By Okoho Bassey
Since the light was finally turned off on him as Cross River State governor in 2007, Donald Duke has been more of a low life, engaging in a dance of shame. With his 2007 presidential ambition gone up in flames, Donald soon cut a frustrated figure and before long, began spewing more and more of unstatesmanlike verbiages. He stunned the entire nation with bone chilling disclosure about how he and his fellow governors then were rigged into office without winning elections.
Mr. “Fine Boy”, as he was then humored, would later morph into a character in self-contradiction, difficult to understand and remarkably fickle and capricious in ways none but he alone could comprehend.
Over eleven years since his uneventful exit from office as governor, it is now clear to all what frustration and desperation have actually reduced him to. But more worryingly is how he has decided to channel his frustration. Just a few months after vacating government house, Donald had begun manifesting symptoms of bipolar disorder. It assumed an epic scale a year later when it dawned on him that indeed he was no more a governor. He became so anonymous and ordinary that that people often wondered if he was the same imperial and vain glorious Donald. He soon embarked on a headhunt for a villain.
He would soon find one in no less a person than his successor and once-upon-a-friend, Senator Liyel Imoke. And over the years, his attacks on the Itigidi-born politician has increased exponentially in scale and scope.
A smart Alec, with a nauseating puritanical posturing, Donald has been playing god over everyone with unremitting and unabashed attacks on his successor, Senator Liyel Imoke.
As one who had watched statecraft under Donald, his open excoriation of his successor has always ended up as a febrile and futile attempt at rewriting history. A mere exercise in sophistry.
Ever since he left office in 2007, Donald has never been a happy man, not even with himself. With the imperious carriage and the arrogance of power which defined his tenure having long faded and consigned to the trash can, Donald has become a loner and a chronic whimper, seeing nothing good in his successor whom he painstakingly undermined in 2007 from becoming governor.
As a pathological liar that Donald has always been, he has been lying about everything either to get what he wants or to get even. Did he not lie about obtaining a law degree from the Ahmadu Bello University, even when it was obvious that he grossly lacked the mental aptitude to cope with the programme and could not graduate from the institution? In spite of overwhelming evidence deposed to by Mr. Obi Odu, challenging Donald’s law degree claim then, both INEC and the university basically papered over the scam to save his neck. He lied to survive in office as governor.
It is no surprising therefore, that as a known nitwit, he amused only himself with his farrago of illogicalities that the death of Cross River happened in 2007.
Despite running the most opaque and roguish government in the history of the state, Donald would rather have the world believe that he was the best gift from God to the state.
In his self-assigned role of an Ombudsman of Cross River, Donald is fast bequeathing to his children the values of falsehood, the virtues in shiftiness and an inveterate liar they have as a father.
Rescued from near destitution as a wharf rat and a nomadic laundryman from the slums of Surulere, Lagos into Government House, Calabar, by Liyel’s coattails after some “packaging”, the only success Donald can boast of in his entire life was becoming governor. Other than that, he can hardly flaunt himself as one with a successful political career or as someone who has made a success of whatever he had laid his hands on.
Donald’s claim of being the sole representative of Uncle Ben’s Rice in Africa was not only bogus, but a complete makeover, ostensibly to market him to the undiscerning Cross Riverians. But what an awful product he would later turn out, as evident in the duplicity that was the hallmark of his administration.
With no identifiable track records in business, Donald bungled all the way in his entire eight years in office. There is no denying the fact that the Efik-born scammer had no sense of mission in government, hence he did not have a clear cut vision as governor. This explains why most of his hyped projects in office ended up basically as contingent.
His Tinapa fantasy, which ultimately ended up as a white elephant was at best, a contingent project, conceived as a conduit pipe through which he stole the state blind, plunged Cross Riverians into perpetual slavery, insolvency and indebtedness to ECOWAS Bank, defunct Afrikbank and several other financial institutions.
Donald, in his usual illusion of grandeur, would rather blamed anyone but himself for the scam called Tinapa and its inability to flourish as a Free Trade Zone. Despite what successive administrations after his, has paid to service the huge debt from Tinapa, there was a still a N70 billion debt overhang as of 2015. Yet Donald told the whole world that the project was a public private partnership arrangement. So why is the state still struggling to pay the debt arising from the project?
Available records show that 450 million dollars US was sunk into Tinapa project. As of today, nobody has been able to value the cost of Tinapa above 200million US dollars. The corollary effect is that the current administration cannot access facility to carry out any infrastructural development because the state had long reached its borrowing threshold.
Not many people would understand why I insist Donald emblematizes fraud. As governor, he sold what was then Metropolitan Hotel ( now Transcorp Hotel) at one tenth of its price to which he still maintains a sizeable percentage holding to his friend.
A kleptomaniac in government, Donald surreptitiously sold the state liaison office in Lagos to himself through a proxy, only to later turn around and converted same facility to a car mart. A serial failure in business, the car business also went under, just like many of his failed enterprises. In Donald Duke, Cross Riverians learnt a painful lesson in how not to leave a goat in a yam barn.
From an objective evaluation of his governance style, you would agree with me that Donald, in his eight years as governor, flaunted narcissism, delinquency and fantasy as substance, the kind that ensured nobody dared to raise a voice against him.
In his dark alley of his self-conceit, he dispatched his late Deputy, John Okpa to his early grave, pulverized Daniel Asuquo (Dansuki), desecrated the highly revered Obong stool by dethroning the then Obong of Calabar, Prof. Eyo Nta, whom he later sent to jail. With a nose, the size massive enough for three persons, Donald would rather that only he should breathe while others asphyxiate to death. That is the scoundrel called Donald.
In Donald’s entire political career, he has never worked for anyone’s success. A man who is blighted by pettiness and envy can hardly see good in others. He has demonstrated this aplenty.
In 2007, he worked against Imoke by supporting his (Donald) deputy, late Elder Walter Eneji. Sadly, Walter did not recover from his boss’ treachery and deceit. He lapsed into stroke and died a wretch, as he was trounced by Imoke at the poll.
Again, he was behind Godwin Jeddy Agba’s botched governorship ambition in 2015. What was the outcome? After scamming the former General Manager, Crude Oil Marketing of the NNPC, of millions of dollars, he ditched him. It was another colossal failure by Donald seeking relevance as a king maker. Jeddy was conned!
For a such a con man whose political trajectory has been highlighted more by a string of inconsistencies, barefaced lies, abject failures and political misadventures, how do you expect duper of his kind with a haunted political past not to be embittered and uncomfortable with those who tower above him?
As governor, when payment of salaries was not such a big deal, Donald’s administration witnessed the most incessant strikes than any during his time. How he procured a court judgement against the state’s workforce and put them out of work for months is well documented.
So, Donald, stop posturing so puritanically in your oversized coats as if as governor, you were a saint among sinners.
Watch out for part 2: Donald’s 20-yr-old child’s paternity secret
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