You Don’t Fall And Remain Glued To The Ground For 50 Years

BY EMEKA ASINUGO

In the last 10 years or so that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu brought the plight of the Igbo in Nigeria to international limelight and thus intensified the Igbo struggle for self actualization, I had taken great interest in studying why even in the face of their acknowledged resilience and hard work, the Igbo seem helplessly trapped in the contraption of a union which their youths find most difficult to accept as their ideal vision of a country.

The truth we must accept is that when two cultures clash, the weaker culture gives way to the stronger culture which invariably assimilates it. Before the civil war, the Igbo were highly revered because the other tribes saw them as very enterprising, very successful and very unassuming. The other Nigerian tribes had a level of respect for the Igbo that almost bordered on fear. Some Nigerians who were not of Igbo extract loved them and wanted to be like them. But our Igbo cultural heritage fell apart when our people were forced to surrender to Nigeria on 15 January 1970 in order to forestall the massive suffering of Igbo women and children, many of who were dying daily from starvation and kwashiorkor.

The then Finance Minister, Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo added his own punishment on the Igbo by decreeing that every Igbo who participated in the civil war on the side of Biafra would be entitled to only £20 of his money, no matter how many millions he had in his bank account. That was deliberate wickedness and one that set the ball rolling for Igbo downfall. All Nigeria knew that the Igbo were hard working and that no matter what the conditions were, they would always find a way to survive and excel. And perhaps, Awolowo knew the collective damage his decree would do to the psyche of the Igbo race. It is difficult to think he didn’t plan the downfall of the Igbo race in an attempt to please his masters who made him the finance minister. But even at that, the Igbo survived and resurfaced. So, what is it that has kept them down, still agitating to be set free, still struggling for self actualization more than 50 years after the civil war?

When Igbo was Igbo, they had laws that defined their culture which every Igbo man, every Igbo boy, every Igbo woman and every Igbo girls obeyed to the letter. I think that the children of nowadays were not taught those lessons by their parents or they were deceived by their peers not to take those laws seriously any more. Whatever it was, there is a need to revisit some of these laws for the sake of those who did not know about their existence and those who do not understand how little drops of water can make a mighty ocean. And I think that what everyone who loves the Igbo should do is to circulate this message to get to as many people as possible.

In my days, a lot of premium was placed on trust. The Igbo should recognize that for them to make sense of their struggle, they had to trust each other absolutely – and I mean absolutely. That would pave the way for them to be trusted as a people. Just before the former Vice President of Nigeria, Dr. Alex Ekwueme joined his ancestors at 10 pm on Sunday 19 November 2017, he very eloquently echoed this problem with the new generation Igbo. Dr. Ekwueme noted that one of the most important attributes of Igbo people which anchored on their trust for each other had gone with the winds since the end of the Nigerian civil war of more than 50 years ago. He warned that once the Igbo lacked trust among themselves, it would be difficult to make progress. Dr. Ekwueme recalled that Igbo people prided themselves on their level of unity before independence and immediately after independence. He extolled the Igbo man as the most important of God’s creation “after the white man” and explained that God had a very soft spot in His heart for Igbo people and endowed them with great intellect.

Dr. Ekwueme said that when Igbo was Igbo, there was so much unity, such that once Igbo leaders met and took a decision, every Igbo person would abide by it. The trust among the Igbo was the reason apprenticeship became popular with them. The result was that parents would allow their children to stay with an established Igbo man to learn a trade for periods ranging from two to five years after which the apprentice would then be “settled” to start his own business. But even after the settlement, the newly settled young trader would continue to get goods on credit from his former master and return the money after sales because of the trust that existed.

Today, lack of trust has diminished that age-long cooperation between the master and his former apprentice, which is worrisome. Towards the end of the apprenticeship period, it is either the apprentice absconds with huge sums of money belonging to his master, or his master trumps up lies against the apprentice that he stole his money. He would then send the young man home with empty hands in order to avoid settling him. “The main problem of the Igbo today is lack of trust. If we can rebuild trust among ourselves, our people will be better for it,” Dr. Ekwueme said. He wondered at what point the Igbo went wrong.

It is easy to trace at what point the Igbo went wrong when we articulate what defines Igbo people in the first place. One of the fundamental laws that distinguished the Igbo and their tradition and culture was respect for an older person. It had nothing to do with money. It was a general law that affected every Igbo because everyone is normally older that someone. So, even if that person was older with one week or one month or one year, he or she had to be accorded due respect by anyone younger than him or her. It was a culture our people valued so much because it tallied with the republican nature of the Igbo people’s social life.

That culture was jettisoned immediately after the civil war after Chief Awolowo decided to impoverish the Igbo. The psychological result of Awolowo’s decree was that today, Igbo people tend to respect anyone who has money more than anyone who is older but poorer than them. So, unless that culture of respect for older people is revived and invigorated that every Igbo man or woman, boy or girl must show due respect to his or her older Igbo, believe me the Igbo will find themselves still glued to the ground fifty something years after their fall, especially as the North and the West generally show a lot of respect to those who are older than them.

Another area the Igbo have to look into is the role Igbo women play in all of this. Today, Igbo women seem to be the ones at the forefront of the quest for money, no matter how such money was made. In the process, they trade their pride for money. But let us not make any mistake about it. The success or progress of any people to a huge extent depends on how proud and reserved their female citizens can be. Before the Nigerian civil war, it was very difficult for people from other Nigerian tribes to have Igbo girlfriends, not to talk of marrying them. It was a status symbol for a non-Igbo to marry an Igbo girl, just as a black man marrying a white woman in those days was a status symbol. You had to be a top doctor, engineer, architect, military officer or a top lawyer to be even able to talk to an Igbo girl. But today, Igbo women have lost that pride that once defined the Igbo nation because of their inordinate ambition and quest for money they no longer care how it was made. And not until they come out of the woods and reverse this trend will the Igbo struggle have meaning.

The third an equally important area the Igbo have to look into is the stupid habit they learnt from other Nigerian tribes of spraying money during events. That is not Igbo culture by any stretch of the imagination and it portrays the Igbo in very bad light in the eyes of the international community. The international community knows that no one who suffered and genuinely made money can afford to dispense with it the way our people do these days. The very unsettling idea negates everything the Igbo man stands to be counted for – hard work, resilience, frugality and accountability. In civilized societies, if anyone wanted to make a gift of money to another, the one would simply draw up a cheque in the name of the recipient, or put the money in an envelope addressed to the recipient and hand it over privately. That is what civilized people do. They don’t spray bundles of money in a nonchalant display of affluence that only gets minions applauding them hysterically.

Perhaps, those Igbo who indulge in this suspicious practice do so because of their egocentrism, because they want to be seen in public as the wealthy ones. It just doesn’t make sense to any civilized person and the Igbo are known to be civilized. We need to stop this attitude of spraying money and adopt the more civilized attitude of writing cheques or enveloping the money we offer as gifts to our beloved friends and family. When we start with these three laws, we will notice changes in the struggle.

The Igbo should stop mourning and take their destiny in their own hands. And the leaderships of Ohanaeze and IPOB should take note of what to do. You don’t fall and remain glued to the ground for more than 50 years. Ndigbo need to put their acts together.

An Open Letter To South East Governors’ Forum: Freedom Comes In Many Ways

BY EMEKA ASINUGO

Dear SE Governors,

I was constrained to write you this letter after carefully watching Nigeria’s political developments over the years as they daily unfolded.

Many of us, Igbo sons and daughters who were forced by situations in Nigeria to migrate to Europe, America and elsewhere are worried sore that the security of life and property, especially in the northern parts and by extension the entire country, has continued to pose serious challenges to our political leaders that seem to defy solution.

We are worried about the inability of our political leaders to fix the national economy and appreciate naira value.

We are concerned about the seeming unwillingness of our political leaders to fully integrate Nigerians socially, for instance, by making the study of the three major languages, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba compulsory at the primary school level in all schools across the country. In such a way, the bridge would have been built across tribal sentiments and in less than two generations, Nigeria would be on its way to achieving true nationalism.

We are concerned that general uneasiness in the country is being manifested in several ways, despite government’s intervention efforts, and it is worrying.

As the political leaders of the Igbo nation, I do not need to remind you that all Igbo at home and in the Diaspora are looking up to you to salvage them from the circumstances that have sandwiched and trapped them in the enclave they call their country. Progressively going forward in the spirit of one united and prosperous nation has become a herculean task for them because the low or no value some people in the northern parts of the country have determined to place on human life, the lives of fellow Nigerians, is at great variance with the values and aspirations of the Igbo, and going back is just impossible. They are stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Sadly, some of the simple ways the federal government should have addressed these issues were lost to tribal politics and our people have continued to suffer as a result. These issues are captured in the first and second volumes of my book “The Presidential Years: From Dr. Jonathan to Gen. Buhari”, published by Austin Macauley of London, and can be purchased online from Amazon, eBay and other major online bookshops.

As the political leaders of the South East Zone of Nigeria, I hasten to remind you that when the founding members of the South East Governors’ Forum, Chimaroke Nnamani of Enugu, Chinwoke Mbadinuju of Anambra, Achike Udenwa of Imo, Sam Egwu of Ebonyi and Orji Uzor Kalu of Abia sat for the first time, they pledged to work together, irrespective of their political leanings, for the interest of the larger segment of South East communities.

At that time, critics of the Forum alleged that the governors were not doing enough to develop the zone. They failed to attract the attention of the federal government to the deplorable condition of infrastructure in the zone, especially the roads. Even as we speak, most of the federal roads in the South East have remained nothing but death traps and many people are worried about why their South East governors have not deemed it necessary to go beyond rhetoric to, at least, embark on the repair or modernization of these roads themselves and get a refund from the federal government if there are provisions in the law to that effect.

Even judging from the now moribund joint economic ventures in the South East zone, such as the Cooperative and Commerce Bank (CCB), the African Continental Bank (ACB), the Nkalagu Cement Factory, the Anambra Motor Manufacturing Company (ANAMCO) and the Emene Floor Mills, among others, most Igbo at home and in the Diaspora are of the opinion that their governors need to be more proactive in their quest to improve the lot of the South Easterners they represent by reactivating some of these unifying ventures or building new ones.

What they expect is that a strong debate on the review of the Nigerian constitution of 1999 which was drafted by the military purely for the benefit of the north should keep resurfacing until something tangible is done to abrogate it completely and a working constitution drafted by civilians, the elected representatives of the people, is in place.

It has indeed become necessary for the leaderships of the Nigerian government to consider returning to the letters of the constitutional document which Nigerian leaders negotiated with the British government between 1957 and 1959 that granted Nigeria independence.

It was on the basis of that constitution that the three regions agreed to acquire independence as one united country. It was the foundation of what came to be known as a united Nigeria. It was a negotiated constitution. If the three regions had disagreed on the contents of the constitution, there would have been no Nigeria as it was at independence.

In 1966, the military invaded the political growth of Nigeria and aborted its democratic evolution. They discarded the negotiated constitution and introduced one that was not only un-negotiated but one they insisted was un-negotiable, and still expected Nigeria to remain united – possibly by force because they had the gun, and that was important or so it seemed at the time!

The negotiated constitution gave considerable autonomy to each of the three regions. Each region collected its own revenue and contributed an agreed percentage of its gross earnings to the central government. Each region was in charge of its roads, education, medical services and rural infrastructure.

But when the military came into the political arena, they turned the table upside down, weakened the regions economically and strengthened the centre. Like the one party system that the army is, all authority flowed from Abuja, in terms of finance and in terms of security.

The imposition of its constitution on Nigerians by the military would have been unacceptable to the leaders of the three regions at the time – Sir Ahmadu Bello, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Chief Obafemi Awolowo – and many well meaning Nigerians would agree with this.

The current constitution was drafted by the military under General Abacha and was skewed to favour the north. Before then, the regions were federating units. There were four different constitutions – the federal constitution, the eastern constitution, the northern constitution and the western constitution. That was to the extent the regions were autonomous at independence.

Each region had its own ambassador in London. He was known as the Agent-General while the federal ambassador was known as the High Commissioner. M. T. Mbu was Nigeria’s High Commissioner in London at independence. The ambassador for Eastern Nigeria was Mr. Jonah Achara. That of Western Nigeria was Mr. Omolodun. And for Northern Nigeria, it was Alhaji Abdulmalik. These were the four men who were regarded as ambassadors of Nigeria in the UK by the time the country had independence in 1960.

But now states have been created in place of regions. And even though that seems to have complicated issues more, the creation of zones by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida provides an escape route from that stranglehold that was the 1999 constitution.

My take is that we can still manage to come by something close to the regions. Each of the zones General Babangida created during his tenure as military president can now be regarded as a region so that instead of the four regions the country had at independence there will now be six regions. The same level of autonomy can be given to them as was given to the regions before and after independence in 1960.

The north can then carry on with their northernisation or Arewanization policy. The East can embark on their Eastern or is it Biafranization policy and the West on their Westernization or Oduduwanization policy. They meet at the centre. They meet at the centre to agree on their democratic norms and values in the knowledge that true democracy must be negotiated by the federating units. Anything short of that is military imposition and it is not generally acceptable to many knowledgeable Africans.

What the Igbo expect is that the second Niger Bridge should be in place before the termination of the Buhari tenure.

What they expect is that their SE governors can liaise with foreign investors to get light railway trains shuttling between and connecting the major cities of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo states.

What they expect is that when the Igbo say they are the best in business they should prove themselves right. If the Igbo are known to develop other communities, other countries, why are they unable to develop theirs? That is not something to be proud of, and it is down to the political leaderships of the SE to turn around the vision and focus of the Igbo to begin to look inwards.

I am being emphatic here about railway transportation between Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo and the intra-links between their cities like Owerri, Okigwe and Orlu in Imo, for example. Our SE governors should map this in their head and see what the zone would look like with these facilities in place.

All eyes of Igbo elites at home and in the Diaspora are on you governors. They expect you to buttress the role the National Assembly would play especially in the struggle to decentralize authority from Abuja and give zones a financial autonomy that would synchronize with the original documents that gave independence to Nigeria.

It is against this background that the governors of the South East zone should decide to pursue issues affecting their people through regional integration. This calls for an honest pooling together of resources. You can arrange for any country or business enterprise to partner with you on transportation. Our people need a network of railways that would connect major cities in Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo with their state capitals, even if they are light railways.

It is unnecessary to keep agitating for a break-up of Nigeria if our people can develop their communities on their own. They would have literally broken up without breaking up – which is the best policy for South East in their circumstances since the end of the Nigerian civil war.

Take a look at Great Britain today. There are four nations that make Britain great: England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Each of them has complete autonomy. They have their currencies. They have their parliaments. They have their flags. They run their systems on their own. And they all subscribe to a central government and that is what makes them great. South East governors can insist on that pattern of relationship in Nigeria. Then, the Igbo will not see themselves as living in bondage any more. Freedom comes in many ways.

Emeka Asinugo is a London-based journalist, author of “The Presidential Years: From Dr. Jonathan to Gen. Buhari” and Publisher of Imo State Business Link Magazine

POLITICS: The Immediate Challenge Of Imo APC

Imo State Governor Hope Uzodinma. Image: Facebook

BY EMEKA ASINUGO

The tussle between the main Opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Imo State took a 360-degree turn when the Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Election Tribunal and the Appeal Court and confirmed Senator Hope Uzodinma of the APC as the legitimately elected governor of Imo State on 3 March 2020. In an attempt to get an earlier verdict repealed, Rt. Hon. Emeka Ihedioha and his team of lawyers from the PDP camp had requested the apex court to review the case in the light of new evidences of mass discrepancies during the elections. But among its 7-man panel of jurists, six members stood their grounds while one insisted that the Supreme Court erred and should reverse its earlier decision.

Many observers had hoped that the Supreme Court was at least going to call for a re-run of the elections. But the eminent jurists stuck to their guns and insisted that Senator Uzodinma remained the governor because they could not possibly afford to lose face by swallowing the saliva they had earlier spat out. They probably relied on the often quoted dictum of the erudite Supreme Court jurist, Chuwudifu Oputa, who said the Supreme Court is not supreme because it was infallible, but it was infallible because it is Supreme.

The Imo gubernatorial case immediately raised very important political questions which the judiciary in Nigeria must be careful to consider in future electoral judgments. Was it constitutionally lawful for the court to impose a leader on the voting masses by virtue of legal technicalities? In the case of Uzodinma versus Ihedioha, for example, none of the two candidates secured the mandatory spread of votes across two-thirds of the local government areas of the state. Therefore, for any of them to be declared the winner, based on legal technicalities, clearly ran against the provisions of the constitution.

The unwillingness of the apex court to consider the fact that the number of votes accredited to the incumbent governor was far in excess of the total accredited number of voters was another glaring case of complacency. There were other arguments for and against the justification of the verdict. But at the end of the day, the Supreme Court had its way and declared Senator Uzodinma as winner.

It is important, at this juncture, to appreciate the fact that both Senator Hope Uzodinma and Hon. Emeka Ihedioha are sons of Imo land. So, since Uzodinma has been recognized by the highest court in the land over and above Ihedioha as the incumbent governor of the state, any further agitations against his continuation as governor would not only be a distraction of his focus on fulfilling his electoral promises, it would be a draw-back on the development of the very state everyone claims to love. So, the best bet would be for the people of Imo State to stop every form of agitation, rally round Uzodinma and his APC government, and help them deliver on their electoral promises.

When Senator Uzodinma unveiled his campaign manifesto to the good people of Imo State on 14 January 2019, he promised to focus on infrastructural development and to turn around the public image of the people of Imo State if elected into office. The event, still very clear in the memory of many Imo people and their well wishers had attracted dignitaries from across the state, which included traditional rulers, civil servants, market men and women, and the clergy. Party faithful and supporters were there also to chant accolades to the APC governorship candidate.

He had promised then, that his 5-point blueprint for the economic revival of the state would be consummated in a purpose-driven government, anchored on a tripod vision of economic recovery, reconstruction and rehabilitation. In a nutshell, Senator Uzodinma promised to overhaul the structure of the civil service and cognate institutions to ensure a merit-based system. He promised to pay salaries promptly, especially those of civil servants and pensioners, to ensure greater productivity.

This is very important considering the fact that when civil servants are not paid as at and when due, there is a tendency for them to resort to corrupt practices to be able to provide food for their families and to pay their house rents and other bills like electricity bills. In the process, they unwittingly create the opportunity for their superior officers to cart away huge sums of public funds into private bank accounts because everyone is practically corrupt, leaving no one to blow the whistle when the big shots mismanage public funds.

Senator Uzodinma spoke on his desire to enhance education in the state. He would turn Imo State into a knowledge-driven economy and accelerate manpower development through a highly functional and qualitative educational system that would focus on science and technology. He would also establish or more like improve on the scope and spread of skills acquisition and vocational centres in the state. More importantly, he would establish job centres to enhance job search and placements for the myriads of school leavers in the state, desperately in need of jobs. This would also be important in warding off Imo youths from the temptation of involving in criminal activities.

But, somehow, Senator Uzodinma did not mention anything about child poverty in the state, which is also a worrying recurrent decimal indexing the real development of the state. In many communities in the state today, in villages and towns and even in the cities of Okigwe, Orlu and Owerri, so many young Imo children, some as young as eight years, can be seen hawking commodities like akara, banana, oranges, pure water and similar commodities on the roads and streets, even during school hours when they should be in school. In such a way, they are shamelessly exposed to hazards that include motor accidents, rape and even kidnapping. Imo children deserve a lot better treatment from their government. And Imo people hope that their children’s hope in Governor Hope Uzodinma to turn their fortunes around for the better would not remain an empty dream through the tenure of the governor.

The governor had also spoken of his vision of recovering the state economy and the reconstruction and rehabilitation of core infrastructure and micro, small and medium enterprises. This is indeed a bright idea. But the governor must appreciate that the place to start from with this beautiful idea is the revamping of strategies for the supply of electricity in the state which has remained most epileptic. No small or medium size business can succeed without constant electricity. In fact, many Imo sons and daughters in the Diaspora would rush home to help in the development of the state the moment it is known that the state can boast of electricity supply 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Also, important trading routes between villages and urban areas need to be tarred to ensure that agricultural products are safely and quickly moved from the rural producing to the urban consuming areas. All these call for proper feasibility studies which can be easily carried out if the governor has a dependable team to work with.

In assuring the good people of Imo State that his government would be accountable to them, the governor had promised to conduct fair and credible local government elections in the state within the first 12 months of his tenure and to reconstitute the local government joint accounts allocation committee to manage and superintend local government funds. This is also a step in the right direction. For some years now, state governors have depended on the use of administrators appointed by them to run the affairs of local governments across the state. Many people had come to associate the process with the desire of the governors to also manage local government allocations from Abuja. And with their hands economically tied by the state governors, these administrators are unable to run the councils efficiently. So, now that Governor Uzodinma has promised to put the money for the running of local councils where it rightfully belongs, the people of Imo State would have to hold local government chairmen and their councillors who underperform responsible for the under-development of their rural communities if it becomes necessary.

All in all, Imo people have learnt through their experiences that when politicians come to seek their mandate, they say all kinds of things and make all kinds of promises to win their hearts and their votes. But as soon as they get the mandate, very little is done. The politicians strategize to remain in office for as long as they possibly can and thereafter they find a way to install their puppets in governance. There is no likelihood that the style would change during Uzodinma’s tenure but it would also be wrong to take him for granted. There have been instances where the stone that was rejected by builders became the cornerstone pillar of the house. No one knows yet what goodies Governor Hope Uzodinma will bring to Imo State.

Before he became a known politician during the 2000s, Uzodinma was the youth leader of the defunct National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in Imo State of the Second Republic. He became prominent in Imo politics as a member of the Peoples Democratic Party. In 2003, he contested for the governorship of the state under the auspices of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) party and failed. In 2006, he came back to the PDP and sought to contest the governorship election again but lost at the primaries to Senator Ifeanyi Ararume. He was then appointed into the PDP Board of Trustees, from where he was elected into the Senate in 2011, and re-elected in 2015.

Uzodinma is a known businessman who has been involved in the oil and gas sector through his SMIEC Chemical Engineering & Construction Company Limited with which he executed many projects for the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

He obtained his West African School Certificate from Mgbidi Secondary School, Orlu West in 1982 and holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Studies and a Diploma in Transport Studies. He also has an honorary doctorate degree from Imo State University.

From the look of things, there is little doubt if any, that Governor Uzodinma is an astute politician who was able to manipulate virtually all members of the Imo State House of Assembly to defect to the APC on assumption of office after Ihedioha’s nullification. He obviously knew that it would be difficult and very expensive for him to succeed as a governor who had no party member in the state House of Assembly. Members of the House would simply have arm-twisted him to get whatever they wanted for themselves and their constituencies. But by massively defecting to the ruling APC, they would now literarily take direct instructions from the governor as members of the same party. How that is going to affect development in Imo State remains to be seen.

Be that as it may, it is now time for Imo people to embrace their fortune with pride and move on with the APC government to further develop their state. It will be necessary for all Imo to key behind the governor to build trust among people from the various local government areas of the state, and by extension, the Igbo Community world-wide because the Igbo abroad cannot claim to be united when those in the country are not. And the governor cannot unite the different factions, some supporting him, some supporting Ihedioha, some supporting Uche Nwosu, some supporting Ifeanyi Ararume and so on, unless Imo people are willing to come together now for the love of their state.

Governor Uzodinma should take his time to gather a good team. That is what makes government work in the interest of the people. He should also try and tolerate dissent. That is what makes democracy work. That is what makes a government become a listening ear. That is what points the governor to the knowledge of the desires and aspirations of those he is governing. The growth of democracy in Imo State is very crucial and very critical to the political history of Nigeria. So, the PDP must remain relevant in the governance of Imo State by maintaining its position as a responsible Shadow Government which the APC in the state cannot ignore or take for granted.

Whatever the APC government can achieve in these three remaining years will definitely define their position in 2023, barring electoral malpractices. One pressing demand is to ensure that APC legislators have properly located and identifiable constituency offices in their areas of jurisdiction and that they take the concerns of their constituents seriously. Imo people must move on and realize that no government can solve all the problems of the people. They should help themselves. They should make good use of the opportunity Governor Uzodinma will be willing to offer them. Our people have a saying that the taste of the pudding is in the eating. The APC government must now settle down to get Imo people to work together with Governor Hope Uzodinma, with the hope that it shall be well at the end of a long night. This is the immediate challenge of Imo APC.