By James Eze
Wherever Senator Chris Nwabueze Ngige goes, drama goes with him. As a former governor of Anambra State, Senator Ngige’s days in the Governor’s Lodge in Amawbia were marked by tall tales of chimerical proportions, steeped in drama. The tales were as grotesque as Ngige’s fictive interpretation of his own importance which gave birth to a bizarre oath-taking and its consequences that have now become a watershed in Nigerian political history. So, if we are dealing with Chris Ngige, we must always remember that he is given to high drama and where there is none, he whimsically induces one.
Interestingly, Ngige did exactly that recently when Vice President Yemi Osibanjo toured the industrial circuit of Anambra State. Perhaps eager to test his long faded popularity, Ngige who was on the entourage of the VeePee was repeatedly caught on camera whining down the windows of his car to wave at factory workers for a few miserable chants of “Onwa! Onwa!! Onwa!!!” After each chant, Ngige would turn with a comic smile to his fellow passengers in the convoy car and exclaim “they like me o! The people like me.” Ngige is like that. He seeks attention.
So, when he recently called journalists together in Awka to muse about sweeping Governor Willie Obiano out of office in 2017, Ngige was being himself; stage-managing scenarios for his high drama and telling illusory tales to attract the spotlight. As would be, Ngige was joined mid-week by his comrade-in-comedy, governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State who reports claim had made similar gratuitous remarks on APC’s chances in Anambra State. Okorocha himself has never strayed from the abominable and the absurd, inducing chimerical tales of a spiritual slap to re-set an imagination that had gone off kilter with reality. These two comedians are APC’s frontmen in a planned assault on Anambra State. Isn’t it interesting?
Isn’t it interesting that Okorocha whose years in Owerri have been largely dismissed as the years of the locust in Imo State should presume to tell Ndi Anambra about leadership? Isn’t it interesting that Okorocha who has been playing the role of a turncoat against Ndigbo with unmistakable pride, pooh-poohing Igbo interests and mocking the pains of his kinsmen on national injuries should suggest a possible annexation of Anambra State, the ancestral home of the Igbo by the APC; a party that can barely conceal its disdain for Ndigbo? Tufiakwa! Chineke ekwena ife ojoo!
Well, since this is a democracy and people must say what they want; we may indulge the two comedians. They are free to fantasize about APC chances in Anambra State. However, Senator Ngige and Governor Okorocha must first tell Ndi Anambra what APC has done with the mandate that Nigeria gave to their party at the centre. They must explain in simple terms, why Nigerians are celebrating the bleakest Christmas in living memory because of the current RECESSION. They must tell us why Nigeria has slid into an economic hellhole, down from being the largest economy in Africa, why insurgency has refused to evaporate as they had assured in the beginning, why power generation and supply remains in abeyance and why Nigeria stays dangerously split along ethno-religious lines. And of course they must tell Ndi Anambra at what point APC’s promise of change suddenly became a change of promise!
Coming closer home, Senator Chris Ngige should realise that he belongs to a period in the political history of Anambra State that no one truly wants to remember; a season of anomie that portrayed the Light of the Nation in a most unflattering light. Ngige is a niggling reminder of Anambra’s dark years; a period when time stood still and the heavens wept black tears over the reign of anarchy. Ngige must accept the fact that he cannot be excused from the rot of those days, that he is not any better than his partners with whom he conspired to abort the birth of the electoral wishes of the people. Chris Ngige should stop strutting around as though he was a victim of greedy godfathers and an emergency “man-of-the-people” simply because he built a handful of roads under pressure to win the affection of the people and insulate himself from his aggrieved partners. Ngige should take a second look in the mirror and accept the fact that someone with his damaged profile cannot be the moral force that would direct Ndi Anambra to a political safe haven! No! Ngige is one with the powers of darkness that he once represented in Anambra State.
However, while we can do nothing about a man’s political choices, we can at least raise a voice when he makes brazen attempts to impose such choices on the people. What seems to irritate Ndi Anambra most about Ngige’s political career so far is that it is laden with rascality. If he is not taking oaths with other-worldly figures to upturn the people’s choices, he is justifying the deportation of his kit and kin from Lagos to the Niger Bridge in the dead of the night. Or worse still; invading Onitsha during a holy week with broom-wielding APC armada who have since become a blight on the conscience of the nation or spewing inane promises to pull down flyovers in Awka, the state capital that he abandoned when he was governor.
Those who know Chris Ngige should please tell him that Ndi Anambra are not so naïve to miss the threat that is buried in his tragic comments on the 2017 election. However, we expect that Ngige of all people ought to know that Anambra is neither Edo nor Ondo States. He should therefore remember that those who hijack the electoral mandate of Ndi Anambra never sit down to enjoy the spoils of war. So, while he is plotting his usual backdoor manoeuvres, he should prepare for the inevitable!