Nigeria has over the decades experienced fires, with some successfully quenched by either the Federal Fire Service or any of the state fire services. But none has ever been politicized. Not even on January 24 1983 when fire engulfed the 32-storey building of the Nigeria Eternal Telecommunications (NITEL) company in Lagos, West Africa’s tallest building, and President Shehu Shagari proceeded on his scheduled state visit to New Delhi, India, rather stay at home in solidarity with victims has a fire been politicized as what we have seen in Anambra State in recent days because of the 2021 gubernatorial election. The Nitel fire was controversial in the sense that a fraud had been reported in the company and a popular newspaper columnist, Mr Ray Ekpu, had predicted that an inferno could occur there in an attempt by the perpetrators to cover their tracks. All the same, the disaster was never politicized.
Against this background, it is befuddling that the fire in Onitsha, Anambra State, which occurred on Wednesday, October 16, 2019, when a petrol tanker fell on the Onitsha-Enugu Highway and its contents spilled up to Ochanga Market through the open drainage has been politicized. Some have gone as far as recruiting unemployed youths to scandalize the Anambra people and their state on the social media, in the expectation that they would reap political and propaganda benefits from the demonization campaign against Anambra State. Only unconscionable politicians could do so. In the words of the Anambra State Commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment, Mr C. Don Adinuba, it is a mortal sin for any group of persons to seek to politicize the incident because human life is sacred.
Nothing on earth is worth human life. Certainly not political power. Former President Goodluck Jonathan cut the image of a statesman when he announced during the electioneering campaign for the 2015 general elections that he would never allow blood shedding in his quest for reelection because human life is far more precious than any political power. When he chose to accept defeat rather than instigate violence as many African politicians do, Jonathan’s profile rose on the global stage.
The supreme irony is that those using the social media to instigate what political philosophers like Frantz Fanon call psychological violence in Anambra State in the wake of the Onitsha inferno are members of Dr Jonathan’s political party. They are unfortunately keeping with tradition. The truth is that the Anambra State branch of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has always been very different from other state branches. For instance, it has always had at least three factions, each complete with its own state officers who claim recognition by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). They clutch contradictory judicial orders showing each faction to be the legitimate one. They also present different candidates during elections. During the National Assembly elections of February 23, 2019, its candidate in the Anambra South Senatorial election was the controversial Chief Chris Uba. Yet, Chuma Nzeribe, who is far more controversial given his role in the Bakassi Boys episode which saw hundreds of people killed without trial, printed posters in his hometown claiming to be the rightful candidate. Lest we forget, Chuma Nzeribe has consistently been mentioned as a key figure in every awful controversy in Anambra’s recent political history like the three-day mayhem of November, 2003.
The 1999 Constitution provides that cases arising out of elections cannot go beyond the Court of Appeal except if they have to do with the presidential election. Yet, Anambra PDP members insisted on going to not just the Supreme Court of Nigeria but—wait for it—the Ecowas Court of Justice, just to remain in public office after the Court of Appeal had declared their so-called elections fraudulent. It was most embarrassing to people with civilized values across the nation.
Dr Alex Ekwueme, the erstwhile vice president, was highly regarded throughout the nation. His leadership of the PDP in its formative years went a long way to give the party nationwide credibility and acceptance. But the Anambra PDP treated this statesman, great thinker and leader with absolute disdain. At one of the reconciliation meetings he called at Emmaus House in Awka, chairs began to fly in his direction no sooner than the meeting started. Of course, the meeting ended abruptly. When in March, 2010, the then Minister of Information and Communication, Professor Dora Akunyili, called a similar meeting for PDP stakeholders in the same place, chairs also flew in her direction. Security men battled robustly to rescue her.
The whole nation still remembers vividly how the then sitting Anambra State governor, Dr Chris Ngige, was abducted on June 10, 1983, by fellow PDP members in the state. His offence? He refused to surrender the state’s treasury to them. Dr Ngige had earlier been taken to the notorious Okija shrine to swear at about 1am to an oath of allegiance to the self-styled godfathers of Anambra politics, all of them Anambra PDP members. He was then the governor-elect.
Stanley Baldwin, the former British prime minister, would describe the Anambra PDP as a group of people known for power without responsibility. This term has been made popular in Nigeria by such fellows as Professor Pat Utomi of Lagos Business School, though it has gained global currency since 1981 when James Curan and Jean Seaton published a book entitled Power Without responsibility: Press, Broadcasting and the Internet in Britain. It was under the PDP government in Anambra State that workers were owed for several months and schools closed for almost one academic session because teachers went on a prolonged strike in a desperate attempt to force the PDP government to pay them. They were still not paid because the so-called godfathers.
Since the PDP was voted out by ndi Anambra, the state has been on an impressive development trajectory. It is the safest in the country, the most peaceful and the most socially harmonious. Going by the gross domestic product per capita, it is the fourth healthiest economy in the whole country. In fact, its GDP per capita places Anambra’s economy is ahead of those of Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Cote d’Ivory and many others if it were an independent country.
Ndi Anambra are by no means surprised that the same forces that held our state for years back through such practices as the irrecoverable standing payment orders (ISPOs) are fighting back to stop the development trajectory and resume their debauchery and buccaneering business. The great Professor Chinua Achebe described these PDP members famously as renegades and most Anambra people regard them as vultures. They have been regrouping, but ndi Anambra will never allow our state to be hijacked again.
Okoye wrote from Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, University.
