By Tony Lemchi
David Umahi Nweze, the Executive Governor of Ebonyi State Nigeria courts controversy the way the rooster goes after the hen.
A friend recently noted, “Honestly I’m beginning to think that the Governor (David Umahi of Ebonyi State) actually derives a lot of pleasure from negative publicity.” This sort of astringent remarks perhaps explains David Umahi Nweze’s high-handed autocratic style of governance by which he has acquired reputation variously as “koboko Governor”, “Iron gate” and all sorts, and has fought almost every political stakeholder in the state including no less a person than the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Anyim Pius Anyim as well as the former Secretary to Ebonyi State Government, Professor Bernard Odo. His government has left a long trail of violence in every Ebonyi community making mothers childless and women widows.
Only recently, the acid Governor got caught in another web of avoidable controversy after he mobilized “a thousand youths” (his exact words) to forcefully eject the Chairman of the Ebonyi State University chapter of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Ikechukwu Igwenyi, an Associate Professor, his family and parents from their ancestral home in Okposi, an urban town that has been embroiled in a political rivalry with their neighbour, the governor’s own hometown Uburu for ages. Umahi also directed the traditional rulers of Okposi to ensure that the ASUU chairman and his entire family are ostracized from the community.
Nigerians could not have forgotten in such a hurry that Charles Orgbu, a journalist, almost lost his life after he was beaten and actually left for dead on Umahi’s instructions. His offence was that he dared to chronicle Umahi’s acts of misgovernance and terrorism against his own citizens.
Ekubaraoha Youths, Umahi’s killing machine made up of the most notorious of violent criminals and cultists from every community in the state and led by a well known “hard guy” who terrorized the state for many years before he was chosen, was fingered in the attack. It is also common knowledge in Ebonyi that the only qualification required by Umahi to appoint you as Technical Assistant, whatever that means, or Development Center Coordinator is your ability to dispense mindless violence.
And yet Governor Umahi lives in “a glasshouse”. That he chooses stone war at every interval seems to suggest that he already has his house insulated or fortified. Well, Ikechukwu Igwenyi, the ASUU chieftain who he wants to run out of town is not the one who wants to be president of Nigeria nor does he aspire to the Senate.
The Governor is and does. His thinking I presume is that the preponderance of negative publicity and controversy which he keeps amassing will eventually either translate to votes for him or evoke enough fear in his opponents who are then too petrified to contest.
Ebonyi is perhaps the only state in Nigeria where the Governor controls everything both in the public as well as private sectors and he does it with utmost ruthlessness probably compensating for the trauma and palpitations he inflicts on the citizens with his “infrastructural” development. From commerce to professional practice, from peasantry to civil service, Umahi is firmly in control. In Ebonyi, nothing moves unless Umahi moves it.
Ebonyi is now infested with cultism, a phenomenon that would be hardly heard of ten years ago. These “youths” have become a vital plank in Umahi’s government’s agenda of “governance by extreme violence”. Like Louis XIV of France, our Emperor is the state and the state is the Emperor.
By these antics, even the strongest voices in the state have been either cowered or “procured” by the Governor. This is why anyone expecting any organization or group in Ebonyi State to rise to the occasion will be heavily disappointed. Who will tell the Emperor? Who will tell him that his farts really are malodorous?
Who will tell him that he is wearing his royal regalia the wrong side out? Who will tell the Emperor that the stool is fast slipping under him and not be accused of being himself the traitor? I will also advise that nobody pushes the Ezes.
Their staffs of office respectively are made of mere straw and cannot withstand any form of pressure, at least not at this time. Neither should anyone go on excoriating socio-cultural organizations and development unions in the state who have done everything in this world to ingratiate themselves with Umahi’s government and eliminate the apprehension in government quarters that socio-cultural organizations are merely masquerading as such but in reality, just political organizations being used by the opposition against the government. So let no one blame anyone for not speaking up. Rather let us mourn. Let us mourn the emasculation of Ebonyi people and call on ndi ichié to run to the rescue.
Now that the Ebonyi Emperor wants to transit to Aso Rock, Nigerians should get ready for a Koboko President, a president who will run the country with the iron fist that it truly deserves. In other words, David Umahi Nweze, in my opinion, is Nigeria’s best choice for president in 2023 and I personally will be in the forefront of the campaign.
Ebonyi is in good hands though. After all, Abakaliki is fast overtaking Lagos as a megacity. Who knows what Abuja will become under the Koboko President? A Washington DC perhaps.
Lemchi is a journalist and writes from Abuja