Daily Independent Online.
*
Wednesday, June 16, 2004.
Ngige: Still walking the minefield of Anambra politics
By Chukwudi Achife,
Bureau Chief, Enugu
The popular
television cartoon series, “Tom and Jerry” typically illustrates
the political high drama continually unfolding in the southeastern state of
Anambra. As in the series, the battle for supremacy between the predatory cat
and a frail rat, is endless and full of intrigues. The clash of wits and wiles
are as exhilarating as they are exasperating. While the predator keeps
inventing ingenious and devious plans to snare and devour the prey, the latter
is not short of gimmicks that overawe and constantly nonplus its pursuer.
Governor Chris Ngige has survived two
major plots planned and executed by his adversary, Chief Christian Uba, to
unseat him. Those plots were however not only revolutionary and innovative in
nature but also resounding in their failures. In surviving them, Ngige made
history as perhaps the only one in his position to have waded through an
abduction by security agents at the behest of his opponents and survived a
court order made outside jurisdiction that decreed his removal by the security
agents.
But his troubles
are far from being over. Like the cat in the TV programme, his opponents have
changed tactics and the governor has to think and act fast to checkmate it thus
ensuring that a new episode in the drama is complete in form and content. Uba,
the ever-scheming and single-minded political overlord, appears now to have
dropped the swashbuckling cavalier style that produced the two world-beating
but vain efforts at removing his erstwhile political godson. In its place, he
has adopted a wholly political approach, which has seen him yanking off into
his own camp, two ‘field marshals’ of the Ngige’s resistance
army in a space of one month and the number is expected to go on counting.
Chiefs Dan Ulasi
and Joseph Okonkwo, who had formed the bulwark of Ngige’s resistance
against Uba’s onslaughts in two separate but apparently well-timed
periods announced their change of camps and did their best to discredit their
former leader while eulogising and apologising to Uba for the mud and slime
they had slung in his face during their days with Ngige.
Uba’s new
tactics is therefore to woo and entice Ngige’s strongest allies over to
his camp hoping to employ them in the next and understandably make or break
attempt he would make at ousting the governor.
He is said to be
currently working (and is reported to be succeeding) on the members of the
staunchly pro-Ngige state House of Assembly to lift the suspension of former
Speaker Euharia Anazodo and Nelson Achukwu who both played prominent roles in
the two previous attempts to unseat Ngige. Anazodo as Speaker had led the House
to support the governor’s abduction on July 10, last year and recognised
the Deputy Governor, Dr Okey Ude, as his replacement before
Ngige launched a
dramatic come-back and his loyalists in the House ousted Anazodo instead.
Achukwu filed the
action that led to the now infamous order by an Enugu High Court presided over
by Justice Stanley Nnaji directing the Inspector-General of Police to
remove the governor from office. Both legislators would definitely play vital
roles in Uba’s reported new plan to oust Ngige through the House. A loyal
Speaker would simply take over the government in the event of the Governor and
his Deputy’s impeachment by the House.
The ease with
which Uba could win over Ulasi and Okonkwo does not come as a surprise to many
analysts in Awka who had long suspected the sincerity of the two men to the
governor’s cause. In their political careers which date back to the
second republic, both men have maintained a habit of pitching camps with the
side that offered the most lollies.
Okonkwo was a
Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP) lynchpin and made fortunes under the then Governor
Jim Nwobodo of the old Anambra but spent no time in dropping the man as soon as
he fell from power. Ulasi, on his own, made name and enemies as a governorship
aspirant and campaign coordinator for a prominent northern presidential
aspirant during General Babangida’s turpsy-turvy political transition
programme. There are some politicians in both Enugu and Anambra states who
would prefer never to do any political business with Ulasi on account of how he
handled the presidential aspirant’s campaign funds.
The critics
believe that their support for Ngige in his face-off with Uba had been anchored
on an ambition to supplant Uba and Chuma Nzeribe as the political oracles of
Anambra State that were serviced with an almost unlimited access to state
funds.
They had hoped,
said the critics, that Ngige would understand their support in this light
despite the governor’s outcry against what he saw as Uba’s
outrageous financial demands which had precipitated the crisis. Their
calculations must however have failed in Ngige who had hinged his credibility
and the support he enjoys among the people solely on the pledge to end the era
of pillage and rapine of the state’s treasury by the so-called political
godfathers.
Early signs of
their frustration were noticed when they started grumbling loudly that they had
not been getting much from the governor for all their troubles. Ulasi himself,
while calling the governor an ingrate, admitted in his statement that he had
cause to complain to the elders of the party in the state over what he saw as
the paltry and insulting allowances Ngige gave him for official assignments.
Okonkwo on his own accused Ngige of plotting “to run the state alone and
run it down”.
It would not
therefore have been difficult for Uba who had long been probing for cracks in
the Ngige wall to reach out to them. The audacity, stridency and uniformity
with which both men sought to absolve Uba of the crimes they had hitherto
accused him of gave an insight to the level of their angst and frustration.
Their eagerness
to accept that they were “fooled” by Ngige into believing that
President Obasanjo backed Uba in the crisis for which they offered copious and
profuse apologies to the President and other party chieftains further raised
suspicions that the promise or prospects of goodies from that quarter may also
have played a significant part in their resolve to ditch Ngige.
Unfortunately for
Ngige, the duo’s charges of ingratitude against him are popular among his
close aides and supporters, including members of the House of Assembly. He is
generally seen as being too tight-fisted and insensitive to the needs of the
people around him. And in a state where an angel would even be doubted, it is
as good as calling him selfish.
It is Uba’s
plan to rake in as many as possible of these elements before he makes his next
move. The disputed issue of local government elections may have helped him win
over the remnants of Ngige’s sympathisers in the party hierarchy after
the governor snubbed a ‘harmonised’ list of candidates, which the
party was said to have okayed. That dispute, which Ulasi dwelt on while giving
reasons for his action, could well provide a platform for Uba to raise enough
crisis as to ignite the idea of a state of emergency which would certainly be
to his greatest delight.
For now, Ngige
still holds the ace. He controls the state purse, he enjoys popular support, he
is the one empowered to appoint a state electoral commission and so on- but the
question remains, however, that for how long can he continue to hold this ace?.
With “Jerry” (Uba), the predator cat, always on the prowl, who
knows what might happen next?
