NDIGBO! NDIGBO!! NDIGBO please wake up now! Wonderful piece by this igbo man.. Read this APGA, Ndigbo and road to political perdition DECEMBER 31, 2014 BY UCHE IGWE The fate of my brothers and sisters from the South-East in the current political permutation is difficult to locate. I have tried very hard but I cannot get my hand around it. Without being patronising, it just seems that they are nowhere. Apart from waiting for a few crumbs to fall from the incumbent government, one can hardly notice a coordinated presence of Ndigbo in the Nigerian political landscape today. As a student of Nigerian political history, I have found this situation very surprising and in some ways both unacceptable and inexplicable. For a people that had many of their prominent sons and daughters at the forefront for the struggle for independence, one is very worried how they beat such a progressive and seemingly permanent retreat from national political relevance and prominence. Many will suggest that it was as result of the civil war. That could be part of it. The civil war generated a lot of bad blood and inter-ethnic suspicion and tension for Ndigbo among other entities in Nigeria. But that happened almost 50 years ago. Are the Igbo still suffering the hangover of war and are other ethnic groups in Nigeria united to punish them because they fought the war or are their political problems self-inflicted? Are the Igbo architects of their own misfortune? How strategic have they been in their political engagement and mobilisation? I will be inclined to the latter than the former that Ndigbo are the cause of most of their problems in the country since the civil war. The inability of Ndigbo to regain some prominence in the scheme of things is partly their own making. It is not unconnected to the fact that unlike other geopolitical zones, the Igbo have been unable to rally round a common platform. The Yoruba in the South-West did it with the Alliance for Democracy that later became the Action Congress of Nigeria which merged into the All Progressives Congress. The northerners rallied round the All Nigeria Peoples Party and the Congress for Progressive Change which later merged into the APC. The only political party that would have provided hope for Ndigbo to engage constructively with the Nigerian project, the All Progressive Grand Alliance was invaded by greedy, selfish and crafty politicians. The story of the rot in APGA is simply distressing. Since December 2004, the incumbent National Chairman toppled the leadership of the party by elbowing out the former Chairman, Chief Chekwas Okorie, through a judicial ambush, it has been one crisis after another, one litigation after another for the party. Currently, one of the party stalwarts, Chief Maxi Okwu, is asking the Supreme Court to set aside the Court of Appeal ruling of July 2014 and uphold the judgment of the Federal High Court of January 15, 2014 that says that the party’s April 8 national convention was valid. If he gets victory, that will render most of the decisions taken by the current leadership null and void. Besides this litigation, the tenure of the chairman should have long expired by the first week of December. However, in his usual gestapo style, Chief Victor Umeh afterwards assembled his loyalists to an emergency congress that he presided over where he surreptitiously proposed an amendment into the party’s constitution that granted him and his cronies an additional 120 days in office. Those who are familiar with the happenings in the party suggest that the chairman who doubles as a senatorial candidate wants to continue to take charge of the party until after the 2015 elections. In running the affairs of APGA, Umeh is famous for not tolerating dissent. For him to have his way, he stifled internal democracy in the party completely. The media is awash with his “exploits” in all the states where effectively two different factions are today competing to be recognised by the Independent National Electoral Commission after the parallel primaries. The case of Imo State throws light on the extent of confusion created in the party’s just concluded primaries. Two people are each laying claim to being the rightful governorship candidate for the party as two parallel congresses held in two different locations in the state. The first congress was organised by the state executive led by Prince C.C. Nwaka at the Jesus Family and Friends Hall behind NUJ Press Centre which produced Chief Okey Ezeh as the party’s torch-bearer. While the second one was organised by the same state executive led by Peter Ezeobi which produced Emmanuel Iheanacho. Although the Nwaka-led executive was said to have emerged through a state congress as demanded by the constitution, his rival was said to have been handpicked and singleheadedly installed by the national chairman. This impasse is almost replicated in all other states and may affect the electoral chances of APGA in Imo State. The intractable crises in APGA have continued to diminish the chances of expansion of the party in the zone. How can a party that controls only one-fifth of the zone speak for Ndigbo? Instead of investing time to expand the fortunes of the party and consolidate in the region, the party’s leadership is aloof. The last primaries were a sort of bazaar. Apart from formal and informal contributions received from aspirants, the governorship forms were sold at N12m each. The party’s Senate nomination forms went for N5m, House of Representatives forms sold for N3.5m while the nomination forms for the House of Assembly went for N1.5 million. In one of the states, the party sold more than 100 forms for the House of Assembly which amounted to more than N100m. Even delegates at the ward level were made to pay as much as N3,000 before contesting the delegate elections. All these funds accrued to a party that barely has national spread. This does not include subvention which the party is said to receive monthly from Anambra State. I do not want to make hasty generalisations here but I sense that the same things that have distracted APGA from seizing the opportunities to grow within the South-East are the same things that have hindered Ndigbo from forging a united political front nationally. Today, the biggest support base of President Goodluck Jonathan is among Ndigbo. If one may ask, do Ndigbo really have a stake in the Jonathan Presidency? What do they have to show for it except a few hand-outs who a few opportunists and political cheerleaders masquerading as leaders go to Abuja to collect? The South-East zone remains the only one that still does not have up to six states. Its infrastructure continues to decay. The Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway is still a death trap. The same as the Imo end of the Owerri-Port Harcourt Road. If you visit Aba, you will feel sorry for Ndigbo. The town has been abandoned for hoodlums. Most of the boys who used to trade in Ariaria market have all abandoned their shops and crafts to at best street trading and at worst kidnapping. The time for political awakening of Ndigbo is here. They cannot continue to be at the sidelines of Nigerian politics. Let us start by insisting that the right people lead the only surviving Igbo political platform, APGA. Year 2015 is by the corner and Ndigbo can no longer stand aloof for some political lightweights to keep parading themselves as Igbo leaders through political manipulation. Ndigbo should wake up and take their zone from these agents of transactional politics. PUNCH.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 20:19:43 +0000
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