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Thursday,Dec 24,2009
Dim Ojukwu and Peter Obi’s Re-election Campaign
Former Biafran leader, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, has reportedly vowed to return Peter Obi to the Government ....
By Jideofor Adibe
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Thursday,Dec 17,2009
Don’t Cry for Me, Nigeria
It must have been around 1984 that Wole Soyinka declared his generation, ‘the wasted generation’. The 1....
By Jideofor Adibe
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Thursday,Dec 10,2009
A Nation in Coma: Beyond Constitutional Provisions
Nigeria is once again at one of those junctures where tripping over the precipice cannot be ruled out. At issue is ....
By Jideofor Adibe
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Thursday,Dec 03,2009
Uba’s Honorary Doctorate: Why UniZik Was Right
The recent award by Nnamdi Azikiwe University (UniZik), of an honorary Doctor of Public Administration (DPA), to An....
By Jideofor Adibe
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Thursday,Nov 26,2009
Sanusi: A Radical in a Conservative Job?
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi is a very brilliant man. He writes the English language with remarkable authority, and e....
By Jideofor Adibe
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Thursday,Nov 19,2009
Anambra State Needs Liberation
Anambra state has been in the news, often for the wrong reason, for much of the 4th Republic. It has in many ways b....
By Jideofor Adibe
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Thursday,Nov 12,2009
Heroes, Democracy, and the ‘PhD’ syndrome
A nation that does not honour its heroes is not worth dying for –so goes the cliché. This appear....
By Jideofor Adibe
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Thursday,Aug 06,2009
Are We Trying to Pull Down Barrack Obama?
Since Barrack Obama announced a visit to Africa, his relationship with Nigerian Internet bloggers seems to have sou....
By Jideofor Adibe
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Anambra State Needs Liberation
By:
Jideofor Adibe
pcjadibe@yahoo.com
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Anambra state has been in the news, often for the wrong reason, for much of the 4th Republic. It has in many ways become a microcosm of all that is wrong and right with the Igbo nation, even the Nigerian state. While the state has continued to produce new talents that excel to dizzying heights – the Philip Emeagwalis, Ngozi Chimamanda Adichies and the Onitsha entrepreneurs that reinvented home videos into Nollywood – it simultaneously appears to have reached a new level of notoriety by its apparent inability to organise itself or enthrone order and civility in the conduct of its affairs. Practices – for good or evil- that are prevalent in other states, once copied by elements from the state, get taken to a new level. Godfatherism and kidnapping here readily come to mind. Though neither of these originated from the state, today these two evils appear to have become the defining features of the state.
How did things get this bad?
Shortly after the inception of the 4th Republic in 1999, the ‘godfather’ of the time, ‘Sir’ Emeka Offor, reportedly handpicked and installed Dr Chinwoke Mbadinuju as the Governor of the state. But the ‘godfather’ quickly fell out with his ‘godson’, and for nearly one year, schools were closed because the state couldn’t pay staff salaries after deploying much of its resources in fighting off Offor’s antics. Mbadinuju was rightly denied a re-election. But rather than being an opportunity for a new beginning, a new ‘godfather’ Chris Uba, then still in his 30s, was thrown up, and was even more uncompromising in his insistence on total control of both the party and the government apparatuses in the state. Oaths of allegiance were allegedly sworn to him at the Okija shrine and when he felt his ‘godson’ Dr Chris Ngige was beginning to assert himself, he allegedly masterminded his kidnapping. Uba was later to confess that he rigged the election that brought Dr Ngige to power – a confession that was aimed more at ensuring that Ngige was pushed out of power than any genuine act of contrition.
The recently botched PDP ward congress in the state was a chance for the party to redeem itself. It was alleged that more than half of the over 40 candidates who picked the nomination forms were sponsored by Chris Uba. In the ward congress to elect people that would in turn choose the party’s gubernatorial candidate, the same Chris Uba was alleged to have sponsored and secured the loyalty of at least 600 of the over 900 delegates - ensuring that despite his inglorious past, only his anointed would emerge the party’s flag bearer, and perhaps the Governor of the state. One would want to know why people would be made to pay N10,000 just to qualify to become electors of the party’s governorship candidate? What was the subtext in this? Uba himself boasted of how much he had spent for the party in the state, including N800,000 in buying “brand new” Peugeot 406 cars for the party’s executives in each of the 21 local government areas in the state. It may be germane to ask what a person who spends so much for a party in the state expects in return, and the implications of such for the democratic process.
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