Interesting times are here again, and I am enjoying every beat. It is a period when real and fly-by-night politicians mount the podium to propound real development paths; channel serious messages for keeps; display distorted understanding of history, if not rewrite it; entertain; ridicule the electorate’s sense of judgement; and finally justify the expenditure of their sponsors’ money.
Anambra State particularly typifies of all these tendencies in large enough numbers owing to the share number of aspirants that partake in the governorship race, or indeed any other office in the state each election year.
Do not misunderstand the point .This writer is one of those who stand up in defence of the number of aspirants on each election year in Anambra State seeking nomination and eventual as governor of the state. To me it is a testimony on the extent of democratic practice in the body politic of the state. By its nature and the culture of its inhabitants, Anambra State embodies the trait of egalitarianism. So it is natural for people of the state to engage in healthy competitions in various endeavours of life-from academic pursuits, through business, to philanthropy. Politics is not an exception.
The fact that all who are interested come out on each election year and the people begin the weeding process from public discourses through party primaries to the actual voting gives people the chance to drop from the race and support alternative candidates. Or as is often the case decamp from their parties to other platforms and still stand elections. This grade of roving candidates may score 10 votes or less in the whole from the state and it does not matter. At least the system has separated the pretenders from the contenders without hangovers that persist when people are prevented from aspiring.
History of recent elections in the state has left a negative image for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as the biggest house of potential decampees to other platforms for election into positions of governor and of course the greatest receivers of returnees to the party after elections without penalties. Instead roulette settles where it took off from for the sharing of appointive positions and the beat goes on, till yet another elections.APGA is joining this chorus of perfidy too. I hope no party else does.
But times do not stand still, and Ndi Anambra are confessing tiredness about politicians without fixed addresses. Many politicians in the state really have no party per se. They go to every length at the heat of an election to justify the prostitution that follows their practice of the vocation. You hear things like,’we are looking at personality and not party’. Some will tell you that ‘opposition politics is no longer in vogue’. And yet others will tell you that ‘what maters is for you to bring ‘’democracy dividend’’ wherever you are.
It is this attitude that makes mere differences in a political party hang thick, difficult to resolve and foisting avoidable tension on the state. Yet the protagonist who should be embarrassed or ashamed defends it, though tongue-in-cheek. Why? There is a system error that confers undue advantage on the promoters of this anomaly.
Alex Obiogbolu medical doctor and aspirant on the platform of the PDP was once asked in an interview with a monthly magazine how he expected to sail through to governorship with a party broken into five factions. As reported by The Pitch, Obiogbolu took a deep breathe and said the reason PDP is made up of many factions is the strength of the personalities therein and the fact that they have their own views about how things should be done. This the aspirant said makes the party different from other parties where one person dictates what happens. He did not say these parties where one person decides. But of more importance is the fact that Obiogbolu has not explained how he plans to turn his aspiration into candidature despite the factions, nor otherwise addressed the thrust of the question. His real answer lies beneath.
Only recently, Mr Mike Okoye, known more for being lawyer than a politician or public servant was confronted with the question of his party being fractionalised.’ One thing I can tell you is that PDP today, especially for Anambra State, whoever amongst us aspirants emerges; we all will step down and follow that person’ i.okoye said. But it sounds like side-stepping the issue because it takes a unified structure for a candidate to emerge without rancour. Besides, Okoye believes he is the candidate of choice because he comes from Anambra North which, according to him ‘has a bloc vote’. Suppose the candidate emerges from Anambra South or Central? The grounds are fertile for fractures that Okoye is either not seeing or is no prepared to own up now.
But Okoye did not see that the answer to the tricky question by the interviewer on how he planes to beat Chris Ngige lay more in what has prepared him for the office of the governor and not whether Ngige, came to power as a ‘nobody’. The argument of Okoye is that Ngige came to power in 2003 as a nobody and excelled, so he (Okoye),’the new wine in new skin’, should also be given power as a nobody, so that he can ‘excel’ like Ngige did. Nice, but how can you convince any Anambra man to re-invent the will, doing what was done four years into the latest democratic dispensation on the 15th year. Not likely!
But is it really true that Ngige came to power as a nobody? Let us return to that viewpoint, after previewing the presumptions contained in Mike Okoye’s answer to the simple question on how he plans to beat Ngige.
First Okoye is already assuming that he is the candidate of the PDP. This assumption brings the greatest goose pimple to followers of Anambra politics particularly from the PDP angle. Like Obiogbolu who would not address the issue of the PDP factions, Okoye by not seeing a united party as a major prelude to the reality of his candidature is already envisaging a situation where each of the five factions of PDP would produce one candidate and submit the name to INEC. Lobbying and power-play by Abuja will produce one assumed super candidate who will be recognised by INEC.He hopes the in the lobby and power play with his sponsor outside Anambra State. Danger! A non-Anambra agenda is already brewing.
Then litigation begins and continues till years after election to determine retroactively, most likely at the Supreme Court who the governorship candidate of the PDP was in the election.
In the process the ordinary voter in Anambra State loses the chance to assess the candidature of the person they wish to vote for to the judiciary. They loose the chance to listen to him and raise question in election debates. They lose the chance to asses his temperament and take pieces of information on his background and compare notes on integrity. They lose the chance to assess his programme against the resources of their state and above all each of the five aspirants who stand elections as ‘anticipated candidate’ canvass for and get home votes from five locations to place other law-abiding parties at electoral disadvantage.
This challenges the Anambra State electorate to begin to insist on their right to choice, by having only one candidate presented to them on one platform. To this end, if a party fails to resolve its issues and present only one candidate, and neither INEC ,nor the courts are able to prune the list to just one BEFORE the elections, the voters should reject all the candidates from that party. The devil you see and feel during campaign is better that the angel to be introduced by the courts after the fact of voting.
The second assumption by Okoye is that doing his work as human rights lawyer earning income for the upkeep of his family earns him the pedigree to lead Anambra State in the midst of many qualified by experience in public service, simply because he thinks his views agree with the personal opinion of an incumbent governor who represents PDP in another party. That Okoye did not dwell and deepen understanding with any materials that may be at his disposal is a sustainable minus.
The third and most dangerous assumption in Okoye’s surmise is that by coming form Anambra North Zone of Anambra State, he has a bloc vote. This kind of assumption led some governors and their external supporters in the recently concluded Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) ,and they emerged badly bruised and historically stained. Where in the history of Anambra State has Mike Okoye ever seen a bloc vote? No matter who offers him assurances to the contrary, or subjects him to surface-scary oaths, even the votes in his campaign organisation will be split. Besides, is the Anambra North Okoye refers to different from that of Obiogbolu, Emma Anosike, Chinedu Emeka and Stella Oduah? Or is it different from that of super candidate, leading 13 others by the nose in Obi’s faction of APGA?
Having addressed these three presumptions thrown up by his uncalculated answer to a tricky question, let us quickly return to ask if Chris Ngige was actually a nobody when he assumed power in 2003 as governor? Historical facts on my radar do not suggest so. Dr Ngige was at some point in his public service the physician of the National Assembly, then in Lagos, which was a breeding ground for all national politics. He developed his first contact in national politics even as his stethoscope made contacts with the body of legislators.
While yet in Lagos Dr. Ngige was elected the President of Aka Ikenga an Igbo Intelligentsia group formed in Lagos,but which soon impacted most Ndi Igbo In the globe. It was under him that the group influenced the composition, voting in and the agenda of the South East platform to the 1994-5 constitutional Conference co-chaired by Dr Alex Ekwueme and Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. They it was that canvassed through Ekwueme the principle of the six-zonal structure of today’s Nigeria. It was on this seat that Ngige earned the sobriquet ‘Igbo leader’, having established his clear visions and steered them to safe landing in a clear constituency.
He did not stop there. He soon became the President of Alor Development Union, through which he woke up a sleepy little town in the doldrums into a tiny unit of development, which fuelled the model later adopted in larger Anambra State between 2003 and 2006. Even as a public servant he had cut his teeth in his quiet influence on many far-reaching policies affecting South Eastern Nigeria. By the time PDP was formed, Ngige a foundation member became the Asst National Secretary and showcased his workaholic tendencies in driving the initial fortunes of the party.
It was therefore only two easy for PDP to call out a man who had cut his teeth and demonstrated what he could do with bigger power and responsibility when the party ran into deep trouble with Mbadinuju’s government. Can any organisation –never mind a political party-risk a nobody, who had been endorsed for the Senate to help it through a rescue mission and go ahead to insist on him, if his abilities were not known?
It is therefore absolutely incorrect to sum up that Dr. Ngige was a nobody when he came to power as Governor of Anambra State. If that is Mike Okoye’s driving force, he should gracefully settle down to building his pedigree, before he can stand up to be counted. It does not matter who is providing sponsorship funds and from what part of the Bayelsa State he gets his backing in this unfolding masculine race.
To sum up, the common good of Anambra State is best served by rejecting all multiple candidates, blacklisting any candidate that leaves his party after losing the INEC-endorsed primaries of his party .Ndi Anambra should read candidates in-between the lines, particularly as it concerns those sponsored from outside the state, and defend their votes to their last unit of time and energy, all in their interest.
