Congratulations on your latest victory at the courts. Here’s hoping that yet another disgruntled fellow will not come up with a new suit; chagrined, perhaps, about how ably you’ve piloted the affairs of the state thus far. Be rest assured, however, that the entire population of Ndi Anambra – the demonym for the state your regime favours as opposed to the rather stodgy Anambranians – are solidly behind you. Numbered in the fore here are those of us you have been destined by fate and our votes to lead in the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA). Through thick and thin we waded to see that you overcame in spite of odds and would be the last to abandon you in times like these.
Your Excellency, it won’t be too far from the truth to state that these are not the best of times for we floor members of our great party. True the party from inception has had trials and tribulations at various times, none has quaked the party as the present. There is trouble we know, but the bigger problem is that it hasn’t proven easy getting across to the dramatis personae. And who else can one dream to get across to in the circumstances but your humble self? Thanks to the opinion pages of our national dailies, this is bound to get to you somehow – if not directly, through one aide or the other. That is hoping that whichever of them happens to set eyes on this would endeavour to complete the circuit.
Sir, it is at times like this that heroes are numbered – like your traditional title Ebekuodike suggests. Just years back all this would have cost were summons to Casa Bianca to the spearheads and the matter would have been laid to rest. Alas, the Ikemba is no more and the falcon no longer has a falconer; let alone one to hearken to. It would amount to stating the obvious that it is because of his demise that a lot of things in the party went the way it has. No doubt, just a word of advice from him and a supposed storm of elephantine magnitude would have atrophied in the teacup of its inception.
However, more than anything else, the demise of our great leader Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu ought to be a clarion call for a re-think of the principles of the party he symbolized. By the grace of God the onus for the achievement of this falls squarely on you as leader of the party and Chairman of its BOT. The buck can roll anywhere else but stop it must at your desk, like once upon that of Harry S. Truman the 33rd president of the USA. It is on account of this that I daresay that the situation cannot stagnate any more given your proven track records. Most pertinently as it is the wish of all that the party outlives the circumscribed lifespan its critics are predicting for it. Tufiakwa!
The way it is, many things – and I mean many things – went the way it should not and were overlooked before you assumed your tenure. Counting down the litany will be a distraction here. I, therefore, beg to concentrate on the one I think most significant – the conduct of the party primaries to select the candidates for the 2011 general elections. This is recalled to the front burner because the release of the timetable for the primaries for the 2015 elections. Your Excellency, on no account should you allow the kind of charade that took place in 2011 to repeat under your command. This is the most pertinent as the characters that perpetrated that anomaly are the angels parading themselves by your every side now. Your Excellency, if you allow this to come to pass again, not only will it douse the light which we symbolise in the nation but it shall, in tandem, spoil all the good work you have been doing.
I am not competent enough to brief you on that bygone primary but can only restate what transpired as an observer-participant. It is verifiable that the regime at the helm then did all they could to appoint some anointed candidates who ended up not living up to the billing for which they were favoured. It is on record that the party failed to win any senatorial seat in the state where we had a sitting governor and the party’s National Chairman on account of this. This after all the aspirants had been made to part with staggering sums of money and promised that the primaries would be free and fair. I dare say that this would never have been the case had the party chosen aspirants like should be the case. It will be belabouring to further bemoan the fact that these charlatans were later to be favoured in party appointments while party fateful were relegated to the dustbin. Of that later.
Signs that all was not going to be as written surfaced when the party hierarchy appeared to have a problem letting the contestants know whom the delegates to the election would be. A situation so dire it nearly marred the primaries following complaints by aspirants on the eve of the selection. Somehow it had emerged through the grapevine that party officials planned to inflate the delegates by as much as 20% for their anointed candidates. Rather nonplussed by the abject negation of rules by a party whose strongest point was its opposite, these were taken for a ruse. Till the midmorning on the appointed date.
As the various wards lined up to vote many ward chairmen could not identify their ward members, let alone vouch for their numerical strengths. State officials to achieve their nefarious aim turned the rule books upside down. As if to make matters worse, the election committees at the three senatorial zones were headed by government contractors and appointment holders who added their own subplots to scripts allegedly handed down by the party. The long and short of it, Your Excellency, is that most of the elections ended up inconclusive. In the Onitsha Federal Constituency the result was not announced till three days later and at the state party secretariat by a party official. The Returning Officer abdicated her responsibilities in a Pilate-like wash of hands!
Surely this should leave a sour taste in the mouth of any true democrat who has ever fallen to the temptation to lend a hand in this our perennially-nascent democratic experimentation. Apart from being a waste of scarce funds, it is a proven fact that nothing truly strengthens a party like internal democracy. As was proven the last time out, there are so many paper generals parading themselves as tigers. They would be making so many claims of what they did in the past that when the present is trust upon them they end up in the rubbish heap. Many of them no doubt would have been wounding your eardrums on end with endless tales of how they delivered you in their wards. Be not swayed by them for all they did was wait in their hotel rooms for the inevitable already ordained by destiny.
Your Excellency, too much write is as bad for evening service as its talk alternative. But suffice it to note that APGA needs to atone for this and other sins if the party wants to remain whatever it ever dreamt of becoming. The solution is to allow the party choose representatives from its membership and go for the general elections as a bloc. We must not win all the seats in contest but will at least win where we must. This idea of people rejected by the other parties coming to APGA because “they don’t have people” must not be encouraged by you like your predecessor did. The monkey may not be the most prepossessing of animals but it sure does its mother proud.
Also, the party officials must not be allowed to preselect their friends and relatives for reasons that range from nothing short of nepotism to selfishness. Normally they will advance so many spurious reasons for their actions but the case is that there will be so much apathy for these candidates that they cannot but lose. A house divided against itself can only fail. Cases in point include areas where the party had never lost any election in the past but failed to win even a state constituency.
Finally, as the timetable for next primaries dawns, it is your job, Sir, to see that they come to pass as free and fair as the air we breathe. Only by so doing shall we smile to the polls with well-chosen candidates to come out victorious. The result of doing it otherwise will not only see us on the losing side but will also haunt you like it does your predecessor.
Written by Isidore Emeka Uzoatu
