‘’What holds men back is their sense of grand gravitas, not lack of opportunisms.’’
By Jimanze Ego-Alowes
TUE, NOVEMBER 13 2018-theG&BJournal-Simply put, Imo State gubernatorial race has taken shape. Barring any unexpected developments the big parties are PDP, APC, and APGA. So the question is who do we vote for.
Lately APC has come under severe management and internal cohesion stresses in the state and beyond. What is clear is that the ambition of the sitting governor Okorocha, to foist his in-law as dynastic successor has come to naught. And Senator Hope Uzodinma has emerged. Give it to Uzodinma, Imo State owes him a lot. If his political career started and ended only in his now successful effort in unplugging the planned for Okorocha dynasty, he is assured of our eternal gratitude.
And that makes his petition for being made a governor to be in the good books. But all Uzodinma did in his life and career is not the anti-Okorocha gambit for which we repeat the state is grateful. He is been senator and other things. But a penumbra patch zooms across in his past. As a businessman, if he ever was one, his past is too colorful. There is too much of a kaleidoscope of things he did or didn’t do, that are not the best a putative governor should be associated with. We are not culling for angels. We only ask that men come to office not as wondrous characters. So coming from a past of too much color and shades, Imo can’t risk the governance of Uzodinma.
APGA makes even an equally interesting case study of internal wrangling. And it so happened that Senator Ifeanyi Ararume who up until a week to, was a member of the APC, washed up. And just as he defected from APC to APGA, some wondrously again, he was rewarded with the governorship ticket of APGA in Imo State. There has been accusations of all kinds. It has been put on notice that the APGA party lords for instance sold Imo State to the highest bidder. And that brought APGA to its knees. Next, what was once a fairly cohesive party has suffered an exodus. Even those who can’t or won’t leave have let it be known that Ararume is strictly on his own.
But that is not our real fears. It is that if Ararume ever won the Imo governorship he will play an Okorocha. He is all too likely to decamp and join his old co-confederates. And they are in APC. That is to say to vote for Ararume may actually amount to voting for APC by proxy. Ararume is too much of a big center player to be an APGA – nke anyi bu nke anyi – man. Or perhaps it is that APGA, which has served the men of hidden ambitions as a cuckoo vehicle, should be exposed. Nearly one and all who rose with APGA have jumped ship abandoning APGA in shallow waters. There are no reasons to believe that Ararume will be any better. This is especially so given his many movements and gyrations across parties and party lines. In other words, to vote Ararume is to vote APC, even without intending it. It is likely to be the same Okorocha sleight of hand, repeated.
This leaves the PDP as the party, as the default choice, one way or the other. Emeka Ihedioha may not be a perfect choice, nobody is, but he comes with some valuable credits. As much as one can recall he is been PDP. That shows some character and dedication to a cause. Many may argue that it was fortune that favored him and held him back from moving. But how does one then explain Senator Godswill Akpabio? He too had the best of fortune on him, but is now left his hallowed hills for a new hunting valley, of APC. So it is not good fortune that holds men back. What holds men back is their sense of grand gravitas, not lack of opportunisms. Plus or minus, Ihedioha has shown a world of moral weightiness and gravitas.
Additionally, his party primaries have come without issues. Or at least, was one of the best ever. And there has not been any corruption accusations or sleaze on him. It is not that these are any guides to the future. It is just that there are no such guides. So we must make up with what the past of these contender-governors teach and tell us. So, if your past is that good we can risk picking you to help guide and guard our future as governor. One for instance is likely to bet that an Ihedioha as governor will not decamp to any other party – and sell off Imo state – to prosper his careers. With our experience that’s the man to go for in these uncertain circumstances. Repeat, that is the man to go for. These are uncertain times.
Finally, it so happened that of all the Imo senatorial zones, it is that of Orlu that we are fully seized of. The leading candidate is Jones Onyereri. Onyereri is a member of the Federal House. And he represents us. And all the reports are that he is such a great rep. Everybody is proud of him. We endorse him. This is especially so since it is agreed he is the only fellow who can beat Okorocha down to his pants. And finally bury his Okorocha’s delusion of being made Obi of Imo dynasty.
Did Okorocha plant or build APC in the South-East?
The rewriting of the past aka revisionism, is the hard drug all successful power mongers gorge on. After having successfully made power, some as thugs, some as something else, these men get to doing one thing. It is to launder their past, their shameful and sinful pasts as if they started off as saints and for the more audacious, as gods.
Now, Rochas Okorocha, the outgoing governor of Imo state and literary counterfeiter, ala iberiberism, is one such hell of a fellow. Given his miniscule exploits in APC and Imo State, Okorocha is going viral rewriting the history of APC and himself in Imo state.
According to the apocrypha forged under the Okorocha banner, he, Okorocha, built Imo APC from the scratch. Additionally, it is noised abroad by him that while he was about the onerous task of building Imo APC, folks laughed at him.
Now, nothing, repeat nothing can be furtherer away from the truth. In fact Okorocha neither built nor took part in the construction of APC in Imo state or in fact anywhere else in the known world, certainly not in Nigeria.
In all this we should be seized of one thing. It is that to build is not the same as to betray, just as to plant is not the same thing as to destroy.
The following are the details in issue. There was a House built by APGA in Imo state. That House is the twinned governance and government structure of the said Imo State. And Okorocha upon his petitions, was hired as gatekeeper and guard, aka governor. His brief was to make sure that the House APGA built remains in good and excellent repairs. And that ownership never changed. That is, his was to look over the affairs of Imo State and its governance in the light of the mandate given APGA by Imo peoples. And this had to be and remain under the cover, canopy and roof of APGA.
And a turn into his tenure as gatekeeper and guard, Okorocha betrayed himself and his Imo people. He sold them off for worse than a mess of dysentery. Okorocha just like the infamous Vidkun Quisling went about confusing his career as a business agent and hustler in Abuja where he is reputed to have made a kobo or two, etc. with the destiny of Imo peoples. Thus the security and well being of the House that was Imo State, which he petitioned and was hired as gateman and guard, was breached and compromised under his watch.
Under his co-conspiracy, Okorocha plotted and auctioned out the Imo House, whole and entire, to political highway men. These highway men came in under the trade name of APC. That is when APC invaded like thieves in the night, occupied and seized the House that is Imo state, it was already fully built. They and their internal co-conspirator-betrayers never needed to add one block. This is history as it happens and as Okorocha knows it. So to say that Okorocha built APC in Imo State is a contradiction in terms and an absurdity in reality. It is almost like saying that Lucifer when he compromised his destiny, just like the iberiberism governor, built the hell he fell to. No, like Okorocha and APC, Lucifer met a complete structure and occupied it. And began to rule in it. The fact is that a Lucifer like APC and the Iberiberism governor cannot just build anything. There are no histories they ever did. They can only occupy to destroy. Thus it may be said that Okorocha breached and compromised paradise into becoming hell. That is not building, that is destruction.
So there is no logic that may allow the claim that occupying a built house is the same as building one. Okorocha never built APC in Imo state. Okorocha merely turned over the Imo built by others, by APGA, to his highway collaborators, in advancement of his own careerisms.
Anyway, those Okorocha served to breach and occupy the Imo House of Governance, know that Okorocha had no mandate to so do. They know that Okorocha is in it for a game, for his careerisms and those of his gang of in laws and the rest of the scum. That explains why they are treating him like garbage. They have just thrown him into the dustbin of history and rubbished his ambition to rule the known world.
Jimanze Ego-Alowes (PhD) is Author and public commentator
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