Austin Okolie’s piece “No Governorship Zoning Agreement in Enugu,” (ThisDay, February 26, 2022) was of interest reading. It did not only mark his venture outside the narrow precincts of the “Enugu Dream FM”, a radio station founded by his principal, Ike Ekweremadu in 2009 to fan the embers of his long-standing ambition to be governor of Enugu state, it also revealed a compelling flame of frustration in the face of all stark realities vis-à-vis the now manifestly fateful dream of his principal to become the next governor of Enugu State.
He labored to glamourize his principal as an all-conquering messiah, profiled his unequalled sense of equity, and even demonized the political leaders of the state for daring to call him to order in his maddening ambition. While it is always reserved for the dogs to bark at the enemies of their master, the fact however remains that Ekweremadu is walking all alone in his overarching gambit to govern the state by all means.
And for people like Okolie who chorus a repudiation of the long-established zoning principle and spread the lie that there was never any zoning arrangement in the state, or that the cyclical order of rotating the governor’s seat in Enugu State ceases after the first cycle, I hope they realized that there are perhaps only two ways to be fooled: one is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true!
Unfortunately, and perhaps unknown to Okolie, Ekweremadu currently bears a peculiar burden because there is no verdict more scathing than the words of a man standing in witness against himself! A few months after the 2015 general elections, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), set up a committee to review the circumstances that led to the sobering defeat it suffered, and to recommend steps that would help the party to avert a repeat scenario in future elections.
That post-election committee was chaired by him and their findings regarding the party’s loss was unequivocal: the major reason was its non-adherence to the principle of zoning/rotation that has guided the party over the years! Speaking after the submission of his committee’s report, Ekweremadu was even more emphatic: “Since the last president of PDP extraction came from the southern part of Nigeria, it is recommended that PDP’s presidential candidate in 2019 general election should come from the northern part of the country in accordance with the popular views expressed in the submissions to the committee,” he said.
To mitigate injustice and feelings of marginalization in the PDP, the committee also recommended that “the zoning principle, which has been the strength of the party, should be strictly adhered to as a matter of urgency AT ALL LEVELS!” (Vanguard, October 1, 2015)! Could it possibly be that Ekweremadu did not reckon that Enugu State is also part of the “ALL LEVELS” which was recommended by his committee?
Nowhere else has the benefits of zoning been more pronounced than in Enugu State, where adherence to rotational power-sharing/zoning has helped to foster an agreeable political climate that gives every section a sense of belonging such that it could indeed be argued that the committee possibly drew some inspiration from it.
Since 1999, Ekweremadu has held varying degrees of political offices; from Chief of Staff to a governor, to Secretary to the State Government, and a senator largely based on zoning! It is therefore simplistic for Okolie to parrot the lame argument that there is no single document detailing the articles of the zoning. The fact still remains that there is indeed a subsisting document on it arrived at in a meeting by Enugu State stakeholders of which Ekwereandu was a party and has been displayed by no less a person than Senator Collins Ndu. But assuming without conceding that there was indeed no single document in that regard, Ekweremadu as a lawyer knows that it is not all contracts that are written, just as it is not all constitutions that are written.
It is perhaps too late in the day for a practice that has lasted for the past 22 years to be casually wished away by the sheer disingenuous whims of some individuals. We talk about zoning in consequence just as we talk about agreement in conduct. You cannot have your zone enjoy the benefits of zoning for unbroken 8 years and claim tomorrow that it doesn’t exist. The democratic process is sustained by the respect the practitioners have for the process itself!
It is quite amazing to observe Ekweremadu’s overarching sense of entitlement in the affairs of PDP in the country. Mr. Okolie for instance questions why anyone would have “the moral high ground to say that someone (Ekweremadu), who literally laid down his life and political career to salvage the PDP post-2015 when many beneficiaries of the party’s years in power deserted it cannot have PDP governorship ticket. This is not even about a presidential ticket!”
Whereas we all know that Ekweremadu has taken more from the PDP than he could ever possibly offer, the question however is why is he not interested in the presidential politics of the PDP? Why is he running away from engaging in the national political discourse in such craven manner, but working insidiously to disrupt the harmony in his home state? To many observers, it perhaps speaks to the disheartening and somehow incipient recumbent timidity among the Igbo political elite.
Why would Ekweremadu for instance, after holding such high national office of the Deputy Senate President for a wholesome 12 years consider himself only fit to be governor of Enugu State willy-nilly? Why have Igbos suddenly become too timid?
Suffice it to say that Ekweremadu’s ambition to govern Enugu State has been a long-consuming passion that dates back to 2007. Indeed, the unforgivable sin he and his followers hold against Senator Chimaroke Nnamani is solely based on their perception that no one else was better deserving to succeed him in 2007 other than himself. And for not obliging him this passion, he has done everything within his powers to demystify Nnamani. It is doubtless that the greatest headache he seems to be contending with in his present scheme is perhaps the sudden reappearance of Senator Nnamani, and he is reputed to have sworn not to forgive Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi for bringing him back. That perhaps explains why Mr. Okolie would conclude that the only reason why Nnamani allowed power to rotate to the West Senatorial zone through Sullivan Chime was simply because “he thought that the latter would be pliable so that he could continue to rule Enugu State by proxy.”
Okolie insinuates that Ekweremadu would have as far back as 2011 become a governor if he was ever so desperate for it. But the truth is that he had always, without let, aspired but failed! In an interview he granted The Sun Newspaper in 2018, Sullivan Chime described Ekweremadu’s reaction to his decision to zone the governorship ticket to Enugu North thus: “Incidentally, I didn’t know my senator was actually warming up to be governor and when he heard that pronouncement (that it has been zoned to the North senatorial zone), everywhere; every paper was full of attacks from him, attacking me, saying when did they reach such decision? Of course, I ignored him.”
When he was further asked if Ekweremadu had any powers that overawed him, he again narrated how Ekweremadu came back on his knees and “pleaded and I gave it up. I told him it was not a do-or-die affair, but for him to go to the senate he must abandon his colleagues and immediately he did it, all the people he had planned with to cause trouble…” Vintage Ekweremadu! So he did not by any stretch of imagination defer to anyone, and even in 2015 he contested against the incumbent and was defeated! There was thus no way he “could have easily swooped on the governorship ticket”, like Okolie had claimed in his essay as though the governorship election was a sort of grabfest at a buffet table. As a matter of fact, those words further betrays the might-is-right mindset that has always defined Ekweremadu’s perceptions of politics.
What is obvious is that Ekweremadu is seemingly haunted by the reality of a life outside public office post 2023. As elite political offices go, not least in a developing democracy like Nigeria’s, occupants often tend to be carried away by the associated fripperies to the extent that life outside the bubble becomes too hard to contemplate. It may seem like a naturally-imbibed tendency, but it is dangerous if not tempered by the time-honored lesson that power is transient, and the knowledge that public service is also nurtured by the experience gleaned in followership, not by a perpetual sense of entitlement. But he should and has been reminded by the leaders of the state, to in the words of Anton Chekhov, that he who doesn’t know how to be a servant should never be allowed to be a master; the interests of public life are alien to anyone who is unable to enjoy others’ successes, and such a person should never be entrusted with public affairs!
Okolie even alluded to “competence” as Ekweremadu’s selling point in his current gambit, but I am at a loss at this gratuitous elevation. For a man who occupied the elevated position of a Deputy Senate President for a record 12 unbroken years, most of which were under a PDP government, and the Enugu Port Harcourt and Enugu Onitsha highways remained impassable, it beggars reasoning to see any validity in such ascription. If anything, he is afflicted by a tunnel vision of development. He would rather,driven by arcane provincialism, rather facilitate a road contract from the highway to his tiny Mpu village as if the whole of South East had by that elevated position not become his larger constituency.
Those who know the nuances of budgeting at the National Assembly would appreciate the preeminent position he held for at least 8 good years as Deputy Senate President under a PDP government. That these crucial roads, significant portions of which even run through his senatorial district remained unattended to, speak unequivocally about his so-called competence. So barring the reconstruction currently being carried out by the President Muhammadu Buhari government, Ekweremadu might just have occupied such exalted seat without facilitating the fixing of these all-important South-east corridors that adorn his immediate constituency.
Leadership is about legacy. A leader who apparently has little qualms about the political and cultural division that his ambition will foster should never be trusted. By openly disavowing an idea he had taken so much benefits of, and which has earned Enugu State much respect as a stable political entity, Ekweremadu has done incalculable harm to the immense regard people like me hitherto had for him as a respected voice of equity and justice.
No amount of sophistry can whitewash the self-seeking quest that his governorship ambition represents. After 20 unbroken years as a senator,Ekweremadu’s quest to stand against the popular wishes of the state presents an unfortunate visage of a man who has had it all but who has scant regard for gratitude, and who suffers from a paralysis of conscience. His desperate clamour against every principled reasoning is akin to a godhead that demands blood for propitiation which does not take palmoil simply because it is red! It’s instructive to note that all the leaders of the state across party lines are in agreement with this functional template. It is the resolution of the good people of our dear state and the consequences are so stark that not even the governor can change it. He should never forget that a people convinced against their will would still be of the same opinion!
