time when grapevine holds, he has the sword of Damocles dangling over his head in relation to looming corruption suspicions.

Besides, Musonge remains confident that he, not Inoni, can be regarded as a local godfather any time, political gesticulations or none. As Churchill Ewumbue Monono put it in a 1996 write-up sizing up Biya’s likely pick for PM from the South West ahead of Musonge’s appointment in September same year, Musonge seems to have done more to groom the young Fako elite than Inoni, though the latter spent longer years within government circles. Even when Inoni became PM, Fako boys felt his Kupe-Muanenguba wife led him away to care more for her native division. That may not be entirely true.

His local rival aside, Musonge brought along his former arch-rivals, Peter Agbor Tabi and John Ebong Ngole. These should have been the most unlikely two to be seen at a Musonge event. Ebong’s descent into everlasting (?) hell and Tabi’s 12 years in the political wilderness; both men owe them to Musonge. It is understood they were Musonge’s first political casualties. He axed them out of the government in 1997 at his very first opportunity to be consulted by Biya for a cabinet change. Grapevine had been awash with talk that both rivals plus Inoni, thought Musonge was only their caretaker PM when he was first appointed in 1996. He stayed on eight years, three months!

So in Musonge’s calculation, inviting Ebong and Tabi might have been a show of reconciliation or actual reconciliation at a time little remained to divide them. For whatever aspirations each of them nurses now, their paths can only be parallel; they may not clash. An ex-PM may now only aspire for the Senate. Coming from separate constituencies, one’s gain cannot be the other’s undoing. Securing a Senate seat is one thing, holding an influential position therein like speaker, is quite another. So, Musonge may thus be paving his way to the next big thing, assured his peers would stand by him.

If Musonge is not counting on their understanding and forgiving heart, he might be playing on the reality that, now back into government after 12 years in the school of verbal restraint and self-examination, Agbor Tabi, the more militant of the two Musonge victims, should be in no mood to engage in another fight lest he repeats his errors of the past and compromise his chances for his own next big thing. He would need the goodwill of his peers and possible detractors if he must realize his life dream.

There cannot be any denying that Musonge’s mailing list for the Limbe event on 26 September was targetted. It was an oldtimers club. As a formality, sitting ministers may have been invited, just like the sitting prime minister, Philemon Yang, who was only represented, yet Musonge was visibly contented that in the absence of them all, he had a chance to show the world he could stretch a hand at his former arch-rivals and show his local rival that while those who live in a glass house ought to avoid throwing stones, those sure they have no glasses to bother about can go about throwing their stones to mark out captured territory.

This article was first published in Standard Tribune N° 054 of 05 October 2009 (page 11) in my new column STATE OF THE NATION