Abuja is a city divided since penultimate Monday when the National Assembly made its famous resolution, urging Vice President Goodluck Jonathan to seize power, as acting president.

There is palpable excitement in many offices and ominous disquiet in many others.

You get into some offices and immediately feel the excitement in the air, a feeling of satisfaction and expectation about good things to come. People in those offices commend the National Assembly for installing an acting president through a resolution, expect government to roar back to life once again, and congratulate each other for escaping an untoward happenstance.

“The army would have taken over if the National Assembly did not act fast,” one top government official told me. How did he know? “I heard; it was all over the place,” he said.

You get into some other offices, and there is disquiet; the sort you could slice with a knife.

I went to see another top government official who has for some time now been accusing me of “abandoning” him. Abandon is a word frequently bandied about here, especially when the user wants to target and blackmail an important person. “You’ve abandoned me o,” you accuse, and stay back to watch the poor fellow squirm and deny it vigorously. As he is defending himself, you quickly chip in something that he will agree to do, in order to prove that he is still a good friend!

But abandon was far from my friend’s mind Friday last week, when I visited his office.

“I was about to perform my ablution and go to the Mosque,” he apologized, as he stood up, removed his babanriga, and brought his hands out in supplication. I quickly moved to the door, but not before asking when I could see him next week.

His hands in prayer mode, he apologized that next week is filled up in his calendar. “Perhaps, sometimes in March?” he asked.

I got the message. These are not the best of times for chit chat, in some Abuja offices.

The excitement building up in some offices in the Federal Capital over the temporary change of guards was somewhat overshadowed by the reported visit of an Otta General to the man of good luck. What could be the subject of their three-hour nocturnal chat?

“What is he coming to do here again?” I heard someone complain at a business centre in the Sky Memorial, Wuse Zone 5. “He will come and pollute this one again!”

By the time someone finishes making the rounds of government offices in Abuja, one goes away with the feeling that the last may not have been heard of this National Assembly Resolution that became law in Aso Rock.

Author

  • Ogbuagu Bob Anikwe, a veteran journalist and message development specialist, is now a community journalism advocate and publisher of Enugu Metro. Contact him on any of the channels below.

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