Enugu State Governorship 2023; Nenwe Should Avoid Igbo Approach to National Politics in Aninri.

Ejike Okeke

January 17th, 2022

Although many Nenwe big wigs, especially those in diaspora and those living outside Enugu State are not active in politics neither have they being able to initiate and maintain solid and mutual relationship with big politicians that could guarantee securing democracy dividends for Nenwe People. They do not also support emerging young politicians who had shown capacity. They tend to apply so much noise, hate speech and attacks on certain big politicians they believed where responsible for lack of growth of big politicians from Nenwe and as well responsible for poor development of Nenwe town.

In politics, where one have grown above you, you must exhibit total loyalty and must show high level of respect to that person especially when you know that he will be involved in certain decisions about you. Once a winner emerged from an election, Towns who understands politics pay homage to such winner and congratulate him through well articulated media broadcast. Once you chose unguarded criticism and transferring your failures and lack of strategic approach to politics on certain big politician, by continually seeing such political leader as an enemy, you tend to destroy his mindset towards your people. It is almost impossible for a politician to empower a known enemy, except if such enemy have been discovered to become an obstacle if not accommodated. A community cannot jointly say a politician have rejected them, an individual can based on self interest.

My experience in active politics revealed to me that even your own brother from the same kindred can subdue you politically if he suspects that you either hates him, challenges him or bring family issues into your political activities. If your own brother out of any reason can sideline you in politics, what do you think of an outsider whom you constant reminded that he is an enemy through your words and sometimes actions?.

Politically, no matter your anger, the subordinate is expected to above everything ignore pains caused to him by his leader and maintain absolute loyalty and commitment. This on the long run is the only sure way to gain his favour which in turn will favour your community. Once you chose to fight back using words especially social media, expect nothing from that politician if he eventually have his way to seat of power, unless he was touch by the spirit of God.

The Igbo people have chosen to identify enemies within other region instead of being strategic in their political activities by forming alliance with other parts of Nigeria towards ensuring they gain their support through love. They have chosen to attack Aspirants from other regions within Nigeria instead of projecting their own Aspirants. The worst approach to politics is complete rejection of a candidate by a Nation, State, Local Government, Town, Community or village. Once a particular group of people openly shun an aspirant or a candidate, it turns into pure hate. This is political myopia.

The issue of Zoning in Nigeria, especially in Enugu State is political party affair and should not be an avenue to fight any candidate, as the Nigerian constitution empowers anybody who is qualified from any town or local Government to contest for any position of his choice. It now falls on the leadership of political parties to decide on zoning of positions. Any community who chose to use zoning to attack any aspirant is doing that to their own peril, if eventually such person emerged victorious at the end of the day. Such opposition from communities, especially those within the same Local Government area holds no water as the decision of who gets Governorship or other tickets of political parties depends solely on the state governor and other strong stakeholders of the party within the state and at the National level of such political parties. Why then must a town create unnecessary tension on what they cannot decide the outcome?.

When I was at a certain level of politics, I had written about the poor attention given to Nenwe town more than any Nenwe person, backed by video coverage of certain areas and public institutions in Nenwe. My blunt stand on the refusal of our representatives and the governor to develop Nenwe and empower our youths earned me so many enemies in Nenwe town. After 2019, I decided to be strategic rather than being blunt. I chose friendship in place of crude criticism because I realized that an Nsukka man even though we are same Enugu State cannot love you more than their own people. I also realized that you cannot easily access a man in power from another Local Government Area and that through mutual relationship, what is thought impossible will be achieved. The emergence of Hon. Okwu Chinedu (Otaka) as the representative of Aninri at Enugu State Assembly was purely based on loyalty and mutual relationship between him and Sen. Ike Ekweremadu and not because of any form of Zoning.

May it also interest us to know that Aninri will lose nothing if a man from Aninri tried the Enugu State Lion Building and succeeded. It is not about what I can get, but what the entire Aninri Local Government Area and Enugu West stands to gain. It is certain that such person will leave a legacy in Aninri in Particular and Enugu West in General. The Enugu East people (Nkanu) have controlled the political Atmosphere of the State for decades, if any son of greater Awgu acquired much capacity to confront them, it is not a bad idea and nobody from our zone should discourage him or try to blackmail him with zoning. It is only the position of a governor that can guarantee that a local government will produce a senator, House of Representatives Member and other notable good positions within a state. So such opportunity is not bad if it comes to Aninri Local Government area.

An average Igbo man, Nenwe man in particular knows how things are shared in traditional Igbo culture. This was what political parties supports. In Amoji Nenwe for instance, we share things between Ndiugwu and Ndiagbor. This was never created by any political party. In Enugu State, we have the Nkanu, Nsukka, Agbaja and Awgu Zone. These are our ancestral zoning and should form basis of our argument. In this four zones, the Awgu zone have never produced a democratically elected governor in Enugu State. Those who favours zoning based on the 3 senatorial zones in Enugu State, will one day wake up to support that the presidency of Nigeria should rotate between the 6 geopolitical zones of the country viz; South South, South East, South West, North Central, North East and North West. By this, the North will produce 3 consecutive presidents before it goes to another region of the country.

Remember, the PDP much talked zoning, does not exist in any document, neither was it practiced by our ancestors. That a governor handpicked a successor after him from another zone in the spirit of rotation does not amount to zoning. Zoning should be a decision of the entire state and not a political party or one man affair. When zoning is achieved, the zone comes back home and decide by themselves who goes for them. In rotation, the leaders will chose where it rotates to provided that such zone is not ahead of others in the rotation. It may also interest you to know that the governorship had gone round all zones in Enugu State in this present democracy starting from 1999. Going beyond 1999, other zones have gone ahead of Enugu west senatorial zone.

Based on the above revelation, I will urge our people from Nenwe and Enugu West zone in General to shun any fight in favour of zoning to outside Enugu West or against any candidate from Enugu West zone, as they do not have powers to decide. In the spirit of conventional politics, they should also shun unnecessary media war against any zone or Aspirant and approach diplomacy and strategic relationship with people, especially those from Enugu West Zone with capacity of winning the 2023 Governorship Election in Enugu State.

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