Between Isi-Uzo, Enugu Community and Goodluck Jonathan

Former President, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan came from Bayelsa State, an 800,000 voter-population, eight-local-council State, to be crowned President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Jonathan’s presidency was Nigeria’s notice, served wittingly or unwittingly, to the world that it had emerged from its years of self-doubt and internal squabbles over form, to become one of the world’s safest berths for democracy, an African nation ready and willing to run a just, fair and equitable democracy where the minorities would have both their say and their way.

There were many things ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo did right, to be sure. But if there is anything for which he deserves all the plaudits, his political engineering that led to Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency stands out prominently.

Jonathan was a Nigerian reality hitherto thought possible only in the dream world, namely, the fact of a Southern Christian from a Minority State being elected President of the Federal Republic in a country home to three competing major ethnic groups with huge populations. Former President Jonathan was the much-desired New Nigeria Revolution set afoot.

Had he won a second term as president, Nigeria would have cemented its place in the pantheon of democratic societies where leadership recruitment is anchored purely on proofs of intelligence, requisite education, experience and competence of aspiring political leaders, not on ethnicity, religion or geographical zone.
 

Suffice it to say, however, that the case of Isi-Uzo Local Government Area in Enugu State resembles that of President Jonathan in practically every respect. Whatever the outcome of Isi-Uzo’s quest for Enugu governorship come 2023, we would either be celebrating ‘Jonathan the dream come true’ or bemoaning ‘Jonathan the dream shattered.’

In 1996/97, during the late General Sani Abacha’s military regime, Isi-Uzo Local Government Area (which was created in 1976) was carved out of old Nsukka Division which was made up then of seven LGAs, and added to five other LGAs to create today’s Enugu-East Senatorial District. The action followed the excision of Abakaliki Senatorial District from old Enugu State into newly created Ebonyi State.

At the time Enugu East Senatorial District was created, many had protested that the excision of Isi-Uzo from Nsukka to join the new senatorial zone was nothing more than a vicious political gerrymandering deployed by former Governor of Old Anambra State, Senator Jim Nwobodo and others as a ploy to whittle down the voting population of Old Nsukka Division (Enugu North) and, by extension, its ability, as a multitudinous, powerful voting bloc, to determine the tenor of elections in Enugu State. Some others, however, believed that it was a good development, given the said cultural consanguinity of Ndi Isi-Uzo and Ndi Nkanu mainland. 

Part of the claims vociferously made by Nwobodo and others during the ‘Isi-Uzo-must- join- their-kith-and-kin-in-Enugu-East’ campaign was that, in terms of dialect, names and cultural festivals/masquerades, the people of Isi-Uzo were more of Nkanu than Nsukka. Needless to say that Nwobodo and others made a success of their campaign and Isi-Uzo was to finally become part of Enugu East zone in 1996.

Like President Obasanjo with Jonathan, Jim Nwobodo, as Minister of Sports under the late General Sani Abacha, along with his kinsman, one Cosmas Nnamani, an Air Force Officer and a member of the then Armed Forces Provisional Ruling Council (AFPRC), was the political engineer who fundamentally tinkered with the political fate of Isi-Uzo.  

Obasanjo’s well-advertised latter-day ill-treatment of Jonathan only demonstrated one thing: that the former President and Owu-Egba Chief was never altruistic about the national political re-engineering he had carried out –  the fact of a minority man becoming the candidate of a major party and eventually winning election as President – with former President Jonathan as the arrowhead. Indeed, it would appear that Obasanjo’s inexplicably bitter anti-Jonathan rhetoric in the later days of Jonathan’s presidency, beclouded Obasanjo’s sense of judgment, to the extent that he was either unaware, or simply didn’t care, that with his protégé Jonathan as arrowhead, he had set afoot a political revolution in Nigeria that many had expected him to sustain by supporting Jonathan to secure a second and final term as president.

Similarly, Jim Nwobodo’s current disavowal of his earlier narrative on Isi-Uzo shows that his claim of cultural consanguinity as reason for his campaign in 1996 for Isi-Uzo to be ‘united with their kit and kin in Enugu East’ was mere red herring, while the eventual excision of Isi-Uzo from Nsukka into Enugu East itself was nothing but a deceptive act of political gerrymandering designed by Nwobodo and Co. to achieve the particular objective of adding to Nkanuland’s voting population and whittling down that of Nsukka.
Needless to say that Jim and Co. made a huge success of their scheme, in the end: Isi-Uzo was successfully balkanized with Enugu-East gaining one extra LGA to increase its tally to six from its original five, while Nsukka had one LGA taken out of its original seven to reduce its tally to six. It was a perfect plot well executed. The political supremacy of Nkanuland in Enugu State had been set on a hill, never again to be challenged by anyone or group from down the valley. Or so it seemed…

The mills of fate, they say, grind slowly. Predictably, once Isi-Uzo became part of Enugu East as Nwobodo’s gerrymandering booty to his people, the zone’s politicians and successive leaders of government practically threw the LGA under the bus, ensconced in their illusory belief that the place had become theirs to simply mistreat and neglect as they pleased. In their calculation, it was finished for Isi-Uzo which, to them, was no longer of any political moment in the senatorial zone beyond the fact that its addition had also added to the zone’s voting population. But how were they to know that a Daniel would come to judgment in Isi-Uzo’s behalf; that a government would arise in the Coal-City State which would look towards Isi-Uzo with empathy and ask questions as to how it had fared in Enugu East since 1996?

Going by Enugu State’s zoning policy, it is the turn of Enugu East, come 2023, to produce the next Governor of the State after Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi. As a bona-fide constituent of the senatorial zone, Isi-Uzo has expressed its desire to field one of its own to run for that coveted position of Governor. But, this is the story: Senator Nwobodo and several other leaders of Enugu East are bitterly opposed to Isi-Uzo’s move. Why? Because the post of Governor of Enugu State, they say, is meant for ‘only mainstream Nkanu’ not for ‘periphery’ Isi-Uzo!  In fact, Nwobodo and group had reportedly vowed that Isi-Uzo would produce Enugu Governor only over their dead bodies!  Meaning that the people of Isi-Uzo, going by Nwobodo and Co’s proposition, not only do not have any political rights in their own constituency but are also only good as hewers of wood and drawers of water in a zone whose people they were touted as having more in common with than they had with the people of the zone from which their LGA was excised.

Many across the country have since called out Nwbodo and Co for what has been called ‘their parochialism’, ‘clannishness’ and all that, while the accused themselves have stridently denied the accusation. But several questions still persist.

1)  Is Isi-Uzo really not qualified to run for Enugu governorship for the simple reason that it is a one-local government minority in a six-local government district?

2)  Is it within the purview of Senator Nwobodo and others to determine who flies the PDP governorship flag in Enugu, over and above the party leadership, with the state Governor at the head, and delegates from the 17 local government areas of Enugu State? Or is it just a case of one man overreaching himself or attaching rather too much importance to himself?

3)  Would Jim Nwobodo himself have become Governor of Old Anambra State from which the current three States of Anambra, Ebonyi and Enugu were carved out, if the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the Owelle of Onitsha and leader of the defunct Nigeria Peoples Party (NPP, on whose platform Nwobodo became Governor), had micro-zoned the governorship ticket to Onitsha?

4)  Indeed, would a Nwobodo from wawaland have become Governor of Old Anambra State at all if the late Chief Charles Abangwu from Nsukka had not led the rebellion that forced the defunct National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) to restructure the Eastern Region politics to create room for the wawas to effectively participate in the politics and governance of the defunct Eastern Region going forward?
Our history, we are told, shapes our present.

It reminds us of our journey to the present, the odds we faced along the way and why we must always leverage on our past experiences – our challenges and or triumphs –  to make our present even better. How can a man who benefitted so much from another man’s deliberate effort at creating an enabling environment for political inclusiveness for all strata of society turn around to disavow the selfsame same politics of inclusiveness, on the altar of clannishness? How can Nwobodo say that what served him well all those years isn’t wholesome any longer as a leadership recruitment process for our fledgling democracy just because he wants kinsman to be the next Governor of Enugu State? How do you say that what is good for the geese isn’t good for the gander? With two Governors, one Deputy Governor, three Senators, two ministers and more already produced by ‘mainstream’ Nkanu and none yet by Isi-Uzo, how does it not occur to Jim Nwobodo that a man who seeks equity must come to it with clean hands?

It is just as well that the former Governor of Old Anambra State ‘has denied all the allegations against him’ – may his words match his body language! For, we are hoping that what Obasanjo couldn’t accomplish nationally, our own Distinguished Senator Nwobodo would be able to accomplish in Enugu, a pointer to the possibility of the New Nigeria Revolution finally taking off from Enugu. Indeed, should he and other ‘mainstream’ Nkanu leaders support Isi-Uzo’s bid for Enugu governorship, the New Nigeria Revolution set afoot by Obasanjo but cut short by him too, would have finally berthed in Enugu for the rest of the country to learn that no Nigerian should be denied the right to lead his country, State or local government for the simple reason that he or she is a ‘minority’. That, indeed, is the New Nigeria Revolution that we all desire, isn’t it? 

NWEKE, a veteran journalist, wrote from Enugu, the Enugu State capital.