NIGERIA: Enugu West Senatorial Seat and South East Interest

Without a doubt, South East Nigeria is the least politically conscious zone in the country. The atomization and fragmentations evident in the zone’s political life have been so deeply engrained that whoever manages to come to power in the precinct carries on in a manner worse than the Russian Czars of antiquity - a rot earl trashing the way to power and doing even worse things to remain in power.

How else can one explain the raw power being exhibited by the Governor of Enugu State, who has arrogated to himself the power to decide who runs or returns for all the elective positions accruing to the State? What is more, through such politics, the zone has continued to rob the South East and indeed Nigeria so much.

Nigerian politics is ever fully charged and calling for the best of brinkmanship. Other regions in the country all understand this and pushing their best eleven forward, except the South East. To the apolitical region, it really doesn’t matter for as long as some narrow business interests are served.

Enugu State remains a damning example of the demonstrations of how and why the South East is politically backward in Nigeria. Apart from being the headquarters of the zone and its political permutations, Enugu State, since the return to the current civil dispensation in 1999, has remained a hotbed of some kind of political atavism and politics of exclusion.

In a nation where unitary federalism is practiced, every federating unit and its regional grouping, have to carefully aggregate their interests and enter the political struggle from a position of strength. Regrettably, South East is not doing this. It is rather always encouraging divisions and shooting themselves at the foot and busy playing to the gallery, destroying even those who reared their heads both in the States and at the center. Are Igbos meant to kill their own species?

Pull Him Down Syndrome has always been rife in the region. At the verge of the 2011 PDP Presidential Primaries and Election, Chime vs. Nwodo brouhaha consumed Okwesillieze Nwodo and the position of National Chairman of the ruling party zoned to it and occupied by him. Alhaji Ahmed Alkali was put in an acting capacity and soon after, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur assumed the same office in substantive capacity, and Igbos never returned to it till date. No thanks to the politics of attrition in Enugu and South East.

For the avoidance of doubt, media report had it that the so-called aggrieved members of the PDP who then dragged Nwodo to court were allegedly sponsored by Governor Sullivan Chime of Enugu state.

It was exactly the same show of shame when the Senate presidency was zoned to the South East. It traveled through all the five South East states between 1999 and 2005. The best of the zone’s political class, including the erudite and charismatic Chuba Okadigbo, were burnt in the furnace of the zone’s destructive politics.

More recently, the desire of the outgoing Governor Chime to muscle his way to the Senate is replaying the same murky politics. Like many other governors who now see the Nigerian Senate as a retiring benefit, where most of them merely warm the seats, Chime sees going to the Red Chamber as more important than sustaining the South East interest. For the avoidance of doubt, the Office of the Deputy Senate President is zoned to the South East and the possibility of the region retaining it or move up the ladder depends on the number of ranking Senators to return from the zone; more importantly, the return of its incumbent in the person of Ike Ekweremadu. This will not be if the Governor who has imposed his will, is allowed to have his way.

The issues at stake are truly beyond Enugu State. The South East ought to examine the matter and begin to articulate its interest ahead of 2015. Those who claim that it is the democratic right of the governor to contest the Senatorial seat are correct. But they should also take another look at the electoral process in the State and see how democratic it is.

The coming of Governor Sullivan Chime to the Senate is bound to set the South East back. To begin with, as a non-ranking senator, it is almost certain that he would not succeed Ike Ekweremadu as Deputy Senate President. This is at variance with better and deft calculations regarding Ekweremadu’s counterparts in the other regions. The example of the Idoma people as regards Senator David Mark is instructive. They do not want to gamble away the office of the Senate President by insisting that Mark had been to the Senate for four record times and would be returning for the 5th term. They are aware of the high stakes and strategic position Mark occupies in the nation’s polity due to the office of the Senate President which he occupies.

The South East ought to play the same politics in the case of Ike Ekweremadu by prevailing on Chime to sidetrack the Senate and set his eyes on other positions, which would come to Enugu State, such as ambassadorial or ministerial slots. Such would guarantee that he (Chime) remains relevant in Enugu nay Nigeria’s politics if this is his preoccupation.

Ike Ekweremadu is not just a Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Igbos ought to reciprocate his exemplary representation, which has transcended Nigeria, to encompass West Africa sub-region where he (Ekweremadu) is the incumbent Speaker of the ECOWAS Parliament.

In his position as the Deputy President of the Senate, Ekweremadu also became the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Constitution Review. The nation could not successfully amend the constitution up to 2007. But since he set out on the onerous assignment in that year, he has guided the Senate and indeed the NASS to a record three successful amendments of the 1999 Constitution and is at the verge of completing the 4th.

The 1999 Constitution was contrived by the departing military to retain Nigeria as a unitary system. But Ekweremadu has been pushing for the return of the country to true federal system, where there shall be multilevel policing, Local Government autonomy, independent Judiciary, independent State Assemblies as well as a return to regionalism or creation of a State in the South East to bring the region at par with the rest of the country in the meantime. Not only has he completed his PhD specialising in Constitutional Law, he is very much sought after by many important educational and international organizations in and outside Nigeria. He has spoken on these themes at the Johns Hopkins University, in USA, York University in Canada, Commonwealth organisations, to name but a few.

Ekweremadu, as a representative per excellence, has equally complemented the development efforts of the Enugu State Government and South East by attracting well over 168 projects to the State and zone. Many impassable communities in Enugu State, even outside his senatorial district, now have access roads. Ike Ekweremadu has equally partnered with Senator David Mark, Senate President, to deliver the most stable Senate since the return to democratic dispensation. Mark can sleep with two eyes closed knowing he has a loyal and equally experienced deputy. Their bonding is all too obvious.

Governor Chime’s decree seeking to retire Enugu lawmakers is draconian and self-serving, especially when he too wants to come to the Senate after two terms as governor. He is the Governor of Enugu, not Enugu itself. Let the people decide. Even if it is a benevolent decree as claimed, Ekweremadu’s case ought to be an exception. If Benue says Mark should return, why should Enugu Government try to stop their own?

Ekweremadu has tbeen a great asset to both Enugu State and South East and indeed to the nation and West African sub-region. To permit the ill-advised senatorial ambition of the Governor to terminate such thriving representation of an ebullient and energetic intellectual and grassroots transformer will be a disservice of the highest order.

Therefore, the South East leaders ought to assert themselves on such cases where the interest of the entire race is being compromised and do all they can to compel the belligerent forces acting in reflux to regain perspective. That way, the interest of the region is protected and its place in the nation’s polity guaranteed. To ignore such will mean that atomization and fragmentation of the South East people will continue and leave the region as the weakling of the nation’s politics, as it has always been.