By Jude Aneke
The Enugu political landscape has in the past three months been inundated with unwholesome stories which portray the state and her people in bad light. From the PDP’s heavily monetized gubernatorial primaries in which each delegate was bought with tax payers’ money (for half a million naira each to vote against his conscience) to a viral video involving a former governor of the state Senator Chimaroke Nnamani attacking a gubernatorial aspirant at the venue of the primaries, in full view of the governor and without being restrained, the show of shame has yet cease. Before the said primaries, the same senator and head of the infamous Ebeano group was involved in another scandal in which his marauding thugs following his orders, broke the head of an old man named Chiene for having the guts to argue with him. Also before the primaries was a widespread rumour ( yet to be refuted) of sale of the state for a mouth watering amount to the PDP gubernatorial aspirant ( now candidate) and following which the primaries was a mere formality. It was thus a complete allegory of shame, lawlessness and impunity.
Following the brazen attack on the then gubernatorial aspirant of the PDP Barr. Chijioke Edeoga( without any sanction by the party or the governor) and his eventual defection to the Labour party where he clinched its governorship ticket, his persecutors in PDP did not consider it appropriate to declare a ceasefire and move on with their own party affairs. Instead they took their battle to his new party deploying every available arsenal to retrieve the ticket already given to him. The governor of the state who denied the former federal law maker the PDP’s ticket and who has not hidden his desperation to bury his governorship ambition, allegedly commissioned emissaries to Abuja to do whatever they could to ensure that Edeoga’s nomination process was not completed.
The questions many have asked are: if the Enugu PDP valued Chijioke Edeoga to the extent of chasing after him from party to party, why didn’t they choose him as their gubernatorial candidate to have a smooth ride in next year’s election? Why trying to stop another party from taking advantage of their own blunder to place Edeoga on its ballot to win election? Is Chijioke Edeoga the only gubernatorial candidate in Enugu State?
In all the macabre dance of shame, one name has not ceased to reverberate; that name is Odengene. It was he who was first commissioned by the Ebeano governor to hit Abuja and ride roughshod with a heavy war chest of #2 billion naira, an amount considered sufficient to totally compromise the entire Labour party leadership from top to bottom. With such amount of money, the mission was considered accomplished while the governor and his Ebeano coconspirators waited anxiously in the Government House for the good news that Odengene had displaced Edeoga as the Enugu state governorship candidate of the Labour party.
That news did not break out. Instead the Labour party having been reoriented to adopt the character and integrity of its presidential candidate Peter Obi, rebuffed all the PDP overtures and blandishments by sticking to a very popular person they trusted to take them to the Lion building come 2023. The fact that Chijioke Edeoga has since been elected the party’s consensus gubernatorial candidate and issued with a certificate of return is now history.
However, what has perhaps not become history is the continuing show of shame by the Enugu PDP ever since Edeoga’s emergence, something that has made some of its members to conclude that the bad name the party has acquired chasing Edeoga about is enough to attract sympathy votes for the Labour party and make the PDP to lose the election.
Since the Abuja debacle and which has cast a thick shadow on the party, the governor’s increasing use of the Government House as a thoroughfare for impostor groups coming to drain the state’s resources in the name of solidarity visits( as the governor’s only way to neutralize Edeoga’s support) has got too many tongues wagging. This is especially so when arrears of gratuities of public servants have not been paid in the past 11 years while pensions are paid in trickles. Many also fear that at the rate the state funds are being used and abused to service sycophants almost on a daily basis, the state could go bankrupt even before the end of the governor’s tenure.
While the narrative of shame continues, Odengene the tormentor in chief used by the Ebeano PDP government to trouble the Labour party has yet to give up. On Saturday 27th August, 2022, the so-called pilot with zero credibility rating, planned to organize an event at ‘KOBB Event Centre, ‘Shoprite’ Enugu under the auspices of ‘CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME’ and which he Odengene, planned to coincide with the sanitation day for the Peter Obi movement.
After the day’s match, some of the ‘Obidients’ involved were invited to the centre as part of the activities marking the day. None of the invitees except those Odengene tipped off in advance, knew that it was a subterfuge by the PDP to cause trouble in the Labour party using the same Odengene as a hatchet man and unrepentant recidivist. No sooner they were seated than they began to see some known PDP faithfuls who were also in attendance. Not quite long thereafter, the Master of ceremony to everyone’s astonishment, introduced Odengene as the incoming governor of Enugu State. That immediately precipitated a conflagration which almost pulled down the roof of the building as shouts of ‘Edeoga Ka anyi ge so’ halted whatever else the impostor’s hireling wanted to say. The occasion ended in a fiasco as the attendees angrily left the venue to address a press conference reaffirming their loyalty to Edeoga.
The questions that have further arisen are; how much longer will the Enugu PDP play the same game that has always ended in disgrace? Is the man Odengene really university educated taking into account the many absurdities and scandals he has been associated with in so short a time? Grapevine learnt that the impostor was emboldened to do what he did because of a wishy washy lawsuit he filed against the Labour party in far away Rivers State, hoping to ambush it with an exparte order but which was providentially nipped in the bud on 29th August, 2022. Having filed an action in court challenging Edeoga’s candidacy, decency, civility and scholarly discipline demanded that he waited for the outcome before declaring himself a candidate. The Hon. Court refused to be used to destabilize the Labour party in Enugu state.
Time has therefore come for the Enugu PDP and its shameless agent masquerading as a pilot to carry out a thorough introspection with a view to turning over a new leaf and redeeming what is left of its battered image. Concentrating on selling their heavily encumbered candidate to the Enugu electorate instead of chasing Edeoga around should be an honourable thing to do.
The law enforcement agencies on their part must rise in defence of law and order otherwise the situation could get out of hand if the lawlessness continues. If someone other than the person duly nominated by a party and issued with a certificate of return could cause himself to be introduced as a gubernatorial candidate while also sharing brochures containing his photograph as a candidate, without any consequence whatsoever, then all the preparations for a peaceful handover in 2023, may never come off as law and order must first be guaranteed. There is no alternative to law and order.
