David Umahi: When Envy Rules Our Politics

By Ike Abonyi 

“It’s in the character of a very few men to honour without envy a friend who prospered.” – Aeschylus

*Umahi and Obi

Envy and jealousy drive political rhetoric in Nigeria, particularly among handicapped Igbo politicians. David Umahi, the former Ebonyi State Governor and current Minister of Works, has been mistaking envy towards Peter Obi, the Labour Party's presidential candidate for normal political behaviour. The minister's recent outburst against Ndigbo is a desperate and disingenuous effort to impress his political allies and gain favour from the Aso Rock Villa.

The 2023 Presidential standard bearer of the Labour Party, Peter Obi certainly possesses something political that most of his contemporaries in Igboland and indeed In Nigeria think they should be the one having. The question is, why should OBI’S unprecedented goodwill and admiration across the country be drawing for him this level of resentment even from his kith and kins. This is even when the benevolence he enjoys is earned and not awarded as it derives from his content, antecedents, and mien?

Former Ebonyi State Governor did not need the mess he worked into deliberately last week if he was not driven by a feeling of discontentedness on Peter Obi. 

Last week, he accused Obi of inciting the Igbo population over the 13 trillion naira Coastal Super Highway from Lagos to Calabar. Responding to the baseless allegation, Obi said that his position was that the project was not a priority at this time. Umahi knows the truth of Obi’s position has always been on the heels of Obi, ostensible.

As a supervisor of federal government projects that he obviously did not know how the contractors came about even as a Minister, Umahi didn’t need to buy other people’s headache just to impress someone.

Engr Umahi has been doing well in social media harassing engineers and contractors before the camera creating a picture of a hardworking technical man, a square peg in a square hole, shouting about laterite and sand. His window-dressing attitude as a Minister has been excellent. Then suddenly he chose to pour sand into his own garri by trolling an ethnic group needlessly apparently to impress his bosses who may be feeling bad and complaining about the ethnic group.

You know when a child watches his father complain repeatedly about somebody inside the room, the day the child sees the person in public he would do everything to impress his father by challenging the man, the child’s reaction would be based on the held feeling of his father about the person not on the spur of the moment.

It’s generally believed that among the things that set an Igbo man out among his peers in this environment is his intelligence and ability to deploy wisdom especially when he feels being used.

Engr Umahi’s intelligence took flight last week when he needlessly dragged his ethnic group into an issue that does not concern them. Although not a few were angry at Umahi including non-Igbo from all indications, he was not even bordered about the anger of his ethnic Igbo, or others, rather his concern was on how well his boss felt his trolling Peter Obi and his ethnic group put together. He feels very strongly that doing that will enhance his position in Tinubu’s cabinet because such falls in line with their desire to deride and cage both Obi and his irrepressible supporters within and outside the ethnic group.

The 13 trillion naira Coastal Super Highway from Lagos to Calabar for which Engr Umahi trolled Ndigbo needlessly is a contract deal between President Tinubu and his friends and confidants, the Chagoury Brothers aimed at making Eko Atlantic City owned by them remain the superCity In Nigeria. It doesn’t matter who or what should be sacrificed to satisfy these allies. Umahi does not know what exists between Tinubu and the Chagouries but he has dragged himself into it driven by two factors. One to impress his boss who wants the project at all costs and two to nurture his envy and jealousy of the high-rising phenomenal politician of this era, Peter Obi.

Engr Umahi has never hidden his envy and jealousy against Peter Obi. In 2018 when the former Vice President, ATIKU Abubakar as the Presidential flag bearer of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP nominated Obi as his running mate, Umahi as a PDP Governor of Ebonyi almost ran mad, threatening fire and brimstone. It took the intervention of PDP leadership to visit Abakaliki to plead with him that it’s the prerogative of the candidate to pick whoever he wants as his running mate. Even with the explanation, Umahi was still fuming that ATIKU picked Obi without consulting him and others in the South East. His disgust over the matter eventually resulted in his leaving the PDP to the ruling APC.

It would be difficult from whichever angle you are not to attach envy and jealousy to Umahi’s behavior in 2018 and 2024. He has his likes in Governor Charles Soludo and Ike Ekweremadu whose adrenaline rose uncontrollably over the rising political profile of Peter Obi. There are other lesser beings in their class in Igboland who have grown wrinkled faces thinking about OBI’S remarkable political ascendency but these three stood out more significantly. They fought Obi in PDP describing him as a greenhorn and extended it in Labour until the voters silenced all of them. Since Soludo wrote his first letter against Obi he has yet to release the second he promised because the backlash of the first is still hanging on him ahead of his second term bid in 2025.

On Ekweremadu, his last public outing in Nigeria before traveling to London to be hooked was a press conference where he said they would direct Igbos where and how to vote so as not to waste their votes on Obi, the rest of Ekweremadu's story is for another day as its needless flogging the person on ground already.

These are all in desperation to get at Obi who never indulges in name-calling in his politics, but only engages in issue-driven matters.

But anyone shocked at Umahi’s needless outburst should endeavor to look at his political trajectories and know that he has a history of doing anything to cling to power at all costs. Eight-three-year-old Elder Martin Elechi who brought Umahi to power by picking him as his deputy in Ebonyi state in 2011 has not recovered from the political upper cut Umahi gave him. Angry Elechi in 2016 had to reject Umahi’s car gift when he was owned 12 months of his entitlement saying what was happening in the state’s democracy was anthesis of what he stood for.

If dragging his ethnic group to Tinubu to increase his loathing for them why not. The lesser the number of Igbos around Tinubu the better rating for the few of them with him.

It would be difficult and Herculean to find yourself around Tinubu and stay long there as an Igbo if you are not publicly deriding your people. Umahi is not the first, we saw one Joe Igbokwe who has sustained his livelihood around Tinubu over the years by constantly pillorying his ethnic Igbo. Also, the other Ikwere Igbo called Nysom Wike who not only disowned his Igbonness but has gone ahead as Minister of FCT to target Igbo interests, why not if it pleases his master and helps to keep his job.

What is baffling however is the clear inability of some Igbo politicians to engage in competition. Igbos by their nature like healthy rivalry because it helps them to grow. That is why in the marketplaces, you find Igbos everywhere selling the same products hustling for customers in a friendly way but retiring to their joints in the evening to harmonize their lives and on Sundays you find them dancing and mingling together in their various town unions and clubs. They never allowed customers who patronize them to come in between them. 

Igbo politicians of this generation has a lot to learn from their businessmen and women  to grow and earn more respect. Even our forefathers never exposed their differences in public spaces like this.

I recall as a young boy in the Second Republic how the political heavyweights like Chiefs K.O. Mbadiwe, RBK Okafor, C.C Onoh, and the rest made fun of Shehu Shagari overlooking all of them with their names and resources to pick a 447-year-old relatively politically unknown Architect, Dr. Alex Ekwueme as his running mate in 1979. Heaven did not fall in the National Party of Nigeria, NPN. Imagine that happening among these avaricious Igbo political leaders of today.

American Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies, Anne Hendershott, Authored a book,  The Politics of Envy and in it, he provides us Igbos the points why this type of power struggle must be discouraged and nipped in the bud quickly.

“When toxic envy grows unchecked, it will inevitably destroy an individual, a family, a society even a civilization” He further argues that “envy cannot be defeated by politics and requires a heroic attitude to defeat” This heroic attitude entails that all concerned Igbo should see this trait as dangerous and critical and should sternly inveigh against it.  One fact that should border every discerning mind in Nigeria is that jealousy among Igbo politicians is a symptom of neurological disorders and insecurity which is not unconnected with the prolonged political marginalization of Ndigbo in the Nigeria space and which ought to end by now if anyone is still interested in one indivisible Nigeria. God help us.

*Abonyi is a commentator on public issues