The Daily Sun newspaper of Wednesday, March 12, 2014 featured a screaming banner headline on Page 1 entitled “Igbo Governors not united”- Okorocha.On page 6 of the same edition of The Daily Sun, the full story had a headline entitled:”Okorocha Laments Disunity among Igbo Govs”. The story reads thus:”Governor Okorocha of Imo State yesterday in Enugu State identified disunity as the major thing holding back the political advancement of the IGBO, disclosing that even the governors in the South-East are not at peace with one another”. As a keen watcher of the leadership profile of the governors of Igbo nation, I am really unnerved by this revelation of Governor Okorocha. Governor Okorocha has confirmed what we had always suspected and discussed in secret-that our Igbo governors are not on the same page with Governor Okorocha. The only caveat here is that Okorocha who most people accuse of stoking most of the perceived crises among Igbo governors is the one who has had the courage to announce to a global audience that there is disunity among Igbo governors. Could this be a case of ventriloquism- the art of projecting one’s voice so that it seems to come from another source? We have been discussing this issue secretly not out of fear but out of deference to the high office our governors occupy. We did not wish to set an agenda in the press that could tarnish the integrity of our esteemed Igbo governors or distract them from the serious task of governance. But now that one of them has placed the report in the full glare of everyone, it behooves the press to make it an agenda so that the matter can be resolved and redressed permanently. A revelation of such magnitude cannot be swept under the carpet.
This is an opportunity for Governor Okorocha to put the records straight in order to convince right thinking members of the society that, in fact , he is not the aggressor or the Chief protagonist in this play of ”The macabre dance of the Igbo Governors”. My data bank is awash with the reasons that impel most people to see Gov Okorocha as the one that is fueling the real or imaginary disharmony among the Igbo Governors. We in the Press could not discuss this in the open because each time the alleged conflict between Governor Okorocha and the others was broached, both Governor Okorocha and his aides would swiftly refute the idea as the handiwork of political enemies and hack writers who were sowing seeds of discord and acrimony between him and his fellow governors. Of special mention is his relationship with Governor Peter Obi and Governor T.A.Orji of Anambra and Abia States respectively which in the opinion of close watchers has plummeted and nosedived as there is apparently no love-lost between him and the two governors. So, Governor Okorocha’s open confession that the Igbo Governors are not united has come in the nick of time as a whiff of fresh air in an already asphyxiated ambience. So, since the open confession has come from the horse’s mouth, any journalist who uses it as a spring board to probe further will not be accused of playing the role of a fake/ hack writer or even a member of the so-called Ekeonunwa Journalists..
The pertinent question is:” Why do people suspect Governor Okorocha as the one stoking the conflict among the Igbo Governors”? The reason is not far to seek. The major reasons of pointing fingers at him are primarily anchored on two factors. The first is that he is the latest member of the Igbo Governors’ Forum, having become governor in 2011.The other three Igbo Governors became governors since 2007 and they will serve out their tenure in May 2015, while Governor Obi of Anambra State will served out his 8-year tenure on March17th.Again, before Governor Okorocha emerged as Governor in 2011, we did not hear of any disagreements between the South-East Governors. Another reason of suspecting Governor Okorocha as the obstacle to peace among Igbo Governor is anchored on a series of hostile altercations and ripostes that took place between Governor Okorocha and ,at least , two of the other governors(Peter OBI and T.A Orji) or between his aides and their aides. The first refers to a face-off between the aides of Governor Okorocha and Governor Obi in a public function where they argued openly as to who of their principals would sit on a controversial sofa. The story was that the sofa was actually allocated to Governor Obi. However, Governor Owelle Okorocha first arrived the venue and proceeded to sit on the sofa meant for Governor Obi. When the aides to Governor Obi insisted that the sofa was for Governor Obi and refused to release it Governor Okorocha, trouble started between the two groups. The organizers of the event alleged that they did not reserve any official seat for Governor Okorocha because there was no indication that he would be in the event. However, the problem was swiftly resolved but not before the general public had taken notice of the brawl as eye brows were raised and fists allegedly used by the aides of the governors. At the time the brawl erupted, Governor Peter Obi was not even in the venue as he had not arrived the scene.
Another flashpoint was the sudden closure of the Owerri motor park/ loading bay of the Abia State Transport Company, even though the Peace Mass Transport Company from Enugu State which was operating in the same premises was allowed to stay. The Imo State Government was alleged to have issued the order that the loading bay of Abia Mass Transit on Wetheral Road, Owerri be shut down. In what was a reprisal move, the Abia State Government swiftly issued orders to her officials to close down the motor park/loading bay belonging to Imo Transport Corporation (IBC) in Abia State. While this gridlock lasted, there were some unpleasant exchange of tantrums and finger pointing from the aides of the two governors. However, the issue was quickly resolved.
Another source of recrimination between Governor Obi and the former Anambra State Governor, Mr Peter Obi, was the statement made to the press when Okorocha arrived Imo State from a foreign tour. In answer to a question from the press, Governor Okorocha said that Mr. Peter Obi and Ndi Anambra were the causes of the political crises in Igbo Land. Governor Okorocha further said that the Federal High Court, Abuja judgment which sacked Sir Victor Umeh as National Chairman of APGA was a “divine intervention”. This is a very uncharitable comment from a governor who benefitted from the compassion of the top bigwigs of APGA at the time he was desperate to use the platform of APGA to run as governor of Imo State in 2011.Governor Okorocha was imposed on the APGA by the National Secretariat led by Sir Victor Umeh.This pitted Okorocha against Chief Martin Agbaso, the State leader of the party. In the long run, the Chief Agbaso- led local chapter of APGA succumbed and gave its governorship ticket to Okorocha. In a reconciliation meeting held at Rosy Arts Theatre, Ikenegbu Owerri to celebrate the return of peace in Imo State APGA, Owelle Okorocha publicly confessed that in his passion to have a platform to serve Imo State, he might have made some mistakes in the procedure he took in joining the party. He publicly apologized and thanked Chief Agbaso, who he described as a General who stopped his arbitrary move into APGA. At this point, Chief Agbaso said that he was glad to announce that they had finally reconciled their differences.”Chief Agbaso said:” I have never seen a man who has such high passion like me in serving Imo State. I will walk the walk with you no matter how rough the road may be.”At this point, they embraced themselves amid a rapturous applause from the crowd. In spite of this reconciliation, the Deputy Governor, Sir Jude Agbaso, was impeached in less than two years after his inauguration .He is the younger brother to Chief Martin Agbaso. Ordinarily, one would have expected that in view of the critical role of Chief Martin Agbaso in facilitating the governorship ticket for Okorocha, his younger brother, Sir Jude Agbaso, would have been given a reprieve from the impeachment saga. In spite of everything, Governor Okorocha watched while his agents in the State Assembly hurriedly crucified his Deputy Governor and brother to Chief Martin Agbaso on the grounds of reasons which are apparently neither cogent nor verifiable, more so, since even the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) gave him a bill of clean health on the issues raised. Is this how to manage and nurture comradeship in politics?
Another cause of crisis between Governor Okorocha and his fellow Governors in the South East is his comment when members of the Presidential committee on National Dialogue led by Senator OKOROUNMI came to Owerri to have an interaction with Ndigbo from Abia and Imo States. The Committee could not hold its deliberations in Owerri because Governor Okorocha said that” Imo State is not part of the National Dialogue”. Those who had gathered for the Summit were advised to move to Umuahia in Abia State where Governor Theodore Orji swiftly made adequate arrangement for the Committee to interact with the people. But for Theodore Orji’s swift intervention, the Dialogue Committee would not have interacted with Ndigbo in the two Igbo States of Imo and Abia. I am not aware of any summit with any group of people in IMO State where a decision was taken that Imo State should opt out of the National Dialogue. A top politician who reacted to Governor Okorocha’s decision to shut out members of the Dialogue Committee from Imo State said that what Governor Okorocha did was unfair to the majority in Igbo land who has been clamouring for the holding of the Sovereign National Conference. The veteran politician cited the case of EDO State where Governor Oshomhole expressed negative feelings about the outcome of the Dialogue but still went ahead to provide adequate accommodation and logistics for the Dialogue Committee members as well as the participants to interact in a convivial and conducive ambience. Even in the States in the North, most of the politicians were very vehement in condemning the National Dialogue, but they still provided adequate accommodation and logistics to enable them interact with the masses.Imo State was the only State in Nigeria where the Senator Okorounmi Dialogue Committee was not allowed to seat by the State Governor . If, in spite of this act of embarrassment, President Jonathan still went ahead to appoint an Igbo indigene the secretary of the National Dialogue, the President should be commended and not presented as a hater of Ndigbo.The comment made in the White Paper Newspaper of Friday, March 14th-March 16th,2014:12 which portrayed President Jonathan as a hater of Ndigbo is highly despicable and must be condemned by all right thinking members of humanity. In the column which was written by the trio of including the Senior Special Assistant(SSA) to Governor Okorocha,President Jonathan was accused of ignoring Ndigbo entirely in his appointment of the principal officers of the National Dialogue Summit. This is in spite of the fact that the Secretary of the Body is DR (Mrs) Valerie Azinge, an Igbo woman from Enugu State. In fact, DR. Valerie Azinge is from the famous Nwodo political dynasty in Nsukka and he is married to another Igbo man, Professor Epiphany Azinge, the Director General (DG) of National Institute for Advanced Legal Studies, (NIALS) Lagos. It is unfair for a cross section of members of All Peoples Congress(APC) especially the top aides of Governor Okorocha in Imo State to be spreading propaganda that President Jonathan ignored the entire Igbo nation in appointing the principal officers of the National Dialogue Committee. This is a malicious falsehood which is incompatible with the tenets of journalism profession.
A few days ago, the governors of the nineteen Northern States held a summit in which they took a stand on the National Conference. In their communiqué, they urged the Northern delegates to protect the interest of the North while making contributions in the proceedings of the Summit. A few days after that meeting of the Northern governors, the governors of the South East held a meeting in Enugu in order to review the developments in the National Conference. Governor Okorocha was neither present nor was he represented in that meeting.Yet, he was the one who told a global audience that the Igbo Governors were quarrelling. A typical Igbo person will not easily forget the folklore story of the rat in the home that passed information to the bush rat that there was fish in the house. I don’t know when last my Governor, Okorocha, attended the meeting of the South East Governors. Yet, he is the National Chairman of the APC Governors’ Forum and he does not miss attending their meetings. A short while ago, there was a meeting of the top politicians and eminent personalities from the South of Nigeria which held in Calibar, Cross River State. This meeting was attended by eminent persons from Yoruba land and the former Eastern Region but Governor Okorocha was conspicuously absent.In another meeting of the Governors of the states in the South which held at Enugu, Governor Okorocha was not in attendance.
Those of us who took risks for the sake of Owelle Okorocha’s governorship agenda in 2011 are not happy about these developments. Governorship goes beyond building of legacy structures and mounting airconditioners in the highways and manifesting a predilection for swashbuckling and combative disposition. A good governor is the Chief Public Relations Officer (PRO) of his state and he must strive to represent his state in critical caucuses. As a personification of his state and PRO, he should be personable, diplomatic, friendly, welcoming and courteous in his official mannerisms. He must also be a stickler for rule of law/due process, camaraderie and rapprochmore.
Aside the crises which Governor Okorocha said have riddled the rank of Igbo governors, his personal relationship with his fellow politicians in IMO State is crisis-ridden and in a state of topsy-turvy. The relationship between Governor Okorocha and his fellow politicians in Imo State, especially in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has become so acrimonious and rancorous that Governor Okorocha uses every available forum-church ceremonies, wedding as well as burial caucuses- to send fusillade of toxic and incendiary diatribes in the direction of his PDP opponents. Such scenes have become very rampant in Imo State. A good example of the near state of war between Okorocha and the PDP is exemplified by what happened a month ago when President Goodluck Jonathan visited Imo State to welcome top APC members who defected to PDP.The event took place at Dan Anyiam Stadium on Saturday February 22nd. On Monday,24th, the women of APC trooped to the Dan Anyiam stadium brandishing thousands of brooms-the symbol of the APC- and trooped to the Dan Anyiam Stadium to sweep off the footprints of the PDP members who they alleged desecrated the state when they organized an event there the previous Saturday. Addressing the press on the occasion, Governor Okorocha wondered why President Jonathan would come to Imo State to commission a group of people who had since expired and had no electoral value .Some of those Governor Okorocha described as expired politicians include the former two term Governor of Imo State and ex-Federal Minister, Chief Achike Udenwa. Others include two term senator and veteran governorship candidate, Chief Ifeanyi Ararume, Dr Obinna Duruji who was the first Commissioner for Information in Okorocha’s Administration; he is an Attorney –at-Law of the United States Supreme Court .He had served as Commissioner on about three occasions in previous administrations; another personality is Barrister Mike Ahamba(SAN) a revered and accomplished barrister as well as Barrister Soronnadi Njoku, the immediate past Commissioner for Justice and Attorney- General in Okorocha’s Administration. They were all in the APC with Governor Okorocha.However , As a result of irreconcilable differences and interminable conflicts with Governor Okorocha, these high net worth politicians defected in droves to the PDP, their original party. In the same vein, Governor Okorocha’s relationship with HRH Eze Cletus Ilomuanya and Chief Ralph Uwazuruike has nosedived to an all time low. The former is a prominent traditional ruler in Imo State and Chairman South East Council of Traditional Rulers while the latter is the founder of the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB).The relationship between Governor Okorocha and these prominent Imo/Igbo personalities has since plummeted to an all time low.Imo State has never been as factionalized and rancorous as what we now have in the political ambience.
It is pertinent to state that while Governor Okorocha was on assessment tour of Orlu Local Government Area recently, the Orluzurumee youths who were the main drivers of his 2011 governorship agenda s ignored the visit and organized a parallel event at a nearby venue where they condemned Governor Okorocha’s Administration and said a lot of negative things about the Administration. In the communiqué issued by the youths after the meeting, they appointed an academic, Professor Uzorma Protus, as a parallel Mayor of Orlu.They passed a vote of no-confidence on Mayor Esom Obodo who is the Governor Okorocha- appointed Mayor. They also gave series of reasons to justify their grouse against Governor Okorocha. Prominent in the list of grievances is the outright rejection of the naming of Imo State University at Ogboko as European University, Ogboko. The Orlu youths were vehement in demanding that the Ogboko campus of Imo State University (IMSU) should be named Orlu Campus of Imo State University and not European University. They vowed to fight the imposition with every energy they could muster. They accused Governor Okorocha of using state funds to build a private university which belongs to him. These were the very youths with who we worked together to actualize Okorocha’s 2011 governorship agenda; but today, they have become very vociferous and vituperative in denouncing Governor Okorocha’s 2015 governorship agenda. On a related note, Barrister Okoro, National President of Orluzurumee Group who spearheaded Owelle Okorocha’s campaign in Orlu in 2011 has since dumped Governor Okorocha and defected to Captain Iheanacho’s Campaign Group. Captain Iheanacho, a multibillionaire politician and former Minister of Interior, is a front runner in the Imo State governorship battle of 2015 and is running under the platform of All Progressives Grand Alliance(APGA).I will talk more on Captain Iheanacho elsewhere. The abandonment of Okorocha by a faction of Orlu youths and Barrister Okoro faction of Orluzurumee Group does nut augur well for Governor Okorocha’s 2015 second term bid . So, all in all, the summary of this thesis is that a politician who is immersed in the cesspool of interminable crises in his state(IMO) as well as his political region(South-East) does not have the moral high ground of pontificating on IGBO Presidency in 2015.Let us listen to great Igbo politicians like Mr. Peter Obi, former Governor of Anambra State and whiz kid of genuine democracy, who have made a case for Ndigbo to support President Jonathan in his second term bid in 2015.
In conclusion ,I appeal to Governor Okorocha to peruse my viewpoint entitled ”May this mega merger not submerge Gov Okorocha and the APGA”.Google the headline and read online.The viewpoint was written when Governor Okorocha indicated an interest to join APC. I advise Governor Okorocha to set up a think tank of eminent scholars who will guide him successfully in the coming months as the tintinnabulation of the 2015 electioneering tolls. He is making a lot of mistakes and most of his political appointees are even not interested in his 2015 governorship success. In fact, one of his top aides caused a stir recently when he wrote in a public document that he is not excited with his appointment as an aide to Okorocha. He also went ahead to state that even Governor Okorocha should have known that he did not derive any excitement by his being appointed an aide. In fact, the aide who made this statement was actually speaking the opinion of over 80% of Governor Okorocha’s aides, commissioners, Transition Committee members and the like. It is on account of this that I have taken the trouble to alert him on the need to forget the 2015 Igbo for President Project and consolidate his wobbly position at the home front. For Governor Okorocha, the 2015 Presidency is a mirage. His party, APC, will never give him the ticket because he has contributed nothing to the party. Governor Tinubu brought his party, ACN, and the six South West states of ACN to the merger while Buhari brought his party,CPC and Nassarawa State to the merger. His Party, CPC, won Nassarawa State in the 2011 polls. Governor Okorocha joined the party as an individual and has contributed nothing positive to the party. The major aim of the APC is to return power to the North; so, Governor Okorocha should not delude himself that the APC will give him the presidential ticket; it’s a pipe dream. They made him the National Chairman of the APC Governors ‘forum in order to enable him fund APC activities in the South East States. So, let the Igbo nation throw their weight behind President Jonathan Ebere Azikiwe to actualize his 2015 agenda, after all, President Jonathan, through his actions and inactions, played a crucial role in Owelle Okorocha’s defeat of Chief Ikedi Ohakim in 2011. I speak as an insider in Owelle Okorocha’s campaign war room. Ordinarily, the 2015 project should be a time for Governor Okorocha’s political structure to say thank you to President Jonathan for yesterday, so to speak. Although, I am a media professional and not a politician , I was deeply involved in the struggle to make Okorocha Governor; so, I am full aware of the sacrifices made by the like of Chief Martin Agbaso and the original APGA members as well as the various volunteers in order to facilitate the victory of Okorocha. It is sad that once he became governor, he turned a blind eye while the structures that facilitated his governorship were pulled down.
John Mgbe
