Special to USAfrica magazine and USAfricaonline.com, first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper on the internet.
2023 and Ebonyi Governor’s truckload of troubles. By Chido Nwangwu,
An important event with simultaneous political and jurisprudential implications occurred on March 8, 2022 in Nigeria.
It’s the decision and order of the Federal High court in Abuja that the Ebonyi state Governor Dave Umahi and his deputy, Eric Igwe, vacate their current positions, respectively. It has opened, again, the doors of debates on the triple issues of constitutional representation, roles of political parties in elections and political harlotry.
Umahi’s tenure as the Governor of the south eastern State of Ebonyi, from May 29, 2015 to March 8, 2022, has been followed and burdened by rounds of rancour, sets of schism and bloody conflicts.
For the Igbo, such as myself, who meet without calling a meeting, we know Umahi no longer hears us. And, of course, we do not hear him! We hear the pretentious fulminations and submissive subjugations of a once promising technocrat who has since surrendered and ceded the spiritual home of our reverred Dr. Akanu Ibiam to those Ibiam stood against as a high moral buffer to keep Igbo/Biafra kids (including me and Dave Nweze Umahi) alive during the Nigeria-Biafra war, 1967-1970.
Once in a while, we hear Umahi’s straining for freedom, struggling for redemption from his own subjugation.
We know of his regrets regarding his extraordinary acquiescence to the jihadists’ foot soldiers he elevated to stakeholders and landlords in Eze Ogo Ibiam’s homestead!
To put in blunt terms, the Igbo do not trust, or think Umahi’s allegiance is with his people. They think and know, even if unspoken, that Umahi has since chained himself to some domestic “foreign” obligations and dubious allegiances.
Ebonyi was known for what I’ll characterize as, relatively, cordial but competitive politics. Generally, the good people of Ebonyi, the kinsmen and women of the home of the great, late Dr. Akanu Ibiam have watched with astonishing disbelief how their land of nobility and civic values has since, literally, been turned into a battlefield during Umahi’s combative and controversial tenure.
The Court ruled that it was the political party PDP that won the election in March 2019 and not its candidate. Therefore, Justice Inyang Ekwo ruled that having defected from PDP to another political party, namely the APC, David Umahi and Eric Igwe cannot transfer the mandate of the PDP to the APC.
“The votes in any election in Nigeria are to political parties, and not candidates,” the judge stated. Justice Ekwo cited section 221 of the Constitution of Nigeria to order the PDP to send, immediately, names of replacements to INEC for the conduct of new elections. The PDP has done so with unusual speed and gusto.
Umahi is at loggerheads with two Governors from the same South East and most of the previous leaders from the same Ebonyi State.
Umahi, an engineer, is one of the governors “planning to run” or indeed “running” for President of Nigeria in 2023. Evidently, the man’s ambition would have been impacted by the latest decision of the Federal High Court.
With the latest judicial order and the unfolding dynamics of Nigeria’s presidential power politics, the omens seem unfavorable to Umahi as his negatory factors are multiplying. He said he would disregard the Judge’s order. He dismissed the Judge as someone on a charge to get him! He said that Judge Ekwo is unworthy of rendering fair and judicious decisions.
Hence, the Nigeria Bar Association (of lawyers/attorneys) cautioned Umahi for “very uncomplimentary adjectives and intemperate language in characterising both the Judgment and Hon. Justice Ekwo, including but not limited to describing the Judgment as ‘jungle justice’ and His Lordship as ‘a hatchet man’”.
Such intemperate outbursts do not reflect the proper mannerism of a leader in a democratic environment.
You then can appreciate why Umahi’s strategy and methods of his convoluted road towards his 2023 presidential ambition continue to provoke dispiriting challenges.
Umahi has achieved significant infrastructural development of Ebonyi. Regardless, there are truckloads of problems facing Umahi — the man, the politician and custodian of the Ebonyi legacy and heritage.
Umahi has achieved significant infrastructural development and progress of Ebonyi. Apparently, obscuring those are serial compromises and incredible political horse-trading and partisan commitments he has been making. They all create an unflaterring profile of a giddy, garrulous, unpredictable and desperate quest to become President of post-Buhari Nigeria, at all cost.
At the end of the day, I doubt that a polarizing Umahi will succeed a divisive, nepotistic Buhari. Also, Buhari’s clique, the main group that Umahi has been waltzing around and swooning for know politics and power in Nigeria better than the engineer!
—*Dr. Chido Nwangwu, the author of the forthcoming 2022 book, MLK, Mandela & Achebe: Power, Leadership and Identity, serves as Founder &
Publisher of the first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper on the internet, USAfricaonline.com, and established USAfrica in 1992 in Houston. He has appeared as an analyst on CNN, SKYnews, VOA, BET news, SABC, and served as an adviser on Africa business to Houston’s former Mayor Lee Brown. @Chido247 
USAfrica: Putin’s pugnacity in Ukraine, Biden and Trump. By Chido Nwangwu.
