Enugu Back in the hands of Political Thugs is a witness account of assault and violence unleashed at a Ward in Enugu last Saturday.

By Ejikeme Ekpete

Just like other people of Oduma Ward 4, Saturday, 30t April 2022 started like every other day for me. Except that it was the appointed day for the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Ward Congress to elect three ad-hoc delegates. They will in turn join statutory delegates to elect PDP candidates in 2023 House of Assembly, National Assembly, and governorship elections.

I was one of the candidates for the three-man ad-hoc delegate election in my Ward.

That morning, I helped to set up canopies and chairs and was waiting with others for the start of the exercise. The Deputy Ward Chairman, Mr. Boniface Egwu (aka Egwueji) led a gang of thugs and cultists to tell me that they had come to deliver an “order from above” that I should leave the venue.

I told them that I bought form to contest for the delegates position and if they had candidates, they should field them against those of Senator Ike Ekweremadu’s supporters. Let the people queue behind the candidates to decide, in line with the PDP guideline.

They descended heavily on me with dangerous weapons, including machetes and started shooting sporadically in the air. People scampered for safety as the cultists and thugs, who claimed to be acting on the instruction of the Aninri Local Government Council Chairman, Hon. Benneth Ajah, dismantled the canopies and broke chairs.

I made a dash for my car to escape, but Boniface Egwu told them to block me and ensure I did not escape alive. At this point, one of the cultists used a pole dismantled from the canopies on me. I thought I was dead, I nearly passed out. They gave me a deep machete cut on the head, but I mustered the last energy to make a dying-man’s dash across the road. A vehicle could have knocked me down, I needed to apply the last drop of consciousness left in me to escape.

Our people then rallied and took me to a local hospital. I lost a lot of blood and many were seriously wounded. They snatched my phones, money, and other valuables, but what matters is that I am alive to tell my story.

Unfortunately, it not the first time Ekweremadu’s loyalists were attacked by cultists imported by persons of questionable character. These are persons imposed on our people as Council Chairman and principal party officers. On Saturday, 9 April 2022, cultists allegedly imported by the Chairman of the Council brutally attacked us at the monthly meeting of the PDP in the LGA in Ndeaboh, leaving many, including Member representing Aninri State Constituency, Hon. Chinedu Okwu (Otaka) hospitalised with life threatening injuries like broken heads from machete and axes.

Surprisingly, our Governor did not make any effort to ensure that the culprits were investigated and possibly prosecuted. The Governor merely invited the two parties to the Government House, after the wounded had recovered, and came out with a statement that he reconciled them. Government reconciked the wilful attempted murderers and those they attempted to murder.

This slap on the wrist must have emboldened them for last Saturday’s repeat violence.

We’ll soldier on

But come what may, for me and every right-thinking Aninri and Enugu progressive, we are now even more resolved to support Ekweremadu to emerge Governor in 2023. The atrocities of a few Aninri men, who have hired themselves out for loaves of bread will not deter us. These are the same people who unsuccessfully petitioned to the Federal Government to stop work on the now completed and life-transforming Nenwe-Oduma-Uburu Road attracted by Ikeoha. They will not define us or our love for Ikeoha.

Interestingly, we now know that Oduma Ward 4 was not an isolated case of the fraud, manipulations, parallel congresses, and violence that happened on Saturday. I have seen video clips of what happened at Awgu Ward 2 where the Council Chairman, Pedro Nwankwo, not being on ground and unable to democratically deliver a three-man delegate in his Ward as a second-term Chairman, imported hordes of bad boys to attack his people and attempted to scatter the process. Many party supporters, including the Awgu Local Government PDP, who share the same Ward as Pedro, were attacked and their phones confiscated for recording the shameful political violence.

I have equally seen the pictures of the inhumanity meted on one Bertrand Ugwu by government-sponsored Neighbourhood Watch at Ugbaike, Enugu Ezike, Igboeze North LGA. His crime is the mere fact that he was among the many Ekweremadu supporters in the LGA. His head was sliced. Sadly enough, reports allege that this was at the instance of a Council official and a Commissioner from the area running for the House of Representatives.

I have equally seen the trending video from Agba Umana Ward in Ezeagu LGA where a House of Assembly aspirant was carrying about a pump action riffle, intimidating his people. He was allegedly acting in league with a highly paced Enugu Government official running for the House of Representatives.

All these attacks, intimidations and violence boils down to the disregard for the party’s guideline and democratic process by the Prince Vincent Yandev Amaabai-led Abuja panel. Working hands-in-gloves with the state authorities and state PDP leadership, they failed or refused to conduct a credible and transparent congress. No result sheet was found in any of the 260 Wards, as none was released.

Obviously, the trio of the Abuja panel, Enugu State Government, and the Enugu State PDP leadership, wasn’t prepared for any transparent exercise. Their people boasted that they already had a prepared list of delegates, which they were entering in the results sheets that should have gone to the Wards; that the panel would take the fake “results” to Abuja and there was nothing anybody could do about it.

So, apparently, they were surprised that people, mostly Ekweremadu’s supporters, mobilised to the 260 Wards in their numbers for the exercise. In the absence of the official result sheets, the results were recorded on sheets of paper. In most cases, the Ward Chairman, Ward Secretary, and the INEC staff signed the outcomes. In many instances also, party officials, following desperate calls from their bosses at the top, who didn’t see that coming, declined to record or sign the results.

Not ready for any congresses, they deployed thugs, armed party operatives, cultists, and party officials, state appointees, and Council Chairmen to destabilise the process in favour of the results being compiled in the cosy comforts of a hotel behind the Government House.

In the meantime, the violence that marred the congress in many Wards have validated the alarm raised in March by the Ikeoha Campaign Organisation over what it described as “the appointment of known deadly thugs and cultists into state and local government offices all aimed at intimidating and stopping Ekweremadu”.

The campaign organisation also reported other excesses like the the intimidation of Ekweremadu’s supporters by agents of state, including the detention in prison of Paulinus Ugwu, the PDP Ward Chairman for Okpatu; the detention and subsequent charge to court for baseless offences of Joshua Ogbonna, Francis Akpa, and Obi Mamah; the ostracisation of Barrister Emeka Asogwa, Engr. Armstrong Agbo, and Chief Charles Mbah all from Ugwuanyi’s hometown, Orba, Udenu LGA, for reasons of their association with and commitment to Senator Ike Ekweremadu.

Yet they claim that Enugu is in the hands of God. But the violence that headlined the last Saturday’s exercise, the return of thuggery, and political violence in Enugu which we thought former governor Sullivan Chime had swept away from our political engagement and culture, is not only a dangerous foretaste of the things to come in the PDP primaries. It further underlines the fact that contrary to the peaceful and democratic pretenses, Enugu is back in the hands of thugs and cultists.

This is particularly unfortunate for a state already battling serious insecurity. It is one thing to give the monkey a calabash of water and another to retrieve the calabash after the elections when the monkey is done drinking.

Ekpete, a lawyer, writes from Enugu

in the hands of Political Thugs

Hippolytus Onah says that we should allow Gov Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi to anoint a successor from Isi-Uzo LGA and argues why.

Where were you when Ex-Governor Chimaroke Nnamani from Enugu cultural zone anointed Barr. Sullivan Chime from the Cultural zone Governor for another eight years after his own eight years? Not only did he make an Enugu cultural zone man Governor, but also made another Enugu cultural zone man from his own Nkanu part of that Cultural zone Deputy Governor to Governor Sullivan.

Did your sanctimonious sermons and avowed conscience of “rationality” go on French leave then? You didn’t know that those who maintained silence in the face of those injustices have so much to say? Look, stop being clever by half and face reality.

When Abakaliki Senatorial zone left Enugu state to form Ebonyi State with part of our Igbo brothers and sisters in then Abia state (including His Excellency Dr. Ogbonnia Onu, the first Executive Governor of Abia state,) can you tell me who went to Abuja and divided old Enugu Senatorial zone into Enugu-East Senatorial zone and Enugu-West Senatorial zone and left Nsukka Senatorial zone that has the largest human population and land mass into one Senatorial zone and changed its name without consulting the people of Nsukka to a totally strange name Enugu-North Senatorial zone? The three persons that did that terrible injustice are Chief Jim Ifeanyichukwu Nwobodo (Nkanu,) Prof. Ukpabi (Awgu,) and Chief Silas Ilo (Ezeagu.) All three are one-sidedly from Enugu cultural zone and cousins! They never included any Nsukka cultural zone in the decision making process in a sociopolitical issue equally owned by Nsukka Senatorial zone and Enugu Senatorial zone at the exit of Abakaliki Senatorial zone that made for Governor Okwesilieze Nwodoo’s popular cliche “Triangular Equilibrium!”

If you were from Enugu state and were to be born an Nsukka man who watched all these selfishness and marginalization against your people by those who forgot that power is merely transient, how would you truly feel being treated the way you just read me? I have to assume you may know little or nothing about the way and manner the power before now treated the Nsukka land and people.

Just be guided. Look at another truth to watch: Nsukka LGA is one of the largest and oldest Local Government Council Areas in Nigeria today that has not been subdivided. Do you know why? Because the trio of Jim, Ukpabi and Ilo in a bid to create artificial majority for their old Enugu Senatorial zone had to subdivide Enugu Local Government Council Area into Enugu-North LGA, Enugu-East LGA and Enugu-South LGA and carried the subdivision meant for Nsukka LGA and gave it to Nkanu and Awgu LGAs, and they now have Nkanu-East, Nkanu-West and Awgu LGA and Aninri LGA. Then to deplete Nsukka Senatorial zone to remain one Senatorial zone, to make old Enugu Senatorial zone to rule for 16 years and old Nsukka Senatorial zone to rule (if allowed at all,) for only 8 years, the three musketeers of Jim, Ukpabi and Ilo, removed Isi-uzo LGA from old Nsukka Senatorial zone and added them to their new Enugu-East Senatorial zone to make up the needed six Local Government Council Areas for the creation of a third Senatorial zone as expected in every state of the Federation, claiming Isi-uzo people ancestrally were one and the same Nkanu people!

So, how come today, the same people who used Isi-uzo people to secure two Senatorial zones against Nsukka Senatorial zone, claiming Isi-uzo was ancestrally Nkanu like Ugwuogo and the entire Nike people when it was convenient are now singing a different tune when it is now their turn to make one of their own Governor in the rightful turn of their Enugu-East Senatorial zone?

Is this the case of hunter’s dog and the game the dog caught? Good to use the dog to catch games, but not good to partake in eating the meat when it is done, but has to wait for the bones. The axiom goes that a patient dog, eats the fattest bone. Not the fattest flesh!

My dear brother, would you still say who amongst Enugu and Nsukka looked for trouble and do you still have anything against Nsukka people as to why they feel today the way they feel? His Excellency Governor Ifeanyichukwu Ugwuanyi is yet to speak and the birds on slim ropes are already beginning to dance “Benue’s Swange and River’s Owigiri.” My question is, if not that same swollen arrogance and down-looking of the Nsukka cultural zone persona by Nkanu, Awgu, Oji, Udi and Agbaja people (just like some other uncivilized amongst southern Igbos,) what is wrong in Governor Ugwuanyi following the established pattern and footsteps of his very Excellent predecessors?

Let’s remain calm like the Nsukkas remained under past tenures and allow Gov Ugwuanyi to anoint and produce his successor! Let reason prevail against brickmanship; for soon, we will be surprised to find out that great strength and wisdom lie in the patient and silent. I remember one of the works of Shakespeare and the character depicted of “the Oracle”. Remember the quote: “I am but an Oracle, when I open my mouth, let no dog bark! The millipede they trampled upon is enduring in silence and the persons trampling upon it are the ones yelping!

Allow Gov Ugwuanyi to anoint successor

As the 2023 race to Enugu State’s Government House gets hotter, Arthur Okolie explores how Enugu is now in the hands of hypocrites.

Did they say that Enugu is in the hands of God? Forget the fraudulent mantra by a people Ndigbo call “Ndi ekwu ozo eme ozo” (hypocrites). Enugu is in the hands of hypocrites!

With the 2023 election by the corner, Enugu is about the only state that is not discussing its real problems and what each governorship aspirant is bringing to the table to make a difference. So far, no Governorship aspirant, except Chief Ike Ekweremadu, has tendered his agenda/manifesto on how to solve the multifarious problems like heightening insecurity, unemployment, epileptic power, dysfunctional educational system, broken city road network, among others, to guide party delegates to voter right.

Nobody is talking about Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi’s scorecard, which should be the topical issue. Nobody talks about the mountains of refuse defacing Old Park, Okpara Avenue, New Market, Corner Stone, Nkpokiti Junction, Abakpa Nike Bridge, New Artisan, NNPC Mega Station road, Holy Ghost, Ugwuaji, Fire Service, Agbani Road, Uwani, etc. same goes for the biting water scarcity, which has made life unbearable for Ndi Enugu or is it the multiple taxation which grounded businesses. The hypocrites are doing all they can to distract Enugu with their zoning shenanigans.

When politicians come up with such mantra, they always have their target. For instance, when ex-governor, Sullivan Chime, announced that he had zoned 2015 governorship seat to Enugu North (Nsukka zone), it was Chief Anayo Onwuegbu, who provided an insight to guide the simple minded.

Although Ekweremadu had announced in June 2013 that he had no 2015 governorship ambition and thought it should go to Nsukka on the ground of equity, Chime wanted to make assurance double sure.

Onwuegbu, in an interview he granted Vanguard newspaper on 5th November 2014, detailed the context of all Governorship contests from the old Anambra State up to Enugu State and submitted unequivocally that “We have not had zoning in Enugu State; there had never been any zoning”.

“The concept is hinged on the fact that some time ago, it was strongly rumoured that the deputy senate president, Ike Ekweremadu was interested in becoming the Governor of the state (in 2015) and his no-love-lost relationship with the sitting Governor (Chime) is a well-known fact. To put a stop to that ambition, the Governor started announcing that he had zoned the ticket of the party to Nsukka zone. It is a deliberate effort to steer up a sectional consciousness to be used against an envisaged enemy. Let him (Chime) tell us any gathering in Enugu State that says we are going to start zoning. He was not a beneficiary of any zoning arrangement either; he was handpicked by former Governor Chimaroke”, he stated.

Collaborating Onwuegbu’s submission in Sun Newspaper interview on 23rd November 2018, Chime decalred: “In 2013, when we were holding a town hall meeting in Nike Lake Hotel, one journalist asked that since I was leaving office, which zone will succeed me as Governor. When Chimaroke Nnamani became governor, it wasn’t zoned to Nkanu; he won against somebody from the West, even in his re-election bid. When I contested, it was free for everybody, people from the North, from the East, from the West, the same thing during my re-election. Then I said fate had made it that the East had done their two terms, myself in second term at the time, I said it will only be fair that we take it to the North to reduce tensions and I promised to work towards it. That was how it happened. We zoned it to the North, not that there was any agreement; it was common sense to reduce problems”.

One could feel Chime because even when Dr. Nnamani anointed him as his successor in 2007, Nnamani’s deputy, Dr. Okechukwu Itanyi (Enugu North), contested the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Governorship primary against him and only lost narrowly.

It is an open secret that Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi has Hon. Chijioke Edeoga, who recently resigned his position as Commissioner for Environment and pick PDP governorship nomination forms, as his first choice of successor. Ekweremadu announced during his 59th birthday in May 2019 that he wouldn’t return to the Senate in 2023. It is believed that Ekweremadu, who played a major role in Ugwuanyi’s emergence in 2015, might expect him to return the favour in 2023. So, rather than come clean on his preferred successor like his predecessors, Ugwuanyi began early to plot the picture of a man whose hands were tied – by zoning. So, all the sponsored rallies and publications to drum up support for an inexistent zoning arrangement that favours Enugu East zone are believed to be geared towards whipping up anti-Ekweremadu sentiments in Enugu East, particularly among Nkanu people, to discourage the senator and also pave way for Ugwuanyi’s choice.

However, whatever was hidden was made open by Senator Chuka Utazi and Dr Okwy Nwodo during the February 2022 Local Government election campaign in Igbo-Etiti. Nwodo and Utazi made it clear to Enugu people that 2023 to 2031 belonged to old Nsukka zone (which includes Isi-Uzo) because the old Enugu zone (Enugu East and West zones) had done 16 years. Nwodo was even specific on Isi-Uzo.

Unfortunately, nobody is telling Enugu masses the underlying truths. Nobody tells them that Ugwuanyi’s and Edeoga’s mothers are of the same mother, but married in Orba, Udenu LGA and Eha-Amufu in Isi-Uzo LGA, respectively. Isi-Uzo was part of old Nsukka zone, but currently and politically part of Enugu East zone.

Nobody tells them that Chijioke Edeoga is also married to Nkechi (nee Obayi), daughter of erudite Prof. Grace Obayi, Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo’s elder sister.

Chimaroke Nnamani, on his part, wants to install his former Chief of Staff, Peter Mbah, from Nkanu clan.

Again and ironically, most of the promoters of zoning are still hustling to head back to the State or National Assembly, sometimes against graphically agreed zoning formula in their constituencies.

The chief convener of Ife-Emelumma zoning rally and chief marketer of what many, including the Ikeoha Campaign Organisation, described as forged zoning document, Senator Ben-Collins Ndu, has bought forms to return to the Senate.

Chimaroke Nnamani, who ruled Enugu State for eight years (1999- 2007) and spent four years in the Senate (2007 – 2011) before he was consigned to political Siberia by his anointed godson, Chime, is doing his second term as a Senator courtesy of Ugwuanyi. That gesture was interpreted as one of Ugwuanyi’s strategies to eventually checkmate Ekweremadu ahead of 2023. Therefore, by Nnamani’s vociferousness on zoning and prerogative of Ugwuanyi to appoint his successor, he is seen as not just playing to the gallery, but also to the terms of his political rehabilitation in 2019 and survival beyond 2023.

Politics is indeed a serious business. Otherwise, you would expect a champion of Nkanu Governorship interest to wait or insist on Ugwuanyi naming an Nkanu successor before rushing to purchase PDP senatorial forms. And nobody hears him again ever since. By picking the forms, has Chimaroke not betrayed Nkanu and cleared the road for Ugwuanyi to pick his successor from Isi-Uzo? Even a political novice knows that Nkanu cannot have governorship and senatorial seats at Isi-Uzo’s expense at this time and under Ugwuanyi.

Furthermore, Nnamani was a two-term governor on Nkanu’s ticket. He is going into his eighth year in the Senate on Nkanu’s ticket. Yet he’s jostling to return to the Senate, not minding that while his native Nkanu West has produced both two-term Governor and two-term Senator in himself, Nkanu East, for example, has produced none. Where is sense of zoning and equity?

Ugwuanyi did 12 straight years as a Member of the House of Representatives. He is completing eight years as Governor. Yet he has picked forms to go to the Senate at the expense of Igboeze South LGA. It is common knowledge that Enugu North’s Senatorial seat rotates among the three Federal Constituencies. Nsukka/Igbo Eze South Federal Constituency took the first slot through the late Senator Fidelis Okoro from Nsukka LGA. Senator Ayogu Eze took the turn of Igboeze North/Udenu. Senator Chuka Utazi took the turn of Igbo-Etiti/Uzo-Uwani. So, if you follow the argument of Ugwuanyi and his zoning choristers, it should ordinarily restart from Nsukka/Igboeze South where leaving Igboeze South is the LGA to produce the next Senator since Okoro had taken the slot of Nsukka.

But the same Ugwuanyi and his team, who insist that Enugu’s Governorship should restart from Enugu East where it began in 1999 hypocritically, argue that rotation of Enugu North Senatorial seat could restart anywhere since it has gone round. As this piece is written, Hon. Pat Asadu, who is about the strongest contender against Ugwuanyi from Igboeze South, has been asked to return to the House of Representatives for a 6th term in exchange for the Senatorial seat due to Igboeze South.

Currently, most State House of Assembly Members are being returned in exchange for their support for Ugwuanyi’s hard-to-sell governorship zoning formula. The Speaker, Hon. Edward Ubosi (Ozege), has bought forms to return to the Assembly for the 4th term. His uncle, Cornelius Nnaji has equally bought form to return to the House of Representatives. Hon. Chima Obieze is seeking a third consecutive term in State Assembly against Ezeagu’s long established zoning tradition.

So, who is fooling who when some people even want to achieve in Enugu what Senator Rochas Okorocha couldn’t achieve in Imo. Yet they claim that Enugu is in the hands of God. Is it godfather, godson, god the cousin or god the son-in-law?

Arthur Okolie, a political analyst, writes from Enugu

Enugu in the hands of hypocrites