Of PDP dominance and opposition parties in Enugu

Enugu is predominantly a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) state, going by political events since the inception of the Fourth Republic in 1999. No other party has been able to displace the PDP in the Lion Building (the Government House). The reason may not be far-fetched. Enugu is strategic to policy makers, hence the party appears not ready to give chance to the opposition leaders to control the structures of the Coal City state.  The theory is that whichever party that governs Enugu, the administrative headquarters of the defunct Eastern Region, is expected to have more following in the entire South-East geo-political zone.

Even in the Second Republic when ethnic coloration was more pronounced in the nation’s polity, the defunct National Party of Nigeria (NPN) had to deploy federal might to outwit the then Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP) to control the old Anambra State.  How the late Chief Christian Onoh of the NPN halted the re-election of Chief Jim Nwobodo of the NPP, despite Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe towering stature and influence, at the Court to become a governor in 1983, is now history. DrAzikiwe was the leader of the NPP. But suffice it to say that the battle for supremacy among current political actors in the state is ever contentious. This has partly made the politics of Enugu a hot bed in the zone nay the country, coupled with the fact that Enugu is regarded as the heartbeat of the Igbo ethnic nationality.

At the threshold of the exit of the military from political power in 1999, the PDP clinched almost all the elective positions; local, state and federal levels. The PDP has been in the saddle, except in 2003 when the Alliance for Democracy (AD) won the Enugu North Senatorial seat and in 1999, when old Igbo-Eze Local Government and Oji-River representative at the Enugu State House of Assembly, as well as the Aninri Local Government Area fell into the hands of the then All Peoples Party (APP).

Curiously, the beneficiary, Chief Fidelis Okoro, shortly after being sworn-in as a senator, hurriedly returned to the PDP fold, while old Igbo-Eze, Oji-River and Aninri Council areas came under the control of the ruling party in the state in subsequent elections. The emergence of Dr Chimaroke Nnamani as the governor of the state ended the incursion of the opposition as he used his Ebeano, a political platform, to silence dissenting voices throughout his eight-year reign in the state.

Despite the hardline posture of the Ebeano, Nnamani’s founding Chief Campaign Manager and former state Commissioner for Works, Chief Ugochukwu Agballa, of the then Accord Party (AP), almost snatched power from the PDP in 2003 but for the power of incumbency and federal might which favoured Nnamani.

The era of Sullivan Chime was characterised by stiff opposition, coupled with internal squabbles in the PDP in the state. For instance, Chief Okey Ezea tried twice vying through different parties, including the Labour Party (LP) to upturn the table against the PDP.  The efforts of Ezea, a business mogul, which would have truncated the governorship zoning arrangement, almost yielded fruits; it was the Court of Appeal in Enugu that saved the re-election of Chime.

Ezea, the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2015, had to give way to Senator Ayogu Eze in the 2019 governorship election who the incumbent, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, defeated in a landslide at the poll. While Dr Nnamani’s faithful were protesting the alleged betrayal by his erstwhile political godson (Chime), the rift between Chime and Senator Ike Ekweremadu, then deputy president of the Senate also raged, further heightening political tension in the state.

Governor Ugwuanyi, apparently learning from history, had to shift from the old ways of his predecessors, adopting a tactical approach of making stakeholders more visible in his government. Investigation revealed that the ability of Ugwuanyi to subdue his opposition without firing a shot is still a mirage, even to his critics, citing the local government elections which they agreed were skewed towards the PDP flank without resistance.

Indeed, the recent local government election held in the state was a reminiscence of the 2019 gubernatorial election where both Senator Ayogu and Tagbo Ogara fought over who was the authentic standard-bearer of the APC. The APC entered into the February 29, 2020 polls in disarray. A few weeks to the election, Okey Ogbodo, a former member of the PDP, who is laying claim to the APC leadership in the state, issued a statement in Enugu, saying that the APC would not field candidates for the election while a former deputy chairman of the party, Adolphus Ude, came out with his list. He insisted that the party would contest 12 out of the 17 chairmanship council areas in the state. Both Nwoye and Ude went to the poll, while Ogbodo withdrew his loyalists from the election.

Irked by the development, Nwoye appealed to the press to discontinue reportage of the angle of his rivals in APC, stressing, “Political process and political management is a serious business. A situation where someone comes from nowhere and calls himself the APC chairman or pioneer this and that, as well as claims that APC is not participating in the election should be discountenanced.”

Both Nwoye and Ude candidates lost out in the local government polls as the PDP clinched all the chairmanship and councillorship seats in the polls, lending credence to the accusations and counter-accusations of anti-party activities against opposition party leaders in the state.

Now that the local government elections have been won and lost, what are the implications for the political parties in the state in subsequent polls?  The implications, as posited by a political scientist, Dr Ikechukwu Ugbor, is that the other political parties needed to work in order to make themselves relevant in the politics of Enugu State. He said the free run that the PDP often has during elections in the state raises a lot issues concerning the kind of existing opposition parties.  “If they are serious, they should work hard to establish their presence in the state and not only surfacing each there is an election. It is unbecoming that after election, one party sweeps all the elective positions without the opposition wining any. Does it mean that there is no qualified or acceptable candidate in opposition parties? It means that the opposition has to look inward and find a way of penetrating into the minds of the electorate. The opposition parties need to build their structures to enable them wrest power in the state. They should settle their internal wrangling to secure some positions in future polls,” he counselled.

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Further checks revealed that while the major opposition party, APC and the Africa Peoples Alliance (APA) are licking their wounds, crying foul and describing the poll as “a complete sham and electoral fraud,” the PDP fold is full of excitement, with the party faithful clicking their cups over their victory at the election.  The media aide to Senator Ekweremadu, Dr Luke Mgbo, while dismissing the allegation of irregularities by the opposition, said that “there is nothing wrong with Enugu remaining as a one-party state as long as PDP governor is running an all-inclusive government and delivering democracy dividends to the people. What the people want is good governance.

”The overall development in the state since 2015 when Ugwuanyi assumed the mantle of leadership is unprecedented in the history of the state. He has opened up more opportunities, infrastructure and human capital development across the three senatorial zones in the state. These are the reasons the opposition will not be able to change the tide in Enugu State,” he added.

Corroborating Mgbo’s stance, the state chairman of the National Youth Council of Nigeria (NYCN), Comrade Henry Ifeanyi Atigwe, said the local government election opened up the political space to youths in the state. He said the Governor Ugwuanyi has been fulfilling his promise to involve the youths in governance and allotted 97 per cent chairmanship position to the younger generation. On his part, the chairman of PDP in the state, Honourable Augustine Nnamani, commended Governor Ugwuanyi for providing an enabling environment for the conduct of the elections, just as he lauded the professionalism and commitment exhibited by the security agencies, as well as other relevant stakeholders in the state.

 

NIGERIAN TRIBUNE