Ngige Has It! – By Greg Ikwuka

One standing irony of life is that human beings accord more attention to those noisy and dramatic, while soon forgetting those who consistently and quietly labour to upscale their lives and values.
It is not an irony that can easily be changed or amended, but it also serves as the true test for discerning ability.
In the red-hot media discourse on issues around the coming gubernatorial elections in Anymore State, one  writer had descended on every contestant –note not candidates because candidates come one per party and not two or three- lwf tin the Anambra State governorship race  but showed disproportionate sympathy for those disqualified.
In the flurry of reactions that was generated, many had seen the issues differently In fact one such writer was convinced that those who hold such views where those who harbour a sympathy for one of the candidates, mainly Prof Charles Soludo and Dr Chike Obidigbo who ended up becoming a second gubernatorial candidate for APGA, springing from the Maxi Okwu faction.
‘I have been critical of Solud0 in the past, but there is no doubt that he is possessed of the intellectual acumen, the political and professional experience, and well as the vision to be an attractive candidate’. Okey Ndibe wrote
Indeed Soludo can be a candidate of the future in the Anambra gubernatorial contest. But there is a proviso. He needs to quickly understand the terrain he is working quite early. He has made so many unpardonable errors and it is not too late to bend down and learn.
Soludo it was who after being chosen by the PDP National Executive Council without primaries, saw no need to get involved in finding a solution or re-inventing the PDP in the state, or in the event that the issues were intractable quit early to build another party.
He evasively waited for another election season and started his journey in the same rag-tag and crisis-ridden party he had no time to pay attention to, only to run to APGA when the hand-writing appeared on the wall. Yet Soludo did not see that his traducers would not stop if he went into an opposition party in the heat of electoral nominations. By now he knows better.
There is no doubt that Soludo that I know has tended to rely so much on the power tat the top (oga-at- the- top, to use the mad in Lagos NDCSC slang)). These steps are good for boardroom politics which Soludo may have been used to, but very bad for partisan polities which is about relevance in high and low places.  That level of disconnection form the rudiments of partisan politicking and particularly the Anambra State terrain has not prepared the former CBN governor for the u aces of getting elected. But he can learn.
Obaze’s case is messier, in that having stayed away from the country for 22 years,  he failed to register as a voter, or a  party man. He even failed when the opportunity came calling to resign his appointment as Secretary to the State Government, before taking a plunge in the gubernatorial race. Many view Obaze as being a victim of internal manipulation by those who were quick to re-appoint him after failing him.
The PDP currently has two different individuals, each laying claim to the candidacy. It is a very bad practice which has like many negative concepts lasted for so long in Anambra State while the people simply watch, gloss over it and count their fortune from the Grace God -modern day manna.
As a party PDP has not truly regained balance since 2003 when it mistreated and subsequently broke ranks with Dr Chris Ngige, then governor of the state, who teamed up with Bola Tinubu to form Action Congress (AC).
Many PDP’s strides after those moments have actually been achieved through all manner of rigging. Many attribute the multiple candidacy as one strategy of rigging which PDP adopts. In this wise, two or more candidates pretend to be quarrelling. They sell the message that the reason they are in a struggle is that there is something to struggle for. Each candidate picks up home votes in his catchments and at the end of election usually determined in court, long after the election, the winner must come form the PDP and the rest becomes a family affair.
So it is not surprising that while INEC recognises one faction of the party that produced Andy Uba as candidate, the other faction is recognised by the party and the legal battle has begun,yet again. But many see beyond the struggle to the personalities of the individuals and dismiss their struggle with a wave of the hand.
The same phenomenon has surprisingly played out in APGA where one Willie Obiano , hand-picked by Gov. Obi from his business empire is laying equal claim to the candidacy of the party as Dr Chike Obidigbo, Chairman of Manufacturers  Association of Nigeria (MAN)  in the South East.
In labour party, with all the money and the fanfare of an inexperienced, but inordinately ambitious young man and his hurried exit from APGA into LP to have a smooth sail, Ifeanyi Ubah has not been left to enjoy being the candidate of LP. Another gladiator, Comrade Peter Nwosu is laying ,equal claim, campaigning vigorously and working to summit his name in INEC  as the candidate of LP. It is not clear whether that influenced Ubah’s decision to launch his campaign ahead of INEC publication of the names of qualified contestants.
But the point remains that LP has to deal with the latest plague. But beyond the plural claims, Ubah recently surrendered his company the management of AMCCON ( Asset Management Company of Nigeria),meaning that he no longer owns the company until the money owed to banks ( reportedly N70bn) is liquidated. Not much is known about Peter Nwosu however inspite of his stout claim.
The only party so far free from this double candidacy as the APC, which incidentally have warned severally that it would not tolerate it. Perhaps that informed the party’s decision to bend over backwards to accommodate Chief Godwin Ezeemo in a direct primaries after it initially tried to arrived at its candidate by consensus. Both results produced the same person-Senator Chris Ngige, who beat in the Option A4 Primaries trounced Ezeemo by 63,955 votes to Ezeemo’s 9,564.
Ngige has acquired the reputation of being the voice of opposition in the Senate. He is one person who changes the course of devote with his experience and strength of character. Nigerians watched him do that during the anti-strike bill when the Upper chamber of the National Assembly nearly outlawed strikes by imposing the impossible condition of getting two-thirds majority of the votes of union members to go on strike. Ngge rose against it in chambers and it fell.
Ngige also characteristically resisted a lot of pressure local ad foreign, when along with Senator Obente whose Anti-Gay Bill Ngige co-sponsored, insisted that homosexuality should be outlawed. Many however try to argue that Ngige ought not to have tried to return as governor, but instead a president OR Vice President. Yet the beaded representative of Anambra Central says he is better off not allowing a vacuum of leadership at his home base.
He recently surmounted the vile propaganda to the effect that he did not contribute any bills in his tenure so far, a propaganda given life by a senator from PDP in the Middle Belt, which has more than a casual relationship with the Governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi.
Instead, Ngige has made his accusers look inferior by articulating in a I have just read all his works in the Senate so far, where he served in seven communities and I come to the inescapable conclusion that it takes someone who is workaholic and had the passion for his constituency that would achieve that much in two years, more so when seven months of that period was spent on distractive litigation from the Obi-Akunyili stable.
Unless there are no eyes elsewhere to see what I see from my perceptive the Anambra State elections in mid-November, if free and affair, is easy to predict in favour of Senator Chris, Nwabueze Ngige.