DANGERS OF ANOINTING PART 3 BY CHRIS ONYEISHI

Firstly, Gov. Chime’s account in one of the dailies I read, I think The Vanguard Newspaper of 6th October 2014, was as beautiful as it could be, but it was all veiled in sheer hand twisting and normal use of the incumbency influence to intimidate the rest. His reaction to the notion that some people are threatening to go to court was that those people should not “fool themselves”. I was taken aback when Gov. Chime boasted that “We did that during the last council elections, all our 17 chairmen were returned unopposed“.

I know I may be odd in this thinking, but history will tell. I weep for this country. Every other person who should reason and think beyond today is in the fry. And we watch, helplessly, how the inordinate activities of the political elites strangulate creativity and retard our development and growth as a people.
They amass dirty wealth with which they flaunt in the daylight and they become instant superstars. All of us whose lives are being threatened now scramble to make them intimate friends. If they declare occasions where they want to burn our resources they have hijacked from us, we are the very first to gather to toast to our peril. Absurdity has become the order of the day.


Let us hope that whoever, eventually, emerges in all these political shenanigans will be independent minded enough to shirk off undue pressures, which is usually the consequence of anointing, to face the primary reason of coming to power which is to use the resources of the state to develop the generality of the people of that state and not to embellish the already bloated pockets of a few individuals. If Hon. Ifeany Ugwuanyi becomes that messiah, to God be the glory. I will always give my support from none partisan elevation, at the early stages but I will not fail to sound flurry if the situation gets awry.

The danger of political anointing. Part 2

And I can guess how he will achieve that. He may begin to say that Engineer Vita Abba whom, I learnt carved in at the inception of the anointing gambit, should either become the new Reps or present a candidate so as to pay him for being a good boy. Then the Nwodos, who are known gladiators in not just Enugu politics – but Nigeria at large – and who have been echoing the reason for Hon Ugwuanyi’s consensus emergence, may also be given the opportunity to do something with the senatorial seat currently in the kitty of Ayogu Eze. This will be a good comeback streak for the Nwodos .

I have not inched in very closely to see the place of Uzouwani axis. But it will end up being a very interesting thing. There is also need to know what Senator Ike Ekweremmadu has in his kitty. Will he join hands with Senator Eze to upturn the anointing? We cannot say what is brewing in this direction. But this is where I do not want a large block like the Enugu North to dampen political agitation on the sole ground that Gov. Chime will anoint one of them. If this plays out well this time, all well and good but it should not be their pattern. What will even make me happy is for any other group such as APC to use the opportunity of what will come out of an ill fatted anointment to produce a governor. And I know that Chief Okey Ezea has tried to be as independent as he could be in the politics of Enugu state. But unfortunately he has not shown serious enthusiasm in the whole saga.


But this is even what makes me quarrel the mode of Enugu politics the more. Because of this anointing business, you will never have a robust or boisterous political debate that will throw up the best candidate. You will never have an opportunity to sample the wealth of knowledge, the competence, and the capacity of people who are supposed to be you torchbearers. The bandwagon that follows anointing is excruciating to say the least. Youths – both educated and uneducated – the elderly, even fellow contestants get cowed to a dismal point.


You will only be left, helplessly, to know them when it is already too late in the night before you understand that you’ve made the biggest blunder with your card. But that is not too bad to most of us whose sole concept is that an Nsukka man has become the governor in the making and that Governor Sullivan Chime has fulfilled his promise.

I am not a politician so I would not know what all the ingredients in this process of consensus and anointing – a creed PDP has carefully tucked into their constitution for some clandestine purposes – are.
I would have said that there are elements of creativity in this consensus and anointing thing but when I hear that there is always a rift amongst the big players after anointing, I become left with no option than to say that anointing is the reason we have problems and not the reason there will be no problem. There is what I regard as an uneasy calm. And experience has shown that most of the infractions in the political grouping has always, directly or indirectly, been triggered by one consensus and anointing or another. Throw the thing open and let the players do it on a level playing ground. When you are trounced with a superior argument or performance in group primaries or elections, except you do not know your capacity, you are most likely to concede without grudges. But when you are not given the opportunity to know who is better than you, through bottled up consensus and anointing, you will always feel cheated. And in Nigeria where there is no ideology, you immediately look for another plank.


It is important that PDP has “zoned” the governorship to the North of the state, but it should have stopped at that. But my argument even has been that if people come in and do thorough job, this zoning thing should have become an aberration that would have been done away with, in our political lexicon. Zoning becomes an issue, when people who come in to deliver service to the citizenry, either by omission or commission, refuse to use their offices to give a fairly distributed service. So people now say, let us wait, when it is zoned to us we will get our people favoured after we would have lined our pockets thoroughly.


Rulers, using the odious platform provided by consensus and anointing – in the process – try to conceal their treachery after they have taken their full turn in a given level in the political ladder. They then try to run away with the naive thought that they can have a robot in place after them and, have always had this erroneous and wacky thinking that the best thing is to use anointing to minimize how they are perceived and probed when they vacate office. It has succeeded to the extent that actually, their stooges give blind eyes to their misappropriations in office but experience has shown that it stops just there. Jim Nwobodo tried it with Chimaroke Nnamani. Chimaroke Nnamani, in turn, tried it with present Gov. Sullivan Chime and now Chime is trying it with Honourable Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi.


I have followed all the reasons adduced by major stake holders on why they resorted to anointing. First from the Nwodos and second from Gov. Chime himself. None of the reasons revealed any known ingenuity in the process of democracy by any yardstick. Why are people always afraid of boisterous and robust democratic rivalry that should ordinarily have been the surest avenue through which people who know what service is all about would emerge?

THE DANDER IN POLITICAL ANOINTING. PART 1

I have never met Honourable Ifeany Ugwuanyi personally. It would amount to free and cheap talk for me to say I can conjecture what kind of a governor he will become. If the messages credited to him on a few billboards around the Udenu and Igboeze Norht axis are anything TO go by, one would begin to assume that he is a fine humble man. The same billboard messages will also become a yardstick to know how malleable and docile he can be in the hands of inordinate political godfathers. He has on some occasions had to lift billboards wishing the people happy Easter celebrations and I did see on one occasion where he congratulated people for returning him to the Federal House of Reps.

After seeing this message from Honourable Ugwuanyi, I returned to Lagos and sent my son to go and buy fuel – you know PHCN, or whatever they have metamorphosed to now, never ceases to give us light 24/7 – and when he came back I asked him to thank me. He looked up and said to me, Daddy, I agree you are my father and I also agree that the fuel I bought is for our general good but I would not thank you for taking all the pains to go on that errand. He told me that if I and his siblings won’t thank him for doing the service on our behalf, then we could hold our peace but we should not expect a thank you from him for doing us a favour. And come to think of it. If he had thanked us or me, it would have been because he used part of the fuel money for his personal gains.

From even a distant point, one hears that Ifeanyi Ugwuanyis’s anointment is acceptable by people outside of the ring of “Enugu PDP family”; and that is using Governor Chime’s own coinage. Several of my friends in the social media have even floated pages of campaign supports for him but what do you expect in a country where what matters is how do I get involved to catch a portion of the loot when time comes, now that a sitting governor has given his tacit support to a candidate.

From the Nigerian perspective of democracy, and probably Enugu in particular, the Enugu State governorship race for 2015 is as good as fought and won. Firstly, the incumbent Governor has given his support, secondly he is in the “winning” machine called PDP. Even other political groups – yes, you heard me well, I did not say political parties – are jittery to crane their necks in other to rear their heads. Even though I do not doubt the antecedents, integrity and pedigree of Hon. Ugwuanyi it would have been a lot better for him if all the candidates where duly and satisfactorily given a good hearing. In a game of soccer of eleven players, one recalcitrant player can mar a game.


But from a distance also comes the discordant tune that some stake holders and political heavyweights are threatening to go to court as a show of discontentment to the manner of the anointing. Initially, we heard that among the political juggernauts eyeing the Lion building included, but not limited to, Enugu State PDP chapter Chairman – and a man I have met once and felt his dexterity – Engineer Vita Aba, Senator Ayogu Eze whom from a distance I have always know his legerdemain, Hon. Pat Asadu who is a slow and noiseless, but stiff, operator, ebullient Lawmaker and Enugu House of Assembly boss – Hon. Eugene Odoh, Onwa Fidel Ayogu, etc. In short, one account put the number to sixteen candidates.

The magic wand that made all these people withdraw in favour of Hon. Ugwanyi – without any debate – has many implications. It is either Enugu State has, finally, gotten the best they’ve been looking for, or the others did not even know what they wanted when they indicated interests, or they only wanted to make noise and be settled or, still, there was powerful anointing oil that Gov. Chime sprinkled on their heads that removed all the canker worms and caterpillars that has hitherto destroyed the reasoning of the politicians. If none of the above happened then, only one other conclusion can be inferred. There was an unseen hand of incumbency intimidation that chocked these other men to submit without any other reason other than a notion of “united” PDP family and some promises of being asked to present candidate for some other juicy positions.

But from the grapevine, it is still not impossible that the Abuja end of the game has not been settled as there is this notion that the Rock has asked smaller chapter to desist from consensus for now. I used to know that Gov. Chime was in the good books of President Jonathan as I was a living witness to Chime’s over 100% support for the President – on behalf of Enugu people – on the consensus that produced Goodluck for Nigeria. But I do not know now if the romance is still the same. And indications abound that the relationship may have gone a little awry. Apart from occasional crowd rental by Gov. Chime for the Presidents visits to the East, Chime was not able to secure any meaningful federal presence in Enugu State. Appointing Enugu indigenes alone should not become a hair-raising feat that would equal a support of 130% from Gov. Chime to the President. If the likes of Senator Ayogu Eze have done more romance to the Presidency in Abuja, then anything may start happening in Enugu governorship race very soon. The rumour mill is indicating that if the horse trading going on now is not handled properly, anything is possible.

The big looser may be people like Senator Ayogu Eze and Hon. Pat Asadu. If they did not play any significant role in the emergence of Hon. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi at Enugu level and they cannot use Abuja connection to dismantle that arrangement, then their own seats are already on the line. Gov. Chime may still carry the war further north by insisting that Senator Ayogu Eze and Hon. Pat Asadu should vacate for some other persons.

SHARING POLITICAL PROCEED. Personal experience.

When I was a kid, 8 yrs to be precise. My parents were so much strict on us that we dare not go out after school to socialize with our friends, classmates and age mate. In fact I was not privileged to have experienced moonlight drama, moon light masquerading or the famous building of upstairs with palm fronts. Being the last born in the family made matter worst in that all I had to do was to follow the laid down practice. Even Christmas carol by a block rosary was a taboo not to talk of Christmas masquerade group. Our routine was wake up, do morning chores, go to school, comeback, take siesta and do your assignment.

But one could not bear the pains of looking through our backyard gate every Sunday seeing my mates sharing and eating meat they got from game hunting (animal hunting). It was a practice by kids of my age to go out hunting on Saturdays or Sunday evening (while ours was benediction/catechism class); this was organized by an older guy that was about 8yrs older than us.

On this particular day my long throat could not let me be as a feigned sickness when it was time for our catechism class on Sunday so as to go for hunting with my mates when my house hold had gone to church. So around 5pm as we planned I rushed out to join my people when I heard a whistle. Then we set up for hunting. We were six 6 in number including our leader. Because of big age gap he was so respected by my co hunters(see me see co hunters  lol) for his escapade in catching eyi,eko,uze ,osa,rarely nchi(family of rat).on that day I was busy ready to under study him. I realized that he has a unique method of killing the animals ,he will position all the kids around a specified area under surveillance for animal and direct them to be hitting the ground with stick as well  as converging toward a direction where he will be quietly be staying. This will make the game to automatically run to his side and he will kill it. If it were a case of digging hole to kill the animal, he will look for the uchu (escape route) of the animal and stay while the kids dig from the other side or the kids will be fanning smoke(mixed with pepper) into the hole. These two methods will definitely push the game to escape thru the uchu where our great hunter will comfortably be the first to see the animal and probably the one to kill it.

After the hunting that day we arrived the house of our chief hunter with 4 EYIs and one 2 Osas. I  was happy that at least I will eat enough meat that day and take some to my senior sister. But all my expectations that day turned to be an unrealized dream. The method of sharing of the meat sold my dreams away. As the animal is roasted they are separated in parts and each part of the animal is designated to a particular service or performance one did.

The head goes to the killer

The tail goes to the person that saw the animal first

Left leg goes to the elder

Right leg goes to the owner of hunting material

Right hand goes to the person that will butcher the animal

Left hand   goes to the owner of the kitchen it will be cooked.

And behold all the meat disappeared in my very before and we were left with just the back carcass to share. Six of us. I felt so disappointed with myself and from then on I never attended any hunting exercise. As you embark on any group struggle know how the proceed will be shared.