Senator Annie Okonkwo as history teacher

By Uchenna Nwogwugwu

Senator Annie Okonkwo’s recent account of “Why PDP lost Abia state” in interviews carried by some newspapers on Monday December 24 2007 brought tears to my eyes because it stood truth and logic on their head. It made me nostalgic for Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s “Teacher, don’t teach me nonsense”, an iconoclastic rebuke against those peddling revisionist history. In established democracies, a senator ought to be a repository of researched knowledge but I take it for granted that since our “nascent” democracy is still rooted in an irrational and metaphysical epoch, we shall continue to endure the quality of our legislative representation until such a time that we collectively get tired of the tyranny of mediocrity or something gives way. The distinguished Anambra Senator stopped short of crediting PDP’s “loss” in Abia to former Governor Orji Uzor Kalu’s mobilisation wizardry. “There is no doubt that Chief Kalu is a core politician and he understands politics and decided to mobilise the people. Of course if you mobilise the people you win the election”, he was quoted as saying, perhaps innocently, perhaps ignorantly.

PPA, through Kalu, did a better job at mobilising the people than PDP hence the party (PPA) “won”. Please teacher Okonkwo don’t teach me nonsense. No serious political observer in Abia state will buy this crap as history because it bears no semblance to a true account of that watershed election. How did Kalu mobilise the people? Is Senator Okonkwo aware that there were numerous communities in Abia state waiting to lynch Kalu if he had ventured to campaign within their walls? Kalu spent his time “mobilising” INEC officials in Abuja and Umuahia and judicial officials in Lagos to secure the release of his gubernatorial candidate (Theodore Orji) standing trial on a 100-count charge of stealing and money laundering and who having been refused bail by a Federal High Court in Lagos stood a chance of not being sworn-in in the event of his party’s victory.

It may interest the distinguished Senator that his own party PDP was the party doing the mass mobilisation and winning the hearts of the people in the urban and rural areas under rain and shine. PPA crowds, when they gathered to campaign, were negligent, sparse and unruly. People were afraid of them because they brought back haunting memories of the dreaded Bakassi boys. It was very clear to see, even back then, that PPA was not banking on popular support of the electorate to win the Abia gubernatorial and House of Assembly elections. They had their game plan well sorted out. They were in power and understood the power of incumbency and the result of their manipulation is clear for all to see.

Senator Okonkwo went on to betray his total ignorance of the intrigues of the last elections in Abia when he mouthed assumptions in lieu of the truth. Hear him: “Even in Abia, there were some problems. And if you don’t put a candidate that can win an election and another politician mobilises better, he may take over the place.” I take this to mean that Senator Okonkwo wants us to believe that the PDP candidate, Chief Onyema Ugochukwu “was put” as a candidate, that he could not win elections and that someone else (presumably PPA) won the election because they mobilised better. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

In the first instance, Ugochukwu was not “put” by anybody or group. PDP organized a highly contested free, fair and non-controversial primary election featuring some heavyweight politicians. After winning the primary, Chief Ugochukwu began the arduous task of re-uniting the party’s numerous tendencies and rebuilding its structural foundations, especially reclaiming the party’s moral high ground amidst rejection by Abia people protesting eight years of Orji Kalu’s corruption and misrule. Abia PDP went into the election more united than before.

Ugochukwu was extremely popular with the people of Abia state who saw him as the only formidable and untarnished political personality left on the landscape capable of wresting power from the vicious Orji Kalu clan and possessing the intellectual resource and international network necessary to rebuild the state from the scratch after eight years of starvation and hunger. Ugochukwu was the hope of the young and old. Abia people mobilized to get him elected so they could start a new lease of life. Ugochukwu became the rallying point for an Abia Renaissance. That he won the popular votes by a wide margin has never been doubted.

The only consolation in Senator Okonkwo’s interview was his concession that some of the electoral cases are still at the tribunal. The outcome of the Abia case in the Election Petitions Tribunal would prove to the distinguished Senator that teaching history is more intellectually grueling than the cavalier approach he adopted.

- Nwogwugwu contributed this piece from 26 Aham Street, Umuahia, Abia state