AHEAD of the governorship election in Imo State in 2019, crisis has reared up in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) as the people of Owerri Zone have renewed their call to be allowed to produce the governorship of the state. It is the claim of the zone that they have been marginalized in the governorship of the state since its creation.
Shooting the first salvo, former member of the House of Representatives for Owerri Federal Constituency, Hon Uche Onyeagucha, who also served as Senior Special Adviser to the Governor on Political Strategy, resigned his appointment as the Coordinator of the State Development Council (SDC).
In the letter dated 18th May, 2017, Onyeagucha said “The reasons for my resignation are expressed below in as plain and simple language as possible to dispel every risk of ambiguity. Ordinarily, communications such as this are made through memos, but since it is common knowledge that you do not read such ‘irksome’ literature, I therefore chose to use this unconventional medium in the hope that your attention will be drawn to it one way or another”.
Okorocha wants to foist his son-in-law as next governor
According to Hon Onyeagucha, his reasons for his resignation included his accusation that the Governor’s “selection of 305 persons (one per Ward) as SDC members is a mere political arrangement in your desperate attempt to foist Uche Nwosu, your son-in-law as the next governor of Imo State come 2019 despite the fact that he is from the same zone as yourself and Chief Achike Udenwa.
“You have used SDC members to mobilize our people to fill out fictitious empowerment and other forms through the office of your son-in-law as a way to garner admiration and make the masses see him as dispenser of state favour.
“I am no longer able to allow myself to be used as an instrument against Imo State workers and pensioners. I oppose your current plan to extort Imo pensioners of 50% of their pension rights having previously extorted them of 30% of their pensions and other workers’ salaries. A state that is incapable of paying her pensioners and other workers, her Governor should not be moving around in private jet.
“I am no longer submitting myself to be used as an instrument to emasculate the State Civil Service which structure you have deliberately distorted and almost completely destroyed.
“Having fought against oppression and arbitrariness all my life as a Civil Rights activist, I’ve long observed that your administration has brazenly drifted towards dictatorship and despotism. Every effort to advice you in the contrary have failed. I am left with no option than to join forces with other progressive minds to stand up against your dictatorial tendencies.
“You have deliberately underfunded and emasculated our great party (APC) at every level. This is pronounced in the fact that no single branch of our Party in Imo State has a bus. Party offices of Wards LGAs have been ceased by their landlords because you have refused to assist them to pay rents. Our Party State Headquarters is only but a shadow of what the State Office of a governing Party should be. All appeal to you on these matters has failed, making us to doubt your loyalty and support for APC which delivered you as Governor of Imo State.
“You have impoverished all your political appointees who ought to be making contributions to fund and support our great Party. Precisely, your commissioners, advisers, assistants and Transition Committee Chairmen – past and present – have been paid peanuts that turned them to beggars rather than benefactors to our great Party. The situation today is so bad that every of your appointee who had been relieved of their appointments have turned into an enemy rather than asset to the Party.
“Your deception and continued refusal to conduct LGA elections after 6 long years have further worsened the development and growth of the Party and the LGAs. I challenge you to honor your word for once by conducting LGA elections in Imo State in September 2017.
“The State has suffered so much from your lack of planning and hatred for due process in the affairs of government.”
In a similar development, a former Commissioner and aide of the Governor, Chief Nick Opara-Ndudu, from Ezeogba Emekuku, Owerri, who also as the Chief Economic Adviser to the Governor, wrote a letter to him on May 29th, 2017, saying he wanted to give his “candid advisory on the 2019 Imo governorship election and issue of zoning or rotation”; an issue he said “has generated so much controversy in the past few weeks that I find it absolutely necessary to place my views on record for the sake of posterity”.
Owerri Zone has been marginalized
Chief Opara-Ndudu also said that the clamour to produce the governors of the state “has been most trenchant amongst the people of Owerri Zone who, going by the tenures served by previous office holders, would appear to have the most outstanding and compelling case in their favour”.
He added: “Just like the military that have governed the state for sixteen years since its creation 41years ago, by 2019 Orlu zone would have occupied the governorship seat for sixteen years – a period far more than the combined period that Okigwe and Owerri zones would have served the state in that capacity. When the people of Owerri zone clamour for the governorship seat, come 2019, they do so with these facts in mind. It is an aspiration that is grounded on unassailable facts and supported by the overriding tenets of justice, fair-play and even morality.
“In the past few weeks, I have heard some of our brothers from Orlu making the case for Orlu governorship yet again in 2019! Giving the foregoing facts, that aspiration, with all due respect to those our Orlu brethren, cannot pass the test of fairness and justice. I am aware that those from Orlu Zone who clamour for this position are in the minority and do not represent the opinion of the majority. Your Excellency, the minority that are in the vanguard of this project would appear to be doing so because of your pronouncements on the issue of rotation.
“Your Excellency, it is on account of this realization that quite a number of Owerri citizens have sued for utmost moderation and an abiding spirit of accommodation as we pursue this aspiration. We realize that we need the support of other zones to achieve this collective aspiration and it is our fervent prayer that, in the final analysis, justice and fairness shall be the overriding consideration in dealing with this issue.
“Regrettably, Your Excellency, those who refuse to see the value of morality in politics have jettisoned the role and place of justice and fair play in the scheme of things. They now claim, to the discomfiture of the rest of us, that Orlu people are the Fulanis of Imo politics who must rule the rest of the state in perpetuity. That attitude is not only inappropriate and unfair, but strikes tragically at the very cord of cohesion and unity that has kept Imo people together.
“When they make such unfortunate claims, Your Excellency, backed by such infantile logic and thinking, they forget that forging an enduring and cohesive union in Imo State is a far more beneficial goal than trying to act as a lord and master over other people and tearing us apart in the process.”
Why Owerri Zone is afraid
According to Opara-Ndudu, “Owerri people’s apprehension appears to have been exacerbated by the rather unfortunate encounters some sections of the zone have had with your administration since 2011. They point to the experience of the Owerri Nchise indigenes who have been progressively dispossessed of their lands through an official land acquisition policy that has seen them not even spared some land for cemeteries to bury the dead! Add to that an urban renewal programme that sought to dispossess them of their ancestral market without extensive consultations. On this matter, Your Excellency may recall my humble contributions towards resolving this issue which was sadly ignored. That is a matter for another day.
“They also point to the huge contributions made by Owerri sons to your emergence as governor in 2011 and cite your seeming aversion to their governorship aspiration as, perhaps, not recognising their contributions to the fulfilment of your ambition to govern Imo state.
“Your Excellency, when you ran for the governorship in 2011, over 90% of the key personalities around you were from Owerri. God forbid, if there was any calamity in the course of the campaign, a majority of the casualties would have been Owerri indigenes! Aside from providing you the platform, they rallied round you even when your kith and kin from Orlu failed to see any ray of hope or possibility in your ambition. If one may ask, who remembers Chief Martin Agbaso, Chief P. C. Onuoha, Dr. S. O. Amaeshi, Chief Henry Megwa, Senator Chris Anyanwu and motley of other contributors including Chief CY Amakor, Dr. Obi Njoku, among several other Owerri indigenes who made sacrifices in order that your dream of becoming Imo governor in 2011 was realized.”
“Onyeagucha, others blew Owerri’s chance to produce governor”
Responding to Onyeagucha’s letter to the Governor, a chieftain of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Barr Enyinna Onuegbu, described him as a zealot, whom he “saw and read his open letter and became amused over this unbridled selective amnesia of an Okorocha zealot.” He accused him of joining forces with other leaders from Owerri Zone to frustrate efforts made to make Owerri person the governor of the state after former Governor Ikedi Ohakim.
He said: “Ordinarily angry zealots do the worst damage like Judas their patron saint who was so trusted that he held ‘the cash as treasurer’, but then our brother’s (Onyeagucha’s) own is within the realm of selfish aggrandizement that is nauseating.
“As I write, the memory I vividly see is my friend and colleague Hon Uche Onyeagucha resplendent in his usual white and red cap riding along Wetheral Road in open truck with Okorocha celebrating their electoral victories in 2011 and in 2015. I also recall countless media publications and ‘Otimkpu’ efforts over the years.
“Finally I recall Hon Uche Onyeagucha telling me personally how he had gone to Okorocha in 2007 to plead with him to take APGA, sponsor it and run as its gubernatorial candidate unsuccessfully until [Chief Martin] Agbaso smartly took the opportunity. All my recollections would have not mattered in the present circumstances because repentance, change of opinion, association or camp is a constitutional right, only if Hon Uche Onyeagucha had firstly as a Catholic adopted a mea culpa mood.
“He ought to have first apologized publicly to Ndi-Imo and indeed humanity for his role in birthing this affliction called Rochas Administration that is founded on deception as a state policy, evidence of which abound in Hon Uche Onyeagucha’s letter. This is because Hon Uche Onyeagucha had been his political adviser and strategist over the years and cannot just jump ship or recreate Apostle Peter denials before cockcrow in our generation.
“No please it is unacceptable. We know SDC means nothing to majority of our people but it is evidence of the level [bad governance], otherwise high-level leaders like Hon Uche Onyeagucha were prepared to grovel before Emperor Okorocha when they accepted to be members [of SDC] ab initio.
“We are not amused that after helping truncate the near natural sequence that would have ensured an Imo State Governor of Owerri extraction after an Ohakim expected 2nd tenure in 2011 Hon Uche Onyeagucha is now purporting a toga of Owerri Gubernatorial irredentist without explanation”.
“You are a rabble-rouser”
However, in a sharp twist of events, the people of Owerri-West LGA, Imo-State, Hon Uche Onyeagucha’s kinsmen, have congratulated the Governor Okorocha on his sixth year in office, even as they disassociated themselves from the recent letter written to the Governor by their son.
In an address presented to the Governor on the platform of Owerri-West Stakeholders’ Forum during their solidarity visit to the Governor and signed by Barrister Lady Nnanna-Okoro, they averred that they were happy with the Governor and congratulated him on the celebration of his sixth year in office, saying “Truly, as democrats and poised to change the face of Imo State for good, we are happy with your giant strides evident in the developmental gains of your administration seen in the three zones of the state with our beautiful Owerri having the highest in terms of infrastructural development.”
The Owerri group also thanked the Governor for always remembering them in his various appointments and making their impassable roads motorable, providing of adequate security by setting up various security agencies, and empowering of youths and women in their area among other achievements.
They said that the purpose of their visit to the Governor was to disassociate themselves from Uche Onyeagucha whom they accused of towing the line of the devil.
“We will stand by you at all times because you have not discriminated in the allocation of resources and other democracy dividends. Owerri Zone nay Owerri-West have benefitted largely in all spheres of development,” they said.
Owerri group rejects zoning
Continuing, the delegation of the Owerri West Stakeholders Forum which comprised seven traditional rulers denied there was zoning in the state, assuring the Governor of their faith in political discipline, even as they opined that politics is competitive.
“Equivocally, we stand to state that there has never been zoning as far as the office of the governor is concerned. I, Barr. Lady Ugochi Nnenna-Okoro, as one-time gubernatorial candidate from Owerri Zone, contested alongside Governor Achike Udenwa who is from Orlu Zone. The records of the gubernatorial candidates from the three zones in Imo State contesting at the same time during the primaries as well as the main election from the other various political parties are there since the emergence of our nascent democracy”.
In another twist, while delivering her speech on behalf of the delegation, Lady Nnanna-Okoro reminded the Governor of his promise to make her the next Governor of the state, saying that she still has the video of the Governor making the promise.
She claimed Okorocha made the promise to her at the Government House in the presence of his appointee, including the former Secretary to the Government of Imo State, noting that they were jumping and clapping for the Governor.
“You too cannot be Governor”, Okorocha tells Lady Nnanna-Okoro
But responding to the claim by Lady Nnanna-Okoro that he had promised to make her the next Governor, Okorocha said it was no longer possible to make her the Governor of the state due to developments in the polity.
Okorocha said that one of the things he learnt from his late father was that he should try to keep his promises, but that in the event he is unable to keep to his promise he should explain to the person affected and seek their understanding.
Okorocha also thanked the delegation for their visit, saying he should be the one visiting them as a result of their love for him and his administration.
He enumerated the projects so far executed by his administration in the area, just as he appealed to them not to respond to Uche Onyeagucha’s insult on him, pointing out that Onyeagucha is his son and would soon come back to his senses.
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