Anambra Guber Race: Why Voters Must Punish Ngige
For many political pundits, the on-going political campaign in Anambra State is basically a two-horse race between APGA candidate, Chief Willie Obiano and APC candidate Senator Chris Ngige. Of course there is also Ifeanyi Ubah of the Labour Party and a coterie of about 20 other candidates.
But the spotlight is essentially on Obiano and Nigige and to some extent Ubah. Yet there are many reasons why pundits believe that Willie Obiano has only himself to beat in the November 16 election. Now, let us examine the reasons…
Many Anambrarians see citizen Ngige as his own worst enemy. They argue that since the honourable Senator stumbled into politics over a decade ago, he has managed to almost always have one dark spot spreading around his person like a pox.
They hold him accountable for his own lack of discernment in agreeing to a pact with the Ubah brothers in his quest for power even after he had observed the macabre dance that had unfolded between erstwhile Governor Chinwoke Mbadinuju and his godfather, Sir Emeka Offor. The thinking is that citizen Ngige should have seen the land mines that littered his path to power which were to later accelerate his disgrace out of power. But because he was enamoured of power and vary often carried himself a cheap political pop star, he choose to ignore the obvious dangers that cluttered his ascendancy to power. He paid dearly for it, becoming the first governor of Anambra State to be humiliated by his puppet master and finally discarded like a dishrag.
The honourable Senator's famous ordeal in the hands of his godfather, his alleged nude appearance before the Ogwugwu deity in Okija and inglorious exit from power have since become a staple for bear-parlour pranksters in Onitsha who dramatize it to roaring applause. Recently at the last APGA rally in Onitsha a strong cast of Nollywood actors gave a stage performance of Ngige's travails in power on the campaign stage and drew a loud ovation. But I digress.
There are also those who thought that Ngige's undoing came from the church. The story is often told of how Ngige had dared the Catholic Church in the state with his pro-abortion law which rubbed the church the wrong way. Repeated efforts by the clergy to persuade him against it fell on deaf ears as the diminutive Senator loves to wear his courage on his brows. Ngige's lack of sensitivity made the church to send a strong delegation to the Papacy in Rome to lodge a formal complaint against him.
It is not clear whether the church's efforts had a hand in it but many people believe that his eventual downfall may not have been entirely unconnected to his unwise defiance against the church. Citizen Ngige is alleged to have followed his pro-abortion gospel to a fatal length, leading to the gruesome death of Ego, his Abatete lover who died while trying to abort a pregnancy that resulted from their illicit liaisons.
It would seem that lack of sensitivity and vulgar display of unearned confidence has become the trademark of citizen Ngige. Two recent incidents point to this. His tactless utterance in defence of the illegal deportation of his kit and kin from Lagos by the Lagos State government sticks out as a cardinal sin. The caustic-tongued Senator was reported to have dismissed his maltreated compatriots as “homeless destitute and psychiatric cases.”
The flipside of the argument is that as a senator, Ngige had a duty to speak up for not against the members of his constituency whose citizenship and humanity had just been called to question. However, the whiff of cheap political gains turned him against them and forced him to speak with a broken tongue. Many observers were shocked to see Ngige who had maintained a bemusing silence in the Senate for two years suddenly rediscover utterance for the wrong reason.
Then came his insensitive staging of a rally in Onitsha which many believed was done to spite the highly revered Obi of Onitsha on the same day that the Ofala festival was taking place; a cruel act of provocation of the peace-loving people of Onitsha whose expansive ways had once again been stretched beyond normal limit. To further rub the insult in, neither Ngige nor the visiting APC governors nor Senator Bola Tinubu, their godfather, thought it wise to pay a courtesy call on the Obi.
The whole rally was an affront, calculated to serve as a statement on the all-conquering strength of the new party and of course; it's thinly disguised insolence for the Igbo. The sudden reaction of the respected Onitsha monarch, Igwe Nnanyelugo Alfred Nnaemeka Achebe with a widely reported curse on Ngige and his irreverent APC band is a major footnote in the chronicle of modern Nigerian history. Several Onitsha indigenes and other Igbos who felt violated by Ngige's insouciance have since taken to the orthodox and social media to register their outrage against him and his sponsors.
The growing belief in Anambra State is that citizen Ngige is incorrigible. He cannot be helped at all. He is a nightmare to any well groomed reputation manager as he hardly takes advice being filled to the brim with the wine of his own wisdom. People who hold this view argue that if Ngige were listening to his advisers, he would not have continued his misplaced grandstanding after the outrage that greeted his cruel comment on the deportees and his insolence on the Obi of Onitsha.
And recently, just when people were watching out to see the bearded senator show some remorse or contrition or both, Ngige mounted his high horse in his widely reported media interviews to mouth inane excuses for his actions. He once again defended his new paymasters and blamed Governor Peter Obi for boxing him into a corner and making him hit out in frustration at his own shadow.
It is nevertheless interesting that many Anambra citizens are not surprised by Ngige's recent acts of self-immolation. They have accepted them as Ngige's standard behaviour. Speaking at the recent APGA rally in Onitsha, Chief Victor Umeh, National Chairman of the party had wondered why some power barons in Lagos should come to choose a leader for Anambra State barely a few weeks after deporting indigenes of the state in inhuman conditions. “Does APGA choose the governor of Lagos State for Lagosians?” he asked and further thundered, “We shall not allow any stranger, no matter how powerful to come here to dictate to us.
We shall resist that with the last drop of strength in us.” Many people however knew that no other Anambra son would make himself available to be used by the forces that have consistently worked against the advancement of his own people apart from Chris Ngige.
“We are familiar with the bearded man and his ways,” said Nkemjika Ezimora who runs an NGO in Awka, the Anambra State capital. “People often forget that it was Ngige who led the Ubah brothers into Anambra politics. They were doing well in their private businesses until Ngige deceived them into sponsoring his gubernatorial ambition only to renege on their agreement. We all know how it ended. Now, Ngige is on the march again.
This time, he is leading Bola Ahmed Tinubu into Anambra State. We are already hurting from Ngige's political suicide even when he has not won the election. What will happen if he wins? A power showdown between him and Tinubu will drive Anambra people into the River Niger, I am sure,” the rights activist predicted. Ezimora is one of many people who are worried that citizen Ngige's political career has always attracted undeserved negative developments to Anambra State.
Obiora Ekwegbalu, an Nnewi based lawyer opines that Ngige's political adventures have rubbed both the church of Jesus Christ and the Igbo tradition the wrong way. According to him, “Since Ngige went into politics; neither the church nor the Igbo tradition has known peace in Anambra State. The ancient Ogwugwu deity in Okija was highly respected in the pantheon of Igbo gods.
I remember that Chinua Achebe made many references to Ogwugwu in his book, Arrow of God. Its priesthood used to be one of the sacred repositories of Igbo worldview and genealogy. But Ngige and his godfathers descended on its sacred groove and desecrated it, turning it into the butt of jokes for the entire world and demonizing it as an aberration.”
In much the same way, barely eight years after his titanic wrangle with his godfather led to the desecration of Okija, citizen Ngige struck serendipity once again when he led Bola Tinubu and his APC band to desecrate Onitsha on the city's sacred day. As APC gang wielded their brooms in Onitsha that fateful day, many onlookers shuddered at the senator who seemed to be irretrievably wedded to self-destruction.
What struck many of them was the supreme irony of how the gods could have given one man such gifts as would pave his path with gold only to afflict him with a strange illness that prevents him from making the mark.
In the reckoning of these people, Willie Obiano of APGA is just a governor waiting in the wings if ever there was one.
Nweze, a Public Affairs analyst writes from Awka
COURTESY OF APGA UK