By Haluchi Ikemefuna PhD
Through his recent interview on the charter of equity and the 2027 Imo State governorship election, Prince Bob Njemanze, a notable leader, an intellectual and elder statesman from the Njemanze dynasty in Owerri, has stirred up a hornet’s nest. I don’t know why my brothers from Owerri Zone quickly joined issues and began to shoot from all cylinders with the usual claim and lamentation that it is the turn of Owerri Zone to produce the governor in 2027. These reactions, rather than help our cause, have exposed our underbelly. Our competitors have seen that we are not proactive and pragmatic but reactionary. Worse, we find pleasure in hauling invectives on the man who took the pain to be proactive and point to the right path for us to achieve our goal.
It is on record that we claimed it was our turn in 2007. Didn’t we make the same claim in 2011, 2015, 2019, and 2023? Have we not started as usual with making another claim for 2027? What Prince Njemanze is advising us at this early stage is that we must change course; that mere claim that it is our turn, has not, and will not make us governor; that having surveyed the political jungle as an elder (Prince Njemanze is 81 years old) that we cannot go it all alone; that the need for a properly negotiated alliance at this point in time is imperative; that we must make a sacrifice by strategically doff-tailing with Okigwe Zone in order to realize our goal of being governor of our dear state in our lifetime. He went ahead to assert that it will be advantageous to us since Okigwe has a fellow whom we can adopt and support to win for only a tenure, and be cocksure that come rain or shine he will hand over to Owerri Zone. His hypothesis includes the fact that if we don’t start early to pursue a black goat before the night falls, we will not be able to capture it, and that Orlu has discovered this loophole and is poised to cash in on it once again. His language is calm, strategic, and advisory.
As an Owerri son from Ikeduru, I used to harbour the belief that we in Owerri Zone have been short-changed. But after digesting Ndaa Bob Njemanze’s interview and watching video clips, I have come to accept the compelling argument that we, as Owerri Zone, have been shooting ourselves in the leg. If we don’t take the new opportunity to support Okigwe Zone to complete their tenure in 2027 and then hand over to Owerri Zone to do our eight straight years, we might continue running circles and blame others for our self-inflicted injuries.
Our major problem as a zone is that we have not been patient and strategic in our quest for governorship. Political power is never served ala carte. To gain political power, one has to be strategic. Rather than face the issue, we prefer to play up sentiments and dance to the gallery, forgetting that politics is a serious business and sentiments don’t donate political power to anyone. Yes, we are media gurus, we have wonderful writers, we can weave words to abuse, attack, and clap for ourselves. My question is: why have all these not helped us?
It is a clear fact that the first opportunity presented to us was in 2007 when the governorship election was zoned to Okigwe Zone according to the 1998 agreement. Instead of supporting the Okigwe Zone to produce the governor, we claimed that the 1998 zoning arrangement was a PDP affair and thus was not binding on others. We saw APGA as an alternative platform and hugged it, but we lost the election. Some are now looking back to the same 2007 election and want to spin a new narrative that Okigwe Zone stopped Chief Martin Agbaso of Owerri Zone from becoming the governor in 2007. The purveyors of this narrative are mostly from Owerri Federal Constituency, and they know that it is false. Still, they push this defensive, face saving media narrative to balance the fact that we inadvertently stopped the Okigwe Zone in 2011 and brought in an Orlu man to be governor for another eight years. We found it easier to believe a man from Orlu Zone, hungry for power because he went to the church and swore with the Blessed Sacrament that he would do just one term and hand over power to our zone just to neutralize the fact that Okigwe has just another term before we take over. Very sad indeed. Didn’t the present governor when he was campaigning assure us that he will do only one term?
I have not been able to understand what came over us in 2011 – whether we were bewitched with occultic powers or we just allowed hate for an innocent man to drive us crazy. Why should an Owerri man hand over the APGA ticket that was with him in exchange for a mere deputy governor for his brother when he could have used it to run for the same election if we were strategic about the governorship? Why should Owerri, as a zone, mobilize for an Orlu man hungry for power and believe he would do just one term when the constitution allowed him to do two terms? Why didn’t our people exercise patience and support the then incumbent governor to serve his additional one term and hand over power to us? Which was the easier path: to allow Okigwe Zone to serve their tenure in 2011 or vote in a new person from Orlu Zone that has just completed eight straight years tenure to do another eight years? Lack of strategic thinking? This is where the rain started to beat us.
If what we did in 2007 was a mistake, what we did in 2011 cannot be considered a mistake. It was just foolishness on our own side. I am wondering why we didn’t have someone like Prince Njemanze to raise the needed alarm then. We were all carried away by the volume and velocity of APGA media. Notwithstanding that, we blew up yet another opportunity in 2023 when the elders council came up with a new charter of equity before the election and the governor out of courtesy made the political promise to hand over to us. If we must tell ourselves the truth, we neither believed him nor supported the idea before the election. We did not vote for it. Our zone, with all the nine LGAs, struggled to give the governor a meagre 98,600 votes. On the other hand, Okigwe Zone, with its six LGAs, gave the governor 115,124 votes. With our meagre votes contribution and the refusal of our people who contested the election with the governor to withdraw their cases in court, we need no soothsayer to convince us that we have shown no commitment to that political charter of equity.
One of the benefits of having good elders around is that they help society with their wisdom. Thus, they say that what an elder sees sitting down, a child may not see standing on an iroko tree. If the gravity of the problem facing our zone is not apparent to you, you will gain a lot of insight when you carefully listen to Ndaa Bob’s interview, and you will weep at our poor strategy. When we understand this issue very well, we will see that it makes no sense for every Tom and Dick to fall over each other just to say something to be recognized. The responses I have seen so far do not portray us as people who understand the issues very well; rather they portray us as people who have allowed their emotions to take a better hold of them, and we conveniently chose to insert a false narrative into the discourse. The more we do that, the more we face the nitty-gritty of the charter of equity as it favours Okigwe Zone.
Owerri Zone cannot make headway with our false claim that Okigwe Zone stopped Chief Martin Agbaso in 2007. In 2011, we in Owerri Zone led the propaganda that Ohakim beat a Reverend Father, but that falsehood didn’t make us governor. The falsehood that Okigwe Zone stopped Chief Martin Agbaso in 2007 will not make us governor as well. Ndaa Bob’s interview, where he asserted that the charter of equity should now start with Okigwe Zone for the 2027 governorship election, should elicit new thinking among our people of Owerri Zone because, so far, it stands out as one of the honest contributions to the discourse.
Ndaa Bob, speaking on the history of the rotational governorship in Imo State, noted that “Okigwe, as a zone, has been a victim.” He drew attention to the conspiracy that removed Ohakim from office in 2011 and also drew a roadmap for Owerri Zone to get a shot at the Government House, saying: “If we deny Ohakim his second tenure this time around and struggle for it, we will find ourselves denying ourselves that which every one of us looks forward to…So, it is better for us to look at the issues as they are and pair up, merge, and have an understanding with Okigwe. In fact, if you are talking about the charter of equity, that’s where the charter of equity should be – it should start with Ikedi Ohakim, not a loose arrangement that was made for convenience.” Ndaa Bob’s elder-statesman positions have not seen a counterargument yet, except for those who have decided to throw tantrums at him, leaving the substance.
The facts show that Okigwe Zone did not stop Martin Agbaso in 2007. By the time the charter of equity was introduced in 1999, there was consensus that, in the interest of equity, the governor’s office should rotate from Orlu Zone to Okigwe Zone for eight years each and shift to Owerri Zone for another eight years. The first beneficiary of the charter of equity, Chief Achike Udenwa from Orlu Zone, was governor for eight years. It was, therefore, expected that Okigwe Zone should produce the governor after Udenwa’s eight years for their own eight years. This is supported by the fact that the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which was in power at the time, ceded its governorship ticket to Okigwe Zone and accordingly produced Chief Charles Ugwu as its flagbearer, not Owerri Zone or Chief Agbaso.
However, in shocking disregard for the sensible 1999 consensus on the charter of equity, Chief Martin Agbaso showed interest in the governorship election with his flamboyance and sagacity. He allowed himself to be hoisted by opaque interests to truncate that brotherly arrangement in the pretext of running for governor, knowing full well that it was the turn of Okigwe Zone. As fate would have it, widespread violence in nine LGAs coupled with the appearance of Engr. Charles Ugwuh’s picture on the ballot in place of Sen. Ifeanyi Ararume, who had become the PDP governorship candidate after he won his case at the Supreme Court, forced the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to cancel the April 14 election and conduct a fresh one on April 28. The picture mismatch was not even peculiar to Imo State at the time. In Plateau State, a similar scenario occurred when INEC cancelled an election already won by Major Godwin of the Action Congress (AC) because the picture of Mrs. Zainab Abdumalik of the Democratic Peoples Party (DPP) was omitted. INEC conducted a fresh election involving former Senate Deputy President Ibrahim Mantu of the PDP and the two others, but Major Godwin won again.
In the case of Imo State, Sen Ifeanyi Ararume of the PDP from Okigwe Zone had approached the court to contest the party’s governorship ticket, which was already with Ugwu. The matter progressed to the Supreme Court, where Ararume got victory to fly the party’s flag a few weeks to the election. However, on the day of the election scheduled for April 14, 2007, it was discovered that Ugwuh’s picture was still on the ballot. It was a fatal error, forcing the umpire to cancel and reschedule the election. The fresh election on April 28 had Ararume’s picture. The election produced Ikedi Ohakim as the choice of the Imo people by an unprecedented landslide. So, there was no way for Okigwe to have denied Chief Agbaso a mandate he did not have in the first place, as he was never declared the winner of the election. Moreover, Agbaso’s candidacy was invalidated by an order of court prior to the election as a result of the leadership tussle between Chief Victor Umeh and Chief Chekwas Okorie, which produced two factions. When Agbaso presented his claims before the court, he lost as the Supreme Court reaffirmed Ohakim’s landslide victory.
Therefore, the false claim that Okigwe Zone stopped Chief Agbaso from Owerri Zone in 2007 has no place in Imo political history but is a figment of the imagination of some of our brothers from Owerri Federal Constituency who have surrendered themselves to be merchants of falsehood. Interestingly, discerning minds agree that Ndaa Bob has said it all, and they hope that we in Owerri Zone should listen to him and rethink our position and strategy. A word is enough for the wise, as Orlu politicians are gearing up to take over from the incumbent.