By Chuks Iloegbunam
Someone brought to the office a video clip of Tony Nwoye
“campaigning”. Since the man is the APC candidate in the November 18 Anambra
governorship election, the urge to view his message was overpowering, especially
as he had been rather taciturn since the contentious primary election that
threw him up as his party’s candidate.
*Gov Willie Obiano |
What was his governorship ambition all about? Decked out in a
dark suit, a cordless microphone appeared glued to his lips. “Willie Obiano is a thief,” shouted Tony
Nwoye. “His wife also is a thief.” He
mouthed this abuse for the second and third times. Like a repeater station, the
voice of an unseen fellow echoed his foul words. A few of his listeners
clapped. In a minute the clip ended. What an anticlimax, I thought.
Tony Nwoye’s sacrilegious tongue apart, there was the more
serious tenor of malicious prejudice in this unsubstantiated accusation. Was
his fulmination the sum total of the APC’s manifesto? One assumed that, in
soliciting for political endorsement, effort must be made to portray the
candidate as deserving of support. Did the outpouring of invectives ever solve
any society’s problems?
I immediately reckoned with the link between Tony
Nwoye’s diatribe and the standard fare of the PDP in Anambra State , that
has converted into a fine art the usage of the social media for mendacious
effusions. We will return to these aberrant behaviours. In the meantime, an
introduction of Chinua Achebe integrity is important.
When Abuja toyed with investing the distinguished novelist with a national honour, he struck a resounding blow for the oppressed, and demonstrated that real Ndigbo never put forward their conscience for sale.
*Chuks Illoegbunam |
In a letter addressed to President Obasanjo and dated October
15, 2004, Achebe said inter alia: “I write this letter with a very
heavy heart. For some time now I have watched events in Nigeria with
alarm and dismay. I have watched particularly the chaos in my own state of
Anambra where a small clique of renegades, openly boasting its connections in
high places, seems determined to turn my homeland into a bankrupt and lawless
fiefdom. I am appalled by the brazenness of this clique and the silence, if not
connivance, of the Presidency… “Nigeria’s condition today under your watch is,
however, too dangerous for silence. I must register my disappointment and
protest by declining to accept the high honour awarded me in the 2004 Honours
List.”
Well, Anambra has come a long way since the heady days of
PDP’s governance of the State. Therefore, Governor Willie Obiano was able to
deliver this proclamation last Year: “Ndi Anambra, when I assumed office with
my team on March 17, 2014, we took over a state that had no landmark
infrastructure and no clear-cut strategic vision for the future.
And perhaps more importantly, we met a state that was heavily
traumatised by violent armed robbery, kidnapping, child-trafficking and endless
cases of drug-related crimes. This crime-ridden scenario discouraged
investments and successfully cut off the state from the grid of modern
development. Ladies and gentlemen, my team and I inherited a state with an
average ambition but through strategic refocusing and a commitment to
excellence, we have repositioned Anambra among Nigeria ’s
leading states today!”
Now, Governor Obiano is seeking re-election, to consolidate
his administration’s legacy. The imminent governorship election means that the
elephant’s carcass lies prostrate on the ground, and everybody has reached for
their knife, to cut themselves a helping of its meat. Not surprisingly, there
are more than 30 candidates primed for the contest.
Of course, most of them are in it for keeping up appearances.
But Oseloka Obaze and Tony Nwoye, PDP and the APC candidates respectively,
deserve some attention, if only because they are of parties with some grounding
in Nigerian politics. You expected these dudes to say in concrete terms what
they would do differently if they attained the political power they are
hankering for.
Governor Obiano has restored the peace and stability of an Anambra State previously
reduced to a criminal fiefdom, as Achebe put it. He has transformed Awka into a
real capital city. He has attracted investments both local and foreign.
He has revolutionised agriculture in the state. He is taking
particularly good care of government employees and retirees, paying their
salaries and pensions and gratuities promptly and regularly. He has given back
to Ndigbo their pride. Now it is the place of those challenging Governor Obiano
for Anambra’s governorship to, at least, have the good sense to state what they
intend to do differently to further improve the lot of the people.
Instead they are throwing curses and falsehoods about like
confetti. If Tony Nwoye knows no better than to excoriate Anambra’s Number One
Citizen and his dear wife, Oseloka Obaze, given the fact that he worked under
Governor Obiano, should restrain the lying excesses of his campaign
loudspeakers. Perhaps, he has bounded himself up a dilemma, knowing that the
world knows that he would not be in politics today had Peter Obi not
commandeered him godfather-like into the gambit.
Even Peter Obi himself knows that the world knows that his
self-imposed objective of dethroning Governor Obiano is nothing to do with
principles. Otherwise, they would not aggregate and deploy mudslingers and
quasi-journalists in the demeaning fixation with interminable lies on the
Internet, the newspapers and frequency modulated wavebands.
I recently met with Anyanwu (Mrs.) Bianca Ojukwu who
professed an inability to get over Peter Obi’s betrayal of APGA because it was
in front of her eyes that he solemnly vowed before her husband, Dim Ojukwu,
that he would forever keep the APGA flag flying. How should Ndi Anambra respond
to the contingency of their salvaged state being handed over to the PDP?
Isn’t the prospect of the return of those that abducted a sitting Governor and
turned Anambra into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom too hazardous to contemplate?
What is there to say to the traitorous, the folks that see
public office as an exclusive club only for the initiated, who have no time to
appreciate that governance is about the welfare of the people rather than a
religion of rules and protocols? The good news is that Anambra’s choice in the
impending ballot is unambiguous. Ndi Anambra know the antecedents of the
candidates and the sleight of hand masquerading as godfatherism.
They know those others whose “good morning” should
inevitably induce a retirement for the night. They know that it is anathema to
ditch General Odumegwu-Ojukwu’s party and settle for an alternative that
grudgingly ceded to our people a miserable seven percent of democracy’s
dividends.
They understand that the equitably arranged zoning principle
that should see the governorship in Anambra South in 2022 will be irredeemably
compromised if unprincipled conspirators and recidivists forced the hardworking
Willie Obiano from office. Those are the reasons I will cast my vote for
Governor Willie Obiano.
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