When Prof Nentawe Yilwatda emerged as the National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in July this year, there was the unnoticed voice stridently asking a curious question, “Is Nentawe Yilwatda among the 12?” Curiously, Yilwatda who ‘heard’ the rather strange voice could neither comprehend nor decipher it.

However his recent record-breaking and landmark success the net-tearing catch during the just concluded APC ‘sea voyage’ to the Southeast and Southsouth regions has now made him to retrospectively cast his mind back to that voice on his inauguration day screaming “Is Yilwatda among the 12 (Disciples)? This was the voice that heralded his “missionary journey” to the Southeast and the Southsouth as part of the moveto secure Aso Rock for his party for another four years.

Yilwatda truly is not only among the 12 disciples (this time around of APC), he is the Simon Peter (more so as the party’s national chairman) who led the fishing voyage where ‘Jesus commanded’ him to throw his net to the Southeast and Southsouth part of the Sea, after his party had laboured for years without any tangible catch.’ Heeding the voice, ‘Peter’ Yilwatda deployed his electrically designed (as an Electrical-Electronic engineer) net in the two strategic regions. What followed was a good catch of men and celebration galore. Enugu in the Southeast and Bayelsa in the Southsouth are in the net!
The movement of the Enugu State Governor Peter Mbah and Bayelsa Governor Diri along with all the structures of governance in their statessignals a significant harvest for Yilwatda and his party within a short time. The import of the victory cannot be lost quickly on both the admirers and critics of the APC, including the mourning Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), especially in view of the ‘no go area’ the regions had been made for the progressives and the APC in particular for over two decades. To the PDP,Yilwatda and his party have committed an ‘abomination’ and have entered the ‘forbidden grove, the forest of the gods’, while for the APC the veil in the altar preventing the people of these two regions, especially the South east from ‘accessing salvation’ has been torn.

Analysts must recognise the regional importance of Enugu, which was and remains the political headquarters of not just the South east and the Igbo worldwide. In a war or coup situation, capturing the capital or headquarter is very strategic for victory. Enugu is not just a regional political capital it is as well the fountain and capital of intellectualism hosting the country’s first indigenous university.

It is also important to recognise the crucial impact of the scholastic sojourn of Yilwatda at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in the same Enugu State, where he studied for his PhD. That academic sojourn must have made him a little more an Igbo culturally and politically, making friends and building contacts and bridges within and beyond the university. It may, therefore, not be by accident that he opted for Enugu, his adopted home in the region to launch his ‘political fishing’ for men as it is always the case to launch a war from the point of strength. In this case, the ‘war’ to capture the Southeast for the APC.

Still leveraging on his Enugu sojourn, the Kan Dungung, Plateau-born engineer turned politician, was not only a witness to the failure of PDP in the region, especially in the area of road infrastructure (because as a necessity, he passed through them), he must have heard how in the past people complained at different formal and informal fora the injustice allegedly meted out to the late Dr Alex Ekwueme believed to be the main architect of the PDP and must have quietly vowed to change the narrative one way or the other, given the opportunity.

There is no doubt that in the APC family the toast and celebration would be endless, however it is pertinent to recognise and place on record the obvious underground work and sleeplessnights Yilwatda and his trouble-shooting team must have deployed not only for the open feat but the unannounced success of being able to bring together and harmonise structures of the two erstwhile strange bed-fellows –PDP and the APC – without raising dust or leading to any backlash as had been the case in such previous moves. This is particularly so in Bayelsa State where even so far the victory has not torn apart the old APC structures. For this, the party’s national chairman and his team as well as the Nyesom Wike deserved a pat on the back.

It is important to highlight two significant take-aways from the APC revolution in Bayelsa. The first is that it has neutralised whatever force thatis putting pressure on former President Goodluck Jonathan to contest again to become president, a position he exited in 2015.The second take-away is that with Bayelsa in the safe hand of President Bola Tinubu, it will safeguard the dicey and shaky-shaky state of the APC in the still fluid politics in the neighbouring Rivers State until when the party fully has its way in the state. Till then, Bayelsa will remain a buffer zone for the APC.

Dispassionately speaking, the election of Yilwatda as APC leader has truly and convincingly proven the party, especially Tinubu, as a highly cerebra person who is surrounded by strategists and philosophers who have the capacity to see the end from the beginning. Or how else could one explain how they search for and locate a perfect match in the academic qualifications, career experience and political pedigree of Yilwatda, in attaining the goal and ambition of Mr. President and his party in 2027.

The APC chairman is a professor of Data Science/engineering/analysis and an ex-Minister of Humanitarian Services/Affairs who has touched millions of lives, including those in opposition. The mission to the Southeast must be a political and economic combat operation to rescue the region from the hand of the known and unknown gunmen that have over the years worsen insecurity in the land. It must lead to a conscious economic transformation in the lives of the ordinary men and women, youths and the unemployed who are being coerced and hypnotized into unrealistic self-determination agitation and indulgence in money rituals. The mission should be to give the people the much desired and the long dreamed sense and spirit of belonging to Nigeria. APC must also work out a genuine and a feasible arrangement that would guarantee the Igbo producing the President of Nigeria in line with its internal zoning arrangement to assuage the alleged marginalization of the region in this particular regard.
Prof Yilwatda is certainly heading for a record in the Southeast.

• Fanoro, a Media Consultant is the National Chairman Good Governance for Nation Building and National Unity (GNBNU).