Imo’s political buccaneers
By Steve Nwosu ( e-mail: styveng@yahoo.co.uk)
I had made it a point of policy to stay away from the happenings in Imo politics.
The reason is not far fetched; I am from that state and there is every chance
that whatever you say or write would always be mischievously misinterpreted.
So even when one stutterer who can barely express himself begins to position
to be governor of Imo State come 2007, I retire into my room, get my belly’s
full laughter, but keep quiet in the public place. Who am I to stop a stammerer
when his own people ignored his speech defect and actually elected him to the
state House of Assembly to argue and debate on their behalf?
Now, this same man feels the fun has gone out of the state House of Assembly
and is now looking at the Government House. He would be joined in the race by
a horde of gun-runners, retired 419 kingpins, drug barons, rehabilitated drug
addicts, importers of fake drugs and one confirmed patron saint of armed robbers
in the race for Achike Udenwa’s job.
Don’t feel alarmed, dear readers. In Imo, we have the tradition of pushing
forth the worst from every family to try his luck at the governorship. Since
it is considered to be all about stealing, I guess everyone puts forth their
best thief.
And so, one of those in the race today is a man whose living room, during the
last general elections, was converted into an emergency polling centre - as
shirtless, hemp-smoking, red-eyed young men busied themselves thumb-printing
ballot papers and stuffing them into hundreds of INEC ballot boxes.
While they were at it, the lawmaker told a handful of us that the result of
the election was already known but that he wanted to ensure that he physically
‘delivered’ a particular section of his constituency that had refused
to endorse him or take his ‘election money’ and vowed they would
not vote for him.
He eventually ‘delivered’ that polling booth. For, his thugs would
later carry the fully stuffed ballot boxes to the real polling booths in the
town, fire a volley of shots into the air and snatch the original ballot boxes
and drive off – as scared voters run for cover, scattering in all directions.
The policemen at the polling booth, who pretended to have been taken unawares,
would then chase the thugs and return a few minutes later with ‘the boxes’.
They would beat their chests before unsuspecting voters, as having foiled another
attempt to rig the election. Voting would continue where it had stopped. But
as the voters punished themselves under rain and sun to cast their votes, even
the conniving policemen would have known that the ballot boxes have been swapped.
Welcome to Imo politics.
In my days as Political Editor, one of the Imo senators now posturing as champions
of the people’s cause told me the story of how Dr. Ezekiel Izuogu failed
to become governor of Imo State in 1999. And, surprisingly, it was not because
Izuogu did not step over a coffin – which was the mode of oath-taking
sanctioned by this infamous lawmaker godfather.
The senator regaled me with tales of how he had mobilized and was at his base
with all the ballot boxes (stuffed ballot boxes, that is) and Izuogu just blew
everything on election day.
According to him, Izuogu’s job was simply to be on the field and be monitoring
how the polling was going. If he felt he was losing in any particular area,
he was to reach back to the Senator (on phone) and the senator would then deploy
some of the stuffed ballot boxes to the particular area - to neutralise whatever
advantage the other party candidate had gained in such area.
But Izuogu, who insists on playing clean all the time, had mistaken the godfather’s
promise of supporting him to mean that this sly politician was talking about
helping to mobilise voters for him. He did not know that that promise of support
was to help outrig the other opponents.
Probably not having factored rigging into the calculations, Izuogu was so shocked
at the rape that was going on at the polling booths that he went from one to
the other, monitoring how he was being rigged out – instead of sending
SOS to the godfather senator to do something.
By the time he got back to base, it was already too late to deploy stuffed ballot
boxes to the areas the ANPP had suffered setbacks. To make matters worse, the
godfather’s base – results of which had purposely been delayed to
accommodate last-minute change of figures – could only be manipulated
to the limit of the figure of registered voters stated in INEC’s register.
It was too little too late. Izuogu lost.
Now, as 2007 beckons, the buccaneers have returned.
How do I mean? When President Obasanjo tactfully excluded Imo and Abia from
the list of states to benefit from the recent development plan rolled out for
oil producing states, the least I expected from the representatives of those
two states in the National Assembly was to take on the president.
But the opposite happened. Last week, I watched with utter shock as Senator
Eze Ajoku took his turn on the floor of the Senate to comment on the constitution
amendment bill and the extension of tenure for Obasanjo. Ajoku, who is a lapdog
of Senator Ifeanyi Araraume, told the nation that we, the people of Imo, told
him and the other senators that we are in support of third term.
I would be lying if I say the senators did not give us prior notice. A few weeks
back, the men had met in Imo and invited a horde of reporters who they lodged
in the country home of one of the lawmakers. Journalists had gone there thinking
that the lawmakers were about to take on the president for intentionally cutting
Imo out of the largesse for NDDC states.
When I got wind of the meeting, I even suspected that the lawmakers were about
to ask the people of Imo’s oil producing communities to begin to take
hostages and seize flow stations, as a way of getting Obasanjo to take them
seriously – since it is now obvious that it is only those who kidnap expatriates,
blow up oil facilities and shoot soldiers that Obasanjo feels inclined to talk
to.
On his own part, Udenwa had allegedly written a strongly-worded letter to Obasanjo
condemning the exclusion, arguing that Imo State was even more coastal than
some of the said coastal states, alleging that the ploy to push Imo out of the
NDDC had always been on the card. Udenwa was also said to have personally spoken
with the president on the issue – extracting a promise from Obasanjo that
he would take a second look at the matter.
But since all the senators see things from a lens different from Udenwa’s,
I presumed that they were not satisfied with his approach to the issue and wanted
a more drastic, more radical approach. I felt they were not satisfied with the
extra security vote money that Udenwa regularly commits to maintain peace and
calm in Imo’s oil producing communities and wanted the governor to let
the youths rein free for a while to prove to Obasanjo that what obtains in Delta
and Bayelsa states can also happen in Imo.
But I was mistaken. The senators actually met to thank Obasanjo for that exclusion.
And to show their support for it, work out modalities for endorsing his perpetual
stay in office.
The senators emerged from a meeting of their group to tell bewildered journalists
that their people had asked them to support third term. And to say that this
was the same Imo State I visited last Easter and met my kinsmen livid with the
mere mention of Obasanjo, let alone third term.
Incidentally, the senators’ only claim to contact with the grassroots
people that day was the daredevil ride of their convoys through the town –
under heavy police protection. So, where did the people give them this far-reaching
mandate?
Of course, to confirm that the pronouncement had nothing to do with the people,
a few days later, my kinsmen organised a burial for Senator Arthur Nzeribe who
claims to represent us in the Senate. He can live in Abuja and support Obasanjo
for the rest of his life, but for those of them in Orlu Senatorial Zone, he
does not exist any longer.
The people did not ‘bury’ Nzeribe only because he is backing Obasanjo’s
third term. Apart from the third term issue, Nzeribe has also presented himself
as standing in the way of the actualisation of an Orlu State (alternately called
Njaba State). Now, nothing can be more dear to the heart of an Orlu person (who
is not in Nzeribe’s clique of political buccaneers) than the creation
of that state.
Even the Ohanaeze, the Conference of Speakers of the South East and the South
East Governors meeting have all rated Orlu/Njaba as the first among three possible
choices of states to be created from the zone.
But the senator who once represented us, but has since become a dinosaur of
sorts, is joining forces with other charlatans from a strange land to canvass
for a state that runs completely against the wish of the peoples they claim
to be fighting for.
When, in the early days of the Obasanjo regime, Senator Francis Arthur Nzeribe
sneaked a controversial impeachment proposal into the pigeonholes of fellow
senators and the entire country came down on him, I rose in his defence. My
position then was that many people were more interested in the messenger (Nzeribe,
given his ABN and June 12 antecedents) than the message (that Obasanjo had indeed
committed several impeachable offences). The opprobrium that trailed the Nzeribe
observation would have been the reverse if it had come from another senator.
However, that act, till date, appears to be the only good thing that has come
from Nzeribe since returning to the Senate for a record fourth mandate. Nzeribe
has gone from tolerable to bad and from bad to repugnant. If he is not pushing
Obasanjo as a consensus candidate, he is going on suspension or is sharing Ghana-must-go
on behalf of some executive interest.
Things have become even worse eversince he adopted this his ‘aga akpa
ya akpa’ posture. Aga akpa ya akpa has now come to mean that there is
a price tag for everything – including the collective joy, peace and existence
of the very people he represents. It means that, at the appropriate price, even
that can be compromised.
But I suspect one thing, the Imo senators’ support for third term is a
way of soliciting Obasanjo’s support in the effort to boot Udenwa out
of the Owerri Government House by any means possible – even as Udenwa
does not stand out as the most outspoken opponent of the evil third term agenda.
Now, I don’t care a hoot what happens to Udenwa after 2007. I am no fan
of his government. I believe that many people around that government have an
inferiority complex that has restrained them from tapping from the best of Imo’s
rich human capital. Nobody with bright ideas and great pedigree seems to be
wanted anywhere near the government. But even if I was an Udenwa apologist,
I believe, eight years are enough for him to turn the state around. If he has
not done it in eight years, he cannot do it in 12 years.
However, I am appalled that some people who call themselves Imo citizens would
mortgage the interest of the whole state simply because they want Udenwa’s
job or that they hope to get a mash of pottage, for themselves, from an Obasanjo
who has not been too kind to Imo.
The last time some journalists tried to extract a comment from Udenwa on the
proposed Orlu State, he said he was governor of Imo, and not Orlu. That is a
politically correct statement to make. If he endorsed it, he would not have
committed a political crime either.
But if indeed, as Nzeribe believes, Udenwa is fighting him for not supporting
the call for Orlu State, let me assure him that the governor has the people’s
support. If Nzeribe thinks the best way he can get back at Udenwa is to instigate
the EFCC, he can be sure that the petition would only add to the 24 which the
EFCC says it already has on other governors. And even with Udenwa in jail, Nzeribe’s
campaign against his people’s wish would still fail.
There just has to be a limit to unbridled self interest.