Nwoye Umeadi.
9 November 2009
analysis
Lagos — Anambra State is part of Igbo land. It is therefore relevant to start this clarion call with a well-known proverb of the Igbos which says, "A man who cannot remember the place where rain started to beat him will not remember who made fire for him to warm himself up."
Let us remember how the ills of the state started. Civilian rule returned with Anambra quite unprepared to receive it with self-confidence. This explains how people with questionable pedigree emerged as its kingmakers. However the first elected governor must have meant well for the state since it was him who most successfully tackled the problem of armed robbers. Indeed, the state was once commended by all for being the most peaceful in Nigeria. But this ex-governor had a serious problem, which stemmed from the way the Head of State who unfortunately, was of the same political party with him, was grooming a family of doubtful integrity into a financial empire.
The governor saw his state receiving its share of federal allocations of money by far less than what was due to it. He told his audience that the shortage was being paid to one obscure person for some contract job performed by him. He might have acted as a charlatan to some highly placed persons but was never known to contribute any useful ideas to be used in building the nation or Anambra State. And like all nitwits whenever they find themselves earning some large sums of money, which they did not deserve to earn, this fellow sewed a disgusting robe of a kingmaker and started to use it in deceiving everybody including the Head of State who was building him up. Thus, the Head of State was made to believe that the governor was not performing to the satisfaction of the party, which sponsored him into office. Every stone was turned to see that the governor was not sponsored for the second term in an election presently due.
In order to consolidate himself as a kingmaker - be it as bogus as it deserves to be known - he started to look for his candidates from whom he would select the next governor of Anambra State. Many Anambra State gentlemen who could come forward to remove this bogus kingmaker were now being intimidated by the fabulous wealth he was now using to buy all sorts of authority within a political party. But there was a medical doctor among them, who decided to descend to the kingmaker's level in order to be in a position to dismantle his bogus power. Remember, my fellow Ndi Anambra that one of your proverbs says, "You must be near a cheek close enough to be able to slap it quite effectively".
To show you, my brothers and sisters of Anambra, that there was a cycle of evil running your state at that time, this bogus kingmaker took the governor before the then Head of State who claimed to be settling the "dispute" between them. The kingmaker as if God was prompting him to expose his counterfeit nature to the world confessed to the Head of State that he manipulated and rigged the election to make Ngige- the governor. What the Head of State did or said is now what lawyers can call a matter which "need not be proved" in a Court of Law because it was "judiciously noticed". Thus going to the Head of State by Dr. Ngige and Mr. Christian Uba became necessary when the former, after becoming governor threw to the dustbin all what he signed for his kingmaker including an undated letter of resignation which was intended to be used in removing him from office if he "turned coat".
After resisting the kingmaker, Dr. Ngige refused to budge. Meanwhile by refusing to pay Anambra money to anybody other than the people of Anambra for whom it was meant to be used, he cleared all the arrears of salaries of over one year including those of workers and teachers. It was the teacher's strike during the former governor Mbadinuju which made Anambra State to lose one academic year. Schools reopened and hospitals opened their doors for patients. Even the roads in Anambra, which had no appropriate words to describe their unpassability, were unbelievably rehabilitated within a short time by Ngige. Car-owners of Anambra State- especially those residing outside the state now once started to drive to their hometowns and villages without entering private compounds in search of makeshift passages.
Nigerians can never forget how the Head of State planned to oust Dr. Ngige from office using a police officer who was commanding a squadron of a Mobile Police (Mopol). Anybody who has forgotten should ask the then Vice President who was the principal actor who led Ngige to beat the President and his protégées to a standstill. Ask Mr. Audu Ogbe who was the General Secretary of the President's party and he will tell you why he was plotted out of office. Dr. Ngige was later removed through the court having been "abandoned" for his obstinacy and refusal to surrender to the nitwit and "his builder". So rather than leave Ngige to continue in office in defiance of Uba's bogus whims and caprices, and restore Anambra to lost glory, the Court was now left alone to see the truth of an election- the rigging of which was already confessed to by the person who did it.
The Head of State, in his I am-your-god attitude towards the people of Anambra, said that he was going to give them a new governor in the next election. He told his audience that the person was the person he always saw first whenever he woke from sleep and saw last whenever he was going to bed. And who was that? It was the bogus kingmaker's younger brother, who had served as the President's domestic adviser. Helpless eyebrows were raised but as it happens always with a people, who have been successfully humiliated, nobody seriously challenged that naked insult even when all the people to whom it was directed got the bitter message of insult.
During what could be regarded as the campaign period of the election, which brought Andy Uba to the most short-lived tenure of a governor, serious attempts were made up to court level to establish his unfitness academically to rule Anambra State but as usual with many Nigerian disputes "Orders from Above" must have stayed any willing hand of justice to unfold itself. So Andy Uba, Christian's younger brother "won" an election he never deserved to win even when his elder brother was campaigning against him- telling everybody who cared to listen that people were saying that why he (Christian) should not be governor was because he was not educated. He asked his hearers or listeners to judge him and his brother who is less educated than himself who then should be considered better qualified to be governor. At one time he declared himself a candidate. How Andy left office is one of the happiest days for true and patriotic Anambra citizens.
You have heard how the Supreme Court cut Andy and his advocate to size when they tried to force them to reverse their earlier verdict. That's what everybody in Anambra should do and send these impostors to oblivion which is their place in a State which gave birth to some of the best academic Nigeria has produced. What will the following persons (both living and late) be thinking to see their mother state being disgraced by uneducated fellows? Azikiwe, Emeagwali, Pius Okigbo, Chike Obi, Chinua Achebe, Cardinal Arinze and uncountable number of professors distributed in several educational disciplines in many Nigerian and foreign universities?
Umeadi wrote from Enugu
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