IMO STATE: Ihedioha And The Demand Of History

Emeka Ihedioha. Image: Twitter

BY OKEY IKECHUKWU

Today, the Supreme Court stands on what may well be the precipice of a probably unprecedented judicial challenge. This is with reference to the planned review of its own judgment regarding the last governorship elections in Imo State. So we must urge their Lordships to remember the words of Winston Churchill, the former British Prime Minister, who said: “To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.” The type of special moment Churchill had in mind stands before the Nigerian judiciary and judicial system today. To make this their finest hour is the demand of history.

All hell broke loose when, a few weeks ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the governor of Imo State, Hon. Emeka Ihedioha, be stripped of the Certificate of Return given to him as the duly elected governor and that Chief Hope Uzodinma, the person who came fourth in the said election, be given the Certificate of Return and summarily sworn in as the duly elected governor.

Eminent lawyers, political party faithful, sundry commentators and even freelance grumblers joined issues – even if repetitively so. Protest marches decorated the national landscape. Then, quite unexpectedly, the apex court indicated its willingness to review the judgment. This commendable move remains a decent, dignified and mature stepping forth to take a second look at a case on which it had already made what would ordinarily pass for a final pronouncement.

The Supreme Court, the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) and the learned justices of the apex court should be understood here to be saying to Nigerians that infallibility resides with Divinity alone, as an inherent and inalienable attribute. It does not inhere in human beings, does not reside with men and cannot be successfully simulated by men. Thus their Lordships must, first, be seen to have moved up the ladder of judicial propriety. By so doing, they have also given many people a much-needed emotional respite. The decision to review the case has also tempered the distemper of many whose strident criticism of the apex court verges on the hysterical.

Regarding the criticisms, and this is a slight diversion from our main concern today, it must be said that some of the criticisms have become so tiresome, threadbare and coarsely inelegant that one is sometimes not patient enough to wade through the vituperations to find the substance. Matters have not been helped by the plethora of political cases all over the place. We may recall, for instance, that the PDP cried until it ran out of tears, when its presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, lost at the Supreme Court. The court was (rightly or wrongly) accused of bias and of being a stooge of the ruling party. But the same PDP had celebrated when the APC lost its struggle to field candidates in Zamfara State, all the way to the Supreme Court. The court was not denigrated at all as beholden to the PDP. The story was the same when the APC and Rotimi Amechi, a politician who is largely responsible for over 105% of his political and personal problems, were worsted by the courts. It was inauspicious then to speak of partisanship.

Coming back to the matter at hand, there are currently diverse views on what the Supreme Court should do, or not do. My hope and prayer is that the court comes out with a decision their Lordships can proudly recommend to their children, their grandchildren, to students of law and to posterity. This is a critical case; and for a nation in critical times, standing on slippery slopes of morality in leadership and facing very critical challenges on all fronts. The hunger and anger in the land have fuelled comprehensive distrust of all institutions of state. Ours has become a nation wherein citizens live silently with the quiet certainty and conviction that the average (not every) public office holder is either an outright looter, or at least a person of dishonest means who has escaped the long arms of the law. We live in such trying times, wherein misconduct is made to look very attractive by those who ought to take the lead in guiding society unto the path of moral rectitude. It is against the background of the foregoing considerations that the Supreme Court must exercise the greatest circumspection in the matter at hand. This is the demand of our history today.

I am not from Imo State, but I have said enough about that state on these pages for any observer to note my interests and concerns for good governance in that endowed state. Yes, I confess to having had a healthy contempt for the immediate past government of the state before Ihedioha. Yes, I saw and still see, the great gains of the short, and interrupted, tenure of Emeka as the first real attempt to bring Imo people together, with genuine, people-based, Ikwu-na-ibe notions of leadership and development. I make no apologies about my perception of Ihedioha as having begun to dispel the odour of unsanctity surrounding leadership, governance and service delivery in Imo State before the court judgment. I suggest, and insist, that he brought something that had been largely missing since the days of the late Sam Mbakwe and the likes of Peter Obi as governors in the South-east.

Part of what Emeka brought, and which is in danger of being blown away by Ndi Omekome, is the idea of leadership as service to the people. Not the award of contracts to the elite for kickbacks, in addition to the promotion of never-do-wells into prominence, no. It was service, “for the good of the people, according to their known and accepted norms, and in the promotion of their short, medium and long term interests.”

In those few months, Ndi Imo had the heartwarming experience of seeing a governor who went about conducting government business with calm clear-headedness and unaffected diligence. They beheld someone who came to lead and to offer succor by placing all the cards on the table and asking them to join him so that they could collectively regain and restore their pride as a people. By inviting, deploying and making the best of the state’s rich human capital he was already creating a new reference for the teeming youths, before the Supreme Court judgment.

The contrast between his short stint and the eight years of tomfoolery that preceded him explains why everyone was ready to work with him. The people simply heaved a sigh of relief. This includes the repentant, and perhaps not so repentant, participants in the eight-year leadership dance of shame that preceded his assumption of office. But one thing stood out: he removed the debauchery that had taken violent possession of that endowed state. It is true that the conduct of some Members of the Imo State House of Assembly after the court judgment leaves a big smear on the celebrated rebirth. Yes indeed, it does. But that only shows that some people are still what they were. To take that too hard, or make it a basis for the permanent stigmatisation of the political turncoats, is to overlook the fact that not all are initially guided by deep conviction in all that they do.

But no one must lose sight of the fact that the virtues, and even performance of Ihedioha in office are not matters to tender in a court of law, especially the Supreme Court. They are, at best, subject declarations of preferred values and a cheerful display of ones loyalties with regard to what one would like to see in Imo State. So one does not expect that the Supreme Court that withdrew his certificate on technical grounds will re-award same on the bases of some beautiful prose on his leadership qualities. No. Not at all! It is now a matter of law. But not banal law. It must be law taken new levels of jurisprudential excellence, to the much higher calling that beckons on the ultimate spirit of the law (all rational law) to deliver the type of justice that will resonate with our true humanity. Which is why the Ihedioha appeal that was called up and then adjourned to the second day of March imposes some great demands, based on our recent judicial history. It is the demands ancient jurists would say are imposed on every juror of repute, who does not wish to do anything that is “repugnant to natural justice, equity and good conscience.”

Whichever way the matter goes subsequently, and I hope it goes in favour of those who have argued, stridently, that it beats logic to have a man declared winner in an election wherein the total votes cast exceeds the number of those accredited to vote on the election day, the leadership of the judiciary deserves commendation for reopening this vexatious matter. Those who argue a constitutional restraint on the apex court against reviewing its own case overlook one simple and straightforward fact. That fact is that it is the judiciary that is charged with interpreting the constitution, interpreting all made laws and determining whether any made law, or pretense at law making, can pass muster.

In showing a preference for a return to the status quo ante, one has nothing whatsoever against the gentleman who inherited for the time being the title of governor of Imo State, conferred on him by the Supreme Court judgment. I have known him for as long as I have known Ihedioha, but my position on who I would rather see in the Imo State Government House is personal; and borne of personal certainties about what the state – and Ndigbo- will gain with Ihedioha as governor of Imo State.

SOURCE: THIS DAY

Before The War: A Personal Story

Okey Ikechukwu. Image: Twitter

BY OKEY IKECHUKWU

The expression “before the war” was a central marker for some of us in the 70s. It depicted the transition between eras. “That was before the war” could then be heard with a wry smile and mocking reference to people who dared talk about what they possessed in the past, but who became near-paupers after the war. Father lost many things, including his status as the overall representative of the printers and publishers of Practical Psychology in the country. He was required to contact some people, I think in Ibadan, if he wished to have anything to do with the publication “after the war.” As anyone who can still get archival copies of that renowned international publication today will admit, it still puts the academic drivel that passes for psychology in most institutions today to shame. But we are digressing.

Father was also not able to immediately reclaim his before-the-war status with many of his foreign partners. Though a printer of repute who serviced the entire old Bende and much of the old Owerri Province and much of the South-east before the war, most of his big printing machines went with the war. It took him years to buy new ones all over again, even though he knew where his machines were; and who had confiscated and was using them. Let us backtrack to 1967 and 1968.

There was a big reception for some very important people at our home in Umuahia. Most of the people came from out of town and their vehicles took over much of the street. Then, midway through the engagement, mother called father aside and into one of the rooms, where I was fiddling with the paper boat I was trying to make. Although they took no special notice of me, I made to step out in deference; as was proper. But mother, very uncharacteristically, gave me a look that meant I should continue what I was doing. Strange, but she did. And I remain deeply grateful for it to this day, because it took years for me to realize the value of this first hand encounter with a woman’s little acknowledged, but flawless, intuitive perception.

Standing there with father, she told him that she had an uneasy feeling about the reception and about some of these people being entertained. The man of the house became a bit pensive. Then he asked whether there was anything in particular she could pinpoint as grounds for her uneasiness. She answered in the negative, saying that she wished she could be more concrete. Then father asked whether any of the people present could be the possible cause of her discomfort. Again she spoke in general terms, adding that she feared that what had brought them together, and for which there was so much cheerful exchanges at the moment, may not bring father much joy in the end. “You are a good man,” she said, “but (in my own words) there is one particular man in the parlour from whom I get the impression that whatever you do with him will not end well for you.” Then she asked father whether he knew the man in question well enough. Father explained that the man was the leader of the group from Port Harcourt. He added that he honestly had not seen reason to doubt him.

It was now mother’s turn to look pensive. After what seemed to me a very long pause, she asked whether what they were planning to do together had been concluded. Father answered in the affirmative. Her brows deepened further. She said she felt that it would have been better if it had not been started at all, as the man was “not a good person.” Looking really sad, mother said (again) that the man was “a bad person.” Father, apparently knowing the woman he married, was in no hurry to end the conversation at all. He said that it would have been best to call off the deal, if he had not already signed all the papers. He explained the awkwardness of pulling back on everything they agreed upon almost within the hour. Mother agreed with him, but they both looked very unhappy and disturbed, as father said he wished he had not gotten carried away by the war effort. They both hoped he had not taken a step that might lead to something unpleasant in future.

The guests in question were part of a team that came to relocate some of the most sophisticated of father’s printing machines to Port Harcourt. The war-born Eastern Echo newspaper he was part of faced imminent danger of death, as the vulnerability of Umuahia grew by the day due to the shrinking living space in the South East occasioned by the loss of territory to federal forces. The wisdom of relocating the massive machines, as well as the concert of forces and persons involved in the “brilliant idea’ of letting go of machines he personally brought in from Germany apparently before I was born, seemed unimpeachable.

The sad news is that father did not recover the machines after the war. That was how the sweat of his youth fell under “abandoned property.” The very man mother complained about, whose intervention would have ended the debate over whether or not father should carry his machines, was the person who insisted that the only way father’s “claim” to the machines could be taken seriously was if he produced the original receipts with which he bought them. Interestingly, I was also around when father returned from that trip and I recall how calm he looked, as he narrated everything to mother and announced that he would not make any further contact with the people. He kept his word.

It was shortly after the machine business narrated above that father relocated us to a bungalow he procured in Ihiala. Umuahia was now experiencing more regular air raids and distant, but nevertheless disconcerting, booming sounds. We saw the planes and experienced the bombings alright, but the dreadful booming sounds were a mystery of unimaginable proportions to me in particular. But the immediate precipitating factor for our relocation from Umuahia was an incident in Amuzukwu, a suburb of Umuahia.

The regular airplane bombing of Umuahia town created a peculiar migration pattern, whereby town dwellers moved into the forest-covered surrounding villages every morning to escape the daylight air raids; and returned to their homes in the evenings. We participated in this migration, until one morning when the villagers surrounded the home of the head master where we normally took refuge. They wanted him to bring out the “saboteurs” he was habouring. Their reaction arose from the fact that the bombings were now extended to the villages, fuelling the suspicion that some of the “migrants” were conniving with enemy forces and telling them where to bomb. It was pathetic!

For such behaviour to come from people who all knew father, a man who even paid the school fees of some of their children, was something the head master could not understand. Everywhere was charged. Cudgels and odd implements clanged in front of the house. Unperturbed, and against the entreaties of the teacher who wanted to speak to the people, father stepped out. He just stood there until the noise died down. Then, calling some of the people by name, he said that he would take his family and leave, the way he had come. He explained that no one would blame them for now suspecting even their own shadows and that it was better for him to depart and remain their friend, than stay and risk being blamed for any misfortune in the place.

By the time he was done, the teacher was standing beside him, very angry and totally beside himself with indignation at the behavior of the people. But father calmed him down, as he asked us to enter the car. Some of the people then pleaded that we should stay, that it was the work of the devil, etc. But father was not a man of idle words. Less than two weeks after this incident, we were hurriedly relocated to Ihiala, because the bombings were now more frequent. The terrifying booming sounds were also sounding like they were coming from down the streets. The logic of our relocation was simple: it is easier for a man to secure his head while alone, than when he has his wife and children in tow.

Ihiala saw us temporarily in a refugee camp, where most of our relations (from the now-Anambra part of the east) had settled after their various towns and villages were overrun by federal troops. Families “owned” separate corners in different halls of the primary school. They already had little gardens and farms, as they had apparently been there for many months. There was incredible order and structure to everything, complete with adjudication without the involvement of the Biafran government. But people still fought occasionally over all sorts of things. Water was fetched from the stream, so I experienced that for the first time. It was in the process that I had one spectacular fall, spilt the water I had fetched and broke the “massive” bottle of Lucozade (the real thing of those days, with a wine-like cap) with which I fetched the water.

We left the camp just when I was beginning to enjoy it. Father joined us later with only his Mercedes Benz car and without bringing the fridge. My elder sister and I had asked him to bring it when he came to move us from the camp. When we returned to Umuahia after the war, father had to use my elder sister’s semi-adult bicycle for a while. This was a bicycle he would ordinarily not have looked upon at all “before the war.” As things stand today, 50 years after the civil war, we still nostalgically remember South-east before the War. Very sad indeed!

As The South-East Morns

Okey Ikechukwu

BY OKEY IKECHUKWU

South Eastern Nigeria lies prostrate and without dignity today. It has been thus for a long time now. Enveloped by an incubus of snarling befuddlement as it is dragged towards a benighted terminus, the region has become a metaphor for how to exist (without really living) in a federation of supposedly equal partners. It twists and turn piteously in subdued pain. There is an unvoiced gnashing of teeth and a bitter forbearance. Denuded, ridiculed, swindled and roundly scandalised on all fronts by an elaborate pretense at nationhood that has been to its detriment for far too long, the South East Nigeria is at best a metaphor for nominal and fraudulent citizenship. Its gifted, energetic and bold youths are forced to scavenge around the fringes of morality and legality.

That is because they have found themselves in a system that excludes them from what their peers and supposed fellow citizens take as a matter of course; and regard as their entitlement. There is, for people of the South East, an unnamed fear here and a semi-uncertain confusion there. There is also a semi-real trembling yonder. Anon, it is as if there is always some creeping, inexplicable, yet ever-present, but clearly unhealthy quivering of political and economic nerves. Perplexity walks the land – and with bold, intimidating steps.

But, being a people resolved not to dissolve under inclement currents and the unrelenting assaults of a merciless state that seems determined to annihilate them, Ndigbo remain resilient in the face of inhuman political and economic odds. But does the rest of the Nigerian federation really know, and to its fullest measure, that thralldom and misery have taken permanent residence in the entire South East? Put differently, does anyone really care what people of that region feel, or do not feel, about everything going on around them – and sometimes in their name? I think not. And that is because everyone has been living with a badly treated South East since after the civil war in 1970. It has become normal to reckon without the people in every way.

The failure of the post-war rehabilitation and reconstruction programmes, the decades of burgeoning neglect by the central government, the lack of group cohesion among the people themselves, the curse of poor strategic group leadership, the political incompetence of new “Igbo leaders” and an emergent attitude of presumptive preeminence by most eastern Nigeria’s public office holders of today, have taken their toll. That is why the land and the people now bleed from all pores. Yes, the South East mourns. And so might the rest of the nation if things are not put right and in good time.

It is a matter of fact, and record, that the South East region has remained sidelined in federal developmental projects for decades. The nation has lived with this reality for very long before the current government. The region lacks relevance in the siting of impactful institutions and major drivers of our economic environment. It is mocked by the wretched profile of its most visible political actors. Its sons and daughters in national public positions mostly live to survive their tenures. They sneak off to some recondite and narrow existence, or to their villages, once out of office. Not so for their peers, contemporaries and supposed equals from other parts of the country.

Look around you calmly and you must conclude that there is really nothing happening in the South East to warrant serious national human, economic or political traffic in that direction. It boasts the most dilapidated federal roads in the nation. It is the least considered in the new epidemic of rail projects springing up all over the nation. The second Bridge over the Onitsha end of the Niger was on the cards for decades. It became a metaphor for what should have happened immediately after the civil war, but which did not happen. The over 30 years of traffic nightmare for travelers on that route lingered and became the norm. Local economies even sprang up around the area; which have thrived for decades.

When finally approval was given for the Bridge to be built under the PDP government of yore, it turned out to be a Build Operate and Transfer (BOT) arrangement. In other words, the bridge was approved to be built by whoever was willing, able and available to put down his money for it. Yes, the builder will fund the project and then later recover the money by putting up toll gates on both ends of the new bridge. It is those using the bridge that would pay for the cost of building it; and it was not to be handed over to the government to be used free of cost, until the number of years stipulated as adequate for the builder to recover his cost, along with the accruing profit. And, mind you, there was no case of national bankruptcy; or a dearth of projects of even higher net value being executed all over the nation at the time.

But the bridge was still not built. Had it been built as initially planned, it would most probably have been the only spot in the federation where toll gates were erected so that users of a public, land transport, facility like a bridge would pay for using it. And this was at a time the federal government banned and dismantled all toll gates in the country. It does not matter now, as observed earlier, that projects of higher value have been, and are still being, built all over the federation at government expense. Only the South East must moan, groan and bleed through the nose for a bridge that should have been constructed over 40 years ago.

Now that work has finally commenced on the bridge, thanks to the Buhari government and after a protracted toing and froing on several fronts, the euphoria of this “breakthrough” has, again, exposed the myopia and infantilism of South East political leadership. An elite that clamoured, and still clamours, for an inland port in Onitsha is blind to the fact that this new bridge has been deployed as undertaker for the port project. Go on, take a look at the main frames of the ongoing construction on the second Onitsha Bridge. What type of ship will pass under it? With what type of cargo, if any, or finished products will the ship pass? What in the current specifications show that it is being constructed with a contiguous inland port facility in mind? Who will now stop the work, given the stage it has reached and the amount of money already spent on it, to raise the beams so ship can pass under it?

To be fair, there is enough head room for, crabs, swimmers, speedboats and rafts. For good measure, it may even endure a flat-bottomed steamer ferrying sand around the now-dry banks. But that would be all. So we can at least commission the Onitsha inland port for some form of retail shipping, using canoes, fast swimmers and speedboats between the creeks of the South South and Onitsha. The South East mourns!

Which brings us to the recent presidential intervention on the rehabilitation of the Enugu airport, which was shut down some two months ago. It was with relief and gratitude that many people noted President Muhammadu Buhari’s directive that the sum of ten billion Naira be released for rehabilitation work on the closed airport to start. This was after the South East governors, accompanied by the President General of Ohanaeze, the region’s foremost socio-cultural organisation, paid him an all-important visit. It was like a trip to a shrine to appease a mighty oracle. The issues were presented. The pleas were made. The period of pensive waiting, with bated breath was not missing. Then came the magnanimous pronouncement of a reprieve. Phew! Hurray! But, that is because the South East is involved.

The plan to shut down the airport should ordinarily have been on the table along with the plan for its rehabilitation and re-commissioning. The aviation minister’s explanation, that there was no budgetary provision for the project, thus that it just could not be taken on and executed after it was shut down, begs the question. Does it not? So it was actually the visit to Aso Rock that suddenly, magically and perhaps miraculously, put the rehabilitation of the Enugu airport in the budget? It was also the visit that mysteriously, worked out the cost of the project and ferreted out the funds? So should we then assume that the figure magnanimously announced by the president was advised by actual verifiable calculations, or was it just announced on a whim? Whichever way we choose to look at it, there is cause for misgivings about public administration in Nigeria, the concept of “national emergency” and much more. The South East mourns!

Sorry to those who on seeing the title of this article easily assumed that it was to address the recent series of misfortunes, including fires, avoidable deaths and loss of property, in the South East? No, the misfortunes of the South East are much more than that. Many of them are self-inflicted. The misfortunes are there alright. So are the fires and the avoidable deaths and other losses. But over and above all these stand in bold relief the sustained diminution of a region of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, through deliberate government gymnastics and the political illiteracy of its own ruling elite.

Yes, it has the largest population per square kilometer. But it also has the lowest number of local governments, based on population density. It has records of exceptional performance in all competitive examinations, but the lowest representation in federal institutions. It has the highest number of dilapidated federal roads, no place in the national gas plan and no mention in the epidemic of rail series springing up everywhere else in the country. That is the South East for you. The region morns today.

SOURCE: THIS DAY LIVE