Tag: Obiano

GOVERNOR Willie Obiano’s victory in last Saturday’s Anambra State governorship poll was even more emphatic than pundits had anticipated. By all accounts, he was projected to win, but by a slimmer margin than the final count indicated. Shockingly, he won by a landslide, taking every local government and embarrassing and numbing his opponents to supine acquiescence. Despite his mollifying victory speech, he will probably read more meaning into the landslide than is really plausible. He won alright, but he won, in many significant ways, despite himself.

In an age when most state governments have irresponsibly failed to pay workers’ salaries, in some instances for more than a year, or paid a fraction of the wages, Mr Obiano’s faithful adherence to workers’ welfare was exemplary. It was naturally expected that the electorate would reward him. He might have been quite liberal in the application of the state’s financial resources, as stridently alleged by former governor Peter Obi, but the populace on whose behalf the governor claimed to act were quite unfazed by the applied arithmetic of the state’s finances. Workers were paid, some projects were ongoing, even if not world class, and the state’s economy was not paralysed. Every other thing paled into insignificance.

But the poll victory, particularly its emphatic margin, was more an endorsement of the separate and proud identity of the Igbo people in the national political mix than an endorsement of the salient qualities of the somewhat inarticulate governor. The election came at a time when there was so much hysteria about the place of the Igbo in the national scheme of things, especially as propagated by the ingratiating Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) vis-a-vis the intimidating and antagonistic federal government of President Muhammadu Buhari and his security forces. For a party that identified with the late secessionist leader, Emeka Ojukwu, and which continues to proclaim and celebrate its Igbo identity, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) of Mr Obiano was bound to resonate with the electorate.

It would be foolish to challenge a victory so clear, so determined, so indisputable. The internationalist governor of Imo State, the irrepressible Rochas Okorocha himself, suggested that no one could sensibly challenge a victory so uncomplicated. But whether he himself draws the right lessons from it is unclear, seeing how valiantly but futilely he struggled to drag the Igbo into the national political mainstream.  The Obiano victory does not suggest that the Igbo are unamenable to embracing the mainstream; it only suggests that after the Buhari presidency has so fouled the well of trust between the Southeast and the rest of Nigeria, the Igbo had in turn become defiant. That defiance, from which Mr Obiano has profited so immensely electorally, will most probably be carried into the next general elections.

Ex-governor Obi shouted himself hoarse about Mr Obiano’s poor financial management ability. Though the governor and his team tried to rebut the allegations, the former governor was probably not too mistaken in his judgement of the governor’s capability. Mr Obiano has not been a financial exemplar, nor as visionary and charismatic as the feline-voiced Mr Obi and the indomitable and often excitable Chris Ngige, a former Anambra governor himself and now a minister in the Buhari cabinet. In fact, the governor was neither stirring in the governorship debate, which he had naturally expected to win to put a gloss on his administration, nor incomparable in his style of governance. Except his performance in his second term, which he has won with aplomb, is unequalled, it may be premature to write off the influence of Mr Obi in Anambra politics. However, the former governor misadvised himself and misread regional mood by coming out openly and frontally against the governor.

The Anambra poll may signpost the future of Southeast politics. That region is not deluded to think that the Buhari presidency loves it, and it is doubtful whether the presidency can substantially redress the problem of mutual antagonism between Abuja and that region by embarking on furious projects funding and execution. The Igbo perceive the federal dislike passionately, and they seem desperate to requite it, believing that President Buhari’s conversion and conviction are only skin deep. If the APC is not to find extreme difficulty in winning the Southeast and South-South in the next elections, and struggle in the Southwest and probably in parts of the Middle Belt, the Buhari presidency will have to do a major rethink of its politics in the light of the Anambra poll result.

Mr Obiano should interpret his victory sensibly and with restraint, for it may not carry as much good news as he thinks. Mr Obi should also re-examine his politics and methods all over again, and wonder whether he had not overreached himself and exaggerated his own influence. But above all, the Buhari presidency has the most unpleasant self-examination to carry out. With the doors shut against it in the Southeast and South-South, as it seems, and the windows also shut against it in the Southwest, it must ponder whether it had ruled like democrats or behaved like military autocrats, or whether it really understood Nigeria or it had been chasing a chimera all along.