RECENT happenings in Delta State suggest that the uneasy relations between Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan and Victor Ochei, Speaker of the Delta State House of Assembly, has taken a turn for the worse. What brought this state of play to the fore is the spate of kidnappings in the state.

What is to be done about the menace? Apart from the citizenry becoming more alert and the law enforcement officers upping their act, suggestions and moves have been made in many quarters to push for more stringent punishments for convicted kidnappers.

The death penalty for convicted kidnappers won the cheers and support of many Deltans. The reason is right before our eyes. Kidnapping in Delta State has hit epidemic proportions. The high is kidnapped; the low is kidnapped.

The public figure is kidnapped; the unknown quantity suffers the same fate. Whether ransom is paid or not, some kidnap victims come out alive, others are sent to their early graves. Almost in every case, the kidnap victim is subjected to humiliation and torture by the kidnappers.

It is known that a relation of Governor Uduaghan was a victim of kidnappers sometime last year. It is also known that the mother of Mr. Tony Elumelu, the entrepreneur, was kidnapped.

More famously, the mother of Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, was kidnapped. Even Speaker Ochei’s younger brother fell into the net of the heinous kidnappers. In this sort of ghastly scenario, prompt and decisive action against the criminal abductors of hapless citizens is the only sure measure to assuage the hurt of the populace.

Of course, the advocates of death to convicted kidnappers can only be understood, although there are people, albeit in the minority, who would have little to do with the death penalty, under any circumstances.

That is where Governor Uduaghan weighs in. From information in the public domain, both the executive and the legislative arms of the Delta State government deliberated exhaustively on this vexed issue of how to respond to the siege of the kidnappers. GovernorUduaghan, probably because he is a medical doctor (with a humanist streak) declined to lend support to the execution of convicted kidnappers.

The way I understand it, the Governor’s argument is that the death penalty is no longer in vogue, and has hardly been practised in this country for many years.Besides, the existence of armed robbery to this day in Nigeria proves conclusively that the death penalty is hardly a deterrent to violent crimes.

The Ochei-led House of Assembly saw things quite differently. Jumping on a private members bill, the House rushed through a piece of legislationmaking kidnapping a capital offence. “That is one bill signed by all 28 members of the House”, boasted Speaker Ochei in a media interview. “There is no way it will not scale through. If the Governor, by the time the bill is ready, does not give assent, there is a constitutional provision of what to do and I am sure he cannot discountenance the opinion of 28 members of this House.”

Now the issue that concerns me more in this article is not who between the Governor and the House of Assembly is morally right or wrong in the standpoints they have adopted. I am more interested in the matters of principle and loyalty.

The position of the Delta House in the passage of the Kidnapping Bill has set a terrible precedence in the annals of Nigeria’s democratic history because it is the first time a serving Governor would be given this kind of bloody nose.

It raises two questions. Where was the Governor when this Bill was passed? What did Hon Ochei think he was doing, given that he has been angling, aspiring and lobbying to succeed Uduaghan as Governor? In motivating the Delta House of Assembly to pass a Bill to which the Governor had expressly but confidentially taken exception before all the State House of Assembly members, Speaker Ochei is putting himself forward as someone incapable of being influenced, a politician who knows all the answers, who’s every thought is correct and unassailable!

Is that the way things should go in partisan politics? Whatever happened to bargaining and compromise and informed vested interest? Now, the Governor is also flexing his own muscles, stating that the House of Assembly lacks the powers to give him dictation on how to proceed with Police empowerment for the fight against kidnappers. All told, it appears Speaker Ochei has unwittingly shot himself in the foot. Of course, the death sentence for kidnappers’ legislation could stand.

But, what happens if the Governor refuses to append his signature to the death warrant of a kidnap convict? Would the Speaker sign it himself? Or would a death warrant have the force of law even if the 28 signatures of all House members are on it?

In the evaluation of intervening developments, Governor Uduaghan could lead himself into the adamantine conclusion that the Speaker is not quite the right candidate to succeed him as Governor of Delta State. Or else he will be digging his own political grave?

Mr. MARK ONOME, a public affairs analyst, wrote from Asaba, Delta State.