Rediscovering Virtue In Public Service By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

In the last quarter of 2006, President Obasanjo’s attempt to
change the constitution in order to prolong his tenure beyond the
allowed two terms had ended in predictable futility. Party
primaries were delayed while politicians calibrated the political
wind-vane of third term in full motion ahead of Nigeria’s 2007
general elections.

In Rivers State, the richest of Nigeria’s oil-producing states
in the Niger-Delta, Gabriel Tamunobiebere George (GTG) Toby, was in
his second term as deputy-governor and had been persuaded to throw
his hat into the ring for the nomination by the Peoples’ Democratic
Party, for the party’s governorship ticket in 2007. The customary
screening of the aspirants took place before a party committee in
Abuja on 5 December 2006. When it came to GTG’s turn before the
committee, the questioning was minimal. The committee asked for
proof that he had been paying his party dues, he provided that.
What about his certificate of indigeneship? He had that too. A few
more pleasantries followed by perfunctoriness, he was asked to
go.

The following day, 6 December, the committee issued its
decision. GTG had been disqualified from running. Under the rules
of the party, where the Screening Committee decides to disqualify
an aspirant, it is obliged to disclose its reasons for doing to. In
GTG’s case, the reason given for his disqualification was “question
not satisfactorily answered”. The nature of the question or how the
aspirant had failed to answer it was never disclosed. Aspirants who
were dis-satisfied with the process were entitled to appeal before
a committee headed by Osaigbovo Ogbemudia, a retired general and
former governor of the neighbouring Edo State. So, GTG took his
case before the committee, which chose to meet in Abuja on the day
before the governorship primaries which were to take place in Port
Harcourt, Rivers State. The appeals committee received the
candidates and heard from them. On 9 March 2017, General Ogbemudia
died before his committee had announced the outcomes of the appeals
that they heard over 10 years earlier. Nearly 13 years after, the
committee has still not announced its decisions. It’s unclear
whether they ever concluded sitting.

This revelation about how the state lost benefit of the acumen
of the man described as “the best governor Rivers State never had”
is made in In the Cause of Service: Memoir of Gabriel
Tamunobiebere Toby, just published by University Press
Limited. The story begins in Opobo in the eastern Ijaw creeks of
the Niger Delta in 1870, when the man who would later come to be
known as King Jaja of Opobo established a kingdom on the back of
control of what was then a lucrative trade in palm oil. The Kingdom
was begun by 18 founding chieftaincy stools, one of whom was Chief
Toby. King Jaja’s kingdom included much of today’s Ogoni, Andoni in
Rivers State as well as Ikot-Abasi and Ikpat-Enin in Akwa Ibom
State. Upon the creation of States in 1967, Opobo was initially
part of South-Eastern State, with its capital in Calabar. It only
became part of Rivers State in 1976. In The Cause of
Service also tells how this was achieved.

Following the carve up of Africa in Berlin in 1885, the British
moved to consolidate control over the oil palm trade in the Niger
Delta. In 1887, they arrested and exiled King Jaja, who died in
1891 reportedly poisoned on his way back from exile. Under a treaty
reached with British Consul, Claude McDonald, in 1892, Opobo
Kingdom accepted protectorate status. In return, the Opobo War
Canoe Chiefs agreed to be disarmed subject to payment of
compensation by the British.

In 1944, on the foothills of the end of the 2^nd World
War, the Regent of the Opobo Kingdom, Chief Harry Toby, accompanied
by six other Seniapu (Elders) of the kingdom, finally
executed the Compensation Agreement that the British had promised
their ancestors. One of the signatories was Senibo George
Toby, a wealthy produce merchant and polygamist. He was also the
father of GTG Toby, who was born in January 1939, 5 years before
the execution of the Compensation Agreement. GTG’s mother, Mary,
the second wife of Senibo George Toby, died in child birth when her
son was nine in 1948. Seven years later, in 1955, her husband died
suddenly too. Their first child, GTG, became family head. He was
only 16 and a high school student at the Okrika Grammar School in
present day Rivers State.

In the Cause of Service is the story of how this family
tragedy inducted GTG into a life of service and leadership at
various levels of education, the family, community, faith and
country. It is also a story of the evolution of contemporary
Nigeria. With the help of a scholarship from the government of
Nigeria’s old Eastern Region, GTG would become one of the pioneer
students of the University of Nigeria (UNN), graduating with a
degree in Economics in 1963. Thereafter, he would go into public
life, serving as leader and manager in many public enterprises,
including the now defunct commodity and marketing boards. In 1978,
the son of a produce merchant “returned to his father’s business”
to turnaround the Rivers State-owned, Risonpalm, the biggest
state-owned oil palm business in Nigeria. Appointed thereafter as
Permanent Secretary in the Rivers State public service, his tour of
duty gave him a mastery of the bureaucracy and intricacies of the
state. After retirement in 1996, GTG was called to serve as
Resident Electoral Commissioner of the then National Electoral
Commission of Nigeria (NECON) in Taraba State, which was disbanded
with the death of General Sani Abacha in June 1998.

In 1999, the governorship ticket of the PDP in Rivers State went
to a man who, like GTG, had graduated from the UNN. They had worked
together in the university alumni movement. When he asked GTG to be
his running mate, it was difficult to refuse. So, at 60, he was
reluctantly inducted into active politics. At a time in which
Nigerian politics is dominated by reports of unease at the highest
levels between a president and his vice as well as between
governors and their deputies, In the Cause of Service
offers invaluable lessons in how to stabilize the inconvenient
marriage between insecure chief executives and their dispensable
deputies.

With over six decades in active leadership, GTG is well placed
to examine the hazards of living In the Cause of Service,
especially in Nigeria. These memoirs reveal many. Arbitrariness is
close to the top of the list. Having won re-election in October
1983, then Rivers State Governor, Melford Okilo, was not merely
content with rewarding his political friends, he decided that to
accomplish that he also needed to humiliate those at whose expense
he would do it. So, he asked all 36 Permanent Secretaries in the
public service to either retire or go home to their localities as
high school teachers. In November 1983, he fired those who chose
not to retire. The following month, the military, led by one
Muhammadu Buhari, a Major-General, sacked him and all his peers
too. The military administration recalled GTG and his
colleagues.

Self-interest always fights back. After his service as Deputy
Governor, GTG was appointed Pro-Chancellor and Chair of the
Governing Council of University of Port Harcourt. This was tenured
for four years but when the Council got interested in the
University-owned micro-finance bank, whose earnings were never
disclosed as part of the university’s finances, he found himself
suddenly “transferred” after less than one year to a similar
position in the University of Benin.

In Nigeria, as in many other parts of Africa, no story of public
service is complete without an encounter with voodoo or Juju.
Arriving for a meeting of the University Council one of those days,
GTG found an unusual decoration of a white shroud hung behind his
chair, which was between the Vice-Chancellor and the Registrar. So,
“when the decoration was unveiled at my directive, we noticed some
black and red beads tied and hung on the wall.” The meeting still
took place but rather than run it from the dais, he chose to chair
it from the “floor”. Underscoring the importance of faith and
values in a life of service, In The Cause of Service
declares “fetish concoctions…. ineffective.”

For many involved in lives of service, supportive family life is
considered important. Choosing a partner for this purpose can
sometimes present its own challenges. GTG identified his future
spouse, Christiana, early enough before he entered university in
1960 but getting her consent wasn’t easy. He visited her to propose
in December 1960 but she was to respond that “since I had been in
love with her for three years, it would take her another three
years to respond to my proposal.” True to her word, she finally
communicated acceptance on the eve of his degree examinations in
1963 and it took another three years before they got married in
1966.

In The Cause of Service makes an invaluable
contribution to history, anthropology, sociology, politics and
values of contemporary Nigeria. A future reprint should include a
glossary to explain the nomenclature of traditional offices and
titles of the Ibani culture and of the Opobo Kingdom. Its bigger
point is that public service is not for the faint of heart, bereft
of worth or cause of profit. Despite a long sojourn in public life,
all of GTG’s material acquisitions comprise his family house in
Opobo and some property in Port Harcourt. In pursuing this theme,
In The Cause of service makes the point that those who
seek to stay the course should be prepared to pay a price
sometimes, safe in the knowledge that the most rewarding things in
life are too important to be bought with money or material
acquisitions.

Title:             
                 
       In the Cause of Service: Memoir of
Gabriel Tamunobiebere George Toby

Author:                                              
G.T.G. Toby

Publisher:                                         
University Press PLC

Pages:                                                  
476

Price:                                                   
Undisclosed