ZUL-HAJJ 9 1430 A.H.
THURSDAY NOVEMBER . 26 2009.
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Anambra: Politics of rough necks
By BISI OLAWUNMI
Anambra state offers the Nigerian nation a benumbing political spectacle. How prophetic the inimitable Chinua Achebe, the Ogidi native in Anambra state and authour of the world acclaimed ‘Things Fall Apart’. For in his beloved Anambra state, things are really falling apart.
The Anambra state of polished gentlemen of letters and panache has given way to the reign of ‘unlettered’ moneybags, political brigands and opportunists, often lacking in finesse, but with abundance of braggadocio. Chris Uba is the enfant terrible of Anambra politics who rules that political terrain with an iron fist. He plays the Godfather before whom political aspirants must do obeisance. He once ‘lapped’ his godson, Dr. Chris Ngige, to power as governor of Anambra state. Before him, there was another political financier who made waves in Anambra, Emeka Offor, who was godfather to Dr. Chinwoke Mbadinuju (Ph.D), former Anambra governor. For the university educated godsons, it was a case of academic power bowing before financial power. And in Anambra, as is the case in most of the Southeast, the man with the money is literally worshipped as god. Which is why the region has the highest number of graduate ladies married to ‘illiterate’ moneybag traders. Usually, it was when the godsons wanted to play smart by attempting to shake off the yoke of the godfathers that ‘katakata’ often burst - and the state got embroiled in rough-neck politics. This was yesterday.
Today is not edifying either, politically, for Anambra state, in the cut-throat race for the state governorship position. It has become a theatre of the absurd. Talk of the past casting a shadow over the present. The scenario took a weird and foreboding turn with the 9-day kidnap saga of Pa Simeon Soludo, father of Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, the anointed PDP candidate, in his Isuofia home in Aguata local government area of the state that began on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 moments after the PDP opposition coalition to Prof. C.C.Soludo’s governorship candidacy held a ‘meeting’ denouncing his choice by the party leadership. So, parallel currents are running in Anambra state - while the politicians are roughing it up, kidnappers in the state are trying to match them for share brazenness.
Now, this Chris Uba character gets interesting by the day. Since Emeka Offor and Dr. Mbadinuju faded out of the political limelight, Uba has remained a dominant factor. And like the typical irreverent, loud Anambra trader, the man has refused to be intimidated and could not be shut up in spite of his reported expulsion by the state branch of the PDP for what it described as Chris’ “ungentlemanly and irrational” conduct. He dismissed the report as a joke. He strikes me as a practical man, though. His attitude seem to be: If you want to take advantage of my money or my political structure, you must prostrate and publicly shout: Hail to the King! In all honesty, you can’t fault that logic. And apparently for him, there are no scruples in his political fights. He even once jostled his elder brother, Andy Uba, during the latter’s governorship race. So, when Dr. Chris Ngige, a medico, thought he could play a fast one by playing down Chris Uba’s influence on his emergence as governor, it was not surprising that he got ‘captured’ and locked up, of all places, in a toilet !. That Ngige was dragged to swear at an Okija shrine is humiliating enough. But then how many politicians have a sense of shame?
Now, Chris Uba has engaged Prof. Soludo in a no- holds-barred duet. He does not feel fazed by Soludo’s ‘long’ degrees and big grammar. That, in fact, seems to constitute an angst for him. Anyway, traders will tell you – na gramma we go chop? In politics, having a structure and being on the ground are prerequisites, the assumed lack of which are the major points of opposition to Soludo’s selection, after aborted primaries, as PDP governorship candidate for the February 6, 2010 governorship election.
Chris Uba seems a direct person, no diplomatese in his language. A front page newspaper report of Thursday, October 29, 2009 quoted him as vowing to yank Soludo off Anambra political scene. “I am the leader of the party in the state and I have been funding the party since 1999. Soludo is a visitor in the state; he is a visitor in the party. He came in illegally and we will throw him out legally”, thundered Boy Chris. He says Soludo spoiled the banks and wants to come and spoil Anambra state. But throw out party-backed Soludo? That scenario portends a classic show down. Who blinks? Now, Soludo, used to suave intellectual engagements in elite gatherings, is being forced to mix with the ‘masses’ and engage the opposition in the gutter and trade rough tackle. It must be a wacky experience for the learned professor! Also, as against the convoy of exotic cars carrying suited effete snobs, now Soludo may need to have a convoy of ‘danfo’ buses with gun and machete wielding rough-necks. It is a new terrain, reminiscent of the lawless days of the American Wild West.
Perhaps, the Chris Ubas and the Lamidi Adedibus, the late garrison commander of Ibadan politics, were sending a message – that absentee ‘educated’ folks cannot take undue advantage of the local barons, even if the locals lack high western education. The so-called ‘unlettered’ ones are proving the value of native intelligence in politics, backed by money and muscle.
Chief Emeka Anyaoku, former Commonwealth Secretary-General, who is from Obosi in Anambra state, in his address to the world Igbo Youth Summit in Enugu in October had decried the situation in Anambra and lamented about “kidnapping which is now scandalizing many parts of Igboland”. He had wondered at the loss of modesty where 47 aspirants could feel equally qualified to vie for the governorship ticket of one party and concluded that the fractious political situation in Anambra “is far from edifying”.
And Ojukwu’s war threat should the Court of Appeal grant 17-day governor Andy Uba’s prayer to be reinstated, was the pits. Now, Ojukwu who, in spite of his boast, fled the battle front in January 1970, into exile after plunging Nigeria in an avoidable war, but was brought back by President Shehu Shagari, should be the last person to be beating war drums, again. Soludo, in a newspaper report, before his father’s kidnap, had spoken of “the inelegant characters who have taken over the terrain” in Anambra. He must now be musing whether it is really worth it to get involved with the inelegant ones in Anambra’s murky politics of rough-necks.
OLAWUNMI can be reached vie olawunmibisi@yahoo.com
