The demise of Okey Ezea, who represented Enugu North Senatorial District in the 10th National Assembly, has reopened old woundsin a feisty local politics involving multiple interests and gladiators, LEO SOBECHI reports.

In the buildup to the 2023 National Assembly election, especially the contention for the Senate seat of Enugu North Senatorial District of Enugu State, the bone of contention was whether the outgoing governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, should be allowed to retire to the Red Chamber despite the existing power-sharing arrangement among the federal constituencies in the zone.

While many in the Senatorial zone believe that Ugwuanyi’s defeat at the polls was a tacit endorsement of the zoning arrangement, others claim that the popular electoral wave caused by the Obidient Movement in the entire South-East vitiated the former governor’s plan to secure power through the power of incumbency.

It should be noted that in the lead-up to 2023, Ugwuanyi could be said to have set forth at dawn, based on his decision to gift Senator Chukwuka Utazi a second term and stonewall the senatorial aspiration of Dr Okwesilieze Nwodo, the former national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

While it was easy for Senator Utazi to reciprocate the then-governor’s gesture by surrendering the senatorial ticket, supporters of Nwodo, who was also a former governor of old Enugu State, cried foul. Nwodo’s supporters, especially his kinsmen in Igbo Etiti Local Government Area, cried foul, wondering why Ugwuanyi from Udenu Local Government Area should aspire for the Senate when the Igbo-Etiti/Uzo-Uwani Federal Constituency was yet to take the seat.

At the onset of the Fourth Republic, Senator Fidelis Okoro, from Nsukka, who was elected senator on the platform of the Alliance for Democracy (AD), had to switch platforms to the ruling PDP to enjoy the automatic ticket carrot offered by the then-President Olusegun Obasanjo administration as a token for support of his second-term bid in 2003.

After the do-nothing two terms of Okoro, the pendulum swung to Igbo-Eze/Udenu Federal Constituency and threw up Ayogu Eze. Like Okoro, Senator Eze served two terms, from 2007 to 2015, in the Senate, where he was appointed chairman of the Works Committee.

Then in a bid to sustain the two maximum tenures at the National Assembly as enunciated by Governor Sullivan Chime, Governor Ugwuanyi supported Chukwuka Utazi to serve two full terms, even when it was obvious that he was doing so to ensure that the Senate ticket remained open in 2023, when he was due to serve out his constitutional maximum two terms in office as governor.

It was therefore that attempt to contest the same Senate ticket, which a member of his federal constituency, Ayogu Eze, vacated eight years earlier, that brought the former governor at cross purposes with Nsukka voters. However, some detractors maintained that the people of Enugu North Senatorial District refused to propel Ugwuanyi to the Senate based on his perceived less-than-excellent performance in office.

Others countered that the former governor’s resolve to disrupt the zoning arrangement, which distributed the representation among the two federal constituencies in the zone, namely Igbo-Etiti/Uzo-Uwani and Igbo-Eze North/Udenu, mobilised voter rejection against Ugwuanyi’s Senate chase in 2023.

But all attempts to explain Ugwuanyi’s loss in 2023 with the zoning principle floundered, given the fact that the Labour Party (LP) candidate, Okechukwu Ezea, who defeated him, hailed from the same federal constituency just like the late Senator Eze. On November 18, 2025, when his death was announced, Senator Ezea was just midway into his first four years in the Red Chamber.

Before his sudden demise, the issue of what would become of his second term vis-à-vis membership of the embattled LP had become a topic of general contemplation. Attempts by The Guardian to determine where the senator stood in the defection bug that had caught up with other senators did not yield results.

Now that Senator Ezea is gone, the tone and tenor of the conversation have changed, throwing up new contradictions. The late senator, who contested the Enugu State governorship poll in 2007, had to team up in 2013 with progressives to found the All Progressives Congress (APC). But after losing the governorship contest that year, Ezea confided in his loyalists that it was nearly impossible for the party to defeat PDP in Enugu State.

Perhaps as a result of that confession, or on account of his appointment as the chairman of the Governing Board of the Federal Medical Centre, Jalingo, Taraba State, or even his depleted war chest, Ideke, as he was fondly called, yielded space for Senator Ayogu Eze to try his luck in the 2019 gubernatorial poll on the platform of APC.

Moved by his reservations about the electoral feasibility of the APC in the state, Ezea was among the first set of political heavyweights to identify with the LP immediately after Mr Peter Obi emerged as the party’s standard-bearer in 2022.

Death and renewed contest
NOT only did Ezea’s death deal a heavy blow to the Enugu North Senatorial seat, which had been plagued by mediocrity and voter disconnect, but the ugly development has also opened fresh realities and sparked new concerns.

Contrary to the late senator’s doubt that the APC could ever win a major election against the PDP in the state, the entire structure of the once-invincible PDP has shifted to the federal ruling party.

And with the blue flag and broom heralding activities in the Lion Building, Enugu State Government House, the general impression among the electorate is that whenever the by-election for Enugu North Senatorial District is announced, an APC flagbearer will be the most likely winner.

That notion is supported not only by the power of incumbency of the APC governorship, but also by the tattered LP structure in the Senatorial zone. The LP governorship contender for the 2023 election, Hon. Chijioke Edeoga, for whom the Senatorial District formed the major bulwark of support, had long defected to the PDP and APC .

It could be in light of this obvious feasibility that Ugwuanyi’s renewed aspiration to participate in the move to find a replacement is engendering various perspectives and concerns. The worry in Nsukka, the mainstay of Enugu North Senatorial District, is three-fold: one, Ugwuanyi remains a subset of the Nyesom Wike breakaway faction of the PDP, which reserves its support for the APC.

Second, Governor Mbah, who has become President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s go-to political officeholder in the South-East, is not on good terms with Wike. Thirdly, the aboriginal APC structure in Enugu State fielded a senatorial contender in the person of Ambassador Ejike Simon Eze, who was also an acolyte of Senator Ezea.

The puzzle becomes very dense because, while Ugwuanyi has yet to regularise his membership of the APC, citizens wonder whether Mbah will support Ambassador Eze’s right to first refusal or seek to reward Ugwuanyi for supporting his governorship ambition, even if for a consideration.

However, hovering over the calculations about how Ezea’s replacement would be obtained is the reality of waivers and the need for a qualitative representative for the zone. Much was expected of Senator Ezea when he aspired to the position, given his background as a lawyer and maritime entrepreneur who had transitioned into a grassroots politician.

The years of disappointing representation in the Red Chamber have been a matter of great concern, as most of those who went to the Senate ended up as benchwarmers who failed to reflect the aspirations of the people.

After mourning Ezea’s passing, the people will return to the basics. Will Mbah dictate who flies the APC flag in the senatorial by-election or allow the party to represent its former contender in the interest of cohesion and seamless fusion?

APC stakeholders in Enugu State stated that there is no reason to delay a by-election, as the party is confident of winning the seat due to the power of incumbency. A foundation member of APC, Mr Osita Okechukwu, dismissed concerns that the new-member clause could jeopardise Ugwuanyi’s candidacy or that of any new entrant.

“At the emergency convention we held shortly after APC was registered, it was resolved that you can join APC today and become a candidate of the party tomorrow. There is no law restraining anybody; we demolished that conditionality long ago because we need more members. The convention affirmed that the time one enters the party should have no bearing on his/her ability to vote or be voted for,” Okechukwu stated.

Enugu State governor, Mbah, in his statement mourning the loss of Senator Ezea, described the death as a heart-rending loss, adding that the death of Senator Okey Ezea was not only a huge loss to Enugu State and Nigeria, but also that the “death had left a vacuum that would be hard to fill.”

According to the Enugu State chief executive, “This is one death that cuts really deep. You actually did not have to share his political convictions to appreciate his resilience and unwavering commitment to his constituents and the nation.

“There was also never any doubt regarding where he stood on any issue. In all his political struggles, one fact was evident: he loved Enugu State deeply and remained an advocate of good governance.”

A close ally of Ugwuanyi confided in The Guardian that the former governor was pained by Mbah’s decision to forward the name of the Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Mr Kingsley Tochukwu Udeh, to replace Hon. Geoffrey Uche Nnaji as Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation instead of his predecessor.

“We are therefore very optimistic that this time around nothing will stop Governor Mbah from supporting Gburugburu (Ugwuanyi) for the Senate,” the source declared.

On his part, the 2023 APC senatorial candidate, Eze, described the late Senator Ezea as “a junior brother and close ally for the past 30 years,” noting that he actually went into APC politics because of him, believing that he was going to contest for the Senate.

On the moves by the former PDP candidate to rush into APC with a view to participating in the anticipated by-election, Ambassador Eze stated: “Well, I’m hearing it for the first time. If that is the case, democracy is a liberal system. My joy is that the APC is no longer a side party in Enugu State.

“We have a governor, and there is a structure. If he joins and the structure and the government of Enugu State give him the ticket, he is from Nsukka and then from Udenu Local Government Area; going by the rotational policy, it may not be proper, but everything is all about discussion.”

Eze maintained that it was the entire people of the Senatorial District who would agree on who should go and who should not go, even as he said he was not thinking along those lines now, as the zone was still in deep mourning.

“Like I said, clearly APC in Enugu State is now the party in government and everything is dependent on the governor and whoever he wants to run for the position.

If, through the process, I am given the opportunity through the normal process, why not? But if not, everything for me is dependent on what the governor wants.

“I am a retired civil servant, and I worked in a very disciplined organisation, and if anybody is in APC and he has an interest and the structure in APC gives it to him or her, I have no objection. When we were in APC without the state government, it was a different ball game. But now the governor, Dr Peter Mbah, is the leader of the APC and the leader of the government in Enugu State. If in his wisdom he decides to give it to anybody, provided the person is from Enugu North Senatorial Zone, I will not go to court.”