As The Cloud of Mischief Gathers Over Anambra…

Anyone conversant with the murky politics that Anambra State has been known for will not be surprised at the political adrenalin that has been injected into that state politics as 2011 fast approaches. Such a person will not be caught unawares by the heightened intrigues and tensions that have been built into the politics of the state by varied species of hustlers, desperados and political philanderers that have, once again, set their eyes on dominating the affairs of that tempestuous state for the next political period. No one will be surprised at the thick cache of contestants to the Anambra governorship enroute 2011 but what will task any researcher on Anambra politics is to find any of them with the patriotic zeal and intent to take that badly governed state, which has enjoyed a rare streak of political sanity for the period the incumbent governor, Peter Obi has reigned, to the next level.

At best, most of those on display in the impending Anambra governorship contest are the usual jobbers and glorified traders of fortune who have invested so much in pulling the state down the valley of despair it is struggling to pull out from since Obi happened on that unfortunate state. They are all neighing for the prized diadem with the hope that it will service their personal gluttony, feed the wild appetite of their godfathers and sponsors and give them uncensored access to the resources of the state. Most of them have never subscribed to nor believed that any state could be ran without the devastating contribution of these ramparts and have deigned it an aberration that Peter Obi has governed Anambra State for three years without waiting upon the indecent desires of these marauders and their lackeys.

But then 2010 would not have been possible without the personal sacrifice of Obi who had twice been illegally removed from office but who had employed the instrumentality of the law to set legal precedents that have redefined the concept of democracy in Nigeria. Would there have been a 2010 in Anambra were Obi bugged down by the defeatist mentality to refrain from trying what was seen an impossible task of retrieving his stolen mandate? Would 2010 be an eventful date in Anambra State if Obi had succumbed to the expansive project to confiscate a hefty chunk of his mandate and give his diadem away to impostors who were molded in the most distasteful violation of decent electoral conducts? If Obi had succumbed to the job comforting, which an average short-term Anambra politician were wont to give, would we have been talking of a governorship election in Anambra in 2010? For the avoidance of doubt, we owe the prospect of an election in Anambra in 2010 to the unputdownable spirit of Peter Obi and his unmatched belief in the laws of the land, which, even in its manifest imperfections, he trusted to do what is right in the Anambra issue. He wasn’t disappointed, neither were Nigerians who marched on with him even when it seemed they were on a hopeless cause.

If Obi had not gallantly fought his cause, we would at best, be having a flattered impostor sitting pretty in Awka, doing what he knows best, which is the prosecution of the destruction of an endowed state. We would have completely leased Anambra to political rough necks, who would be locked in an unending warfare to take control of that state. We would have been content to live with so much bewildering illegalities both in the governance of Anambra and the statutes of the country’s electoral system. We would have been content with an unending vultures feast in Awka and the manifestation of howling aberrations and told to either live with these deviant culture or ship out. We would have been imposed with an unlivable state of vice, drunkenness, darkness and bizarre gluttony.

For the three years he has been in power, Obi has been a stabilizing force in Anambra such that he had brought the boiling political temperature of the state to a near zero level. He had brought sanity, decorum and a track able template of accountability to bear on the hitherto wild act, which the governance of Anambra became before he came. He has pulled Anambra from the brinks of a failed state and has reflated the wheels of progress in that stricken state. He had been able to do these because he lacks an over-bearing godfather or city father who breathes down on his neck demanding his desert for foisting him in power. He had acted a needed neutral role because he never subscribed to the abnegating tenet that relegates the interests of the state and promotes the brazen needs of the loud cabal that has found room in the fluid political structure of the country to take advantage of the system. Equally, Obi has invested governance with an unnerving humility and sincerity of purpose that has roused the anger of the deadly locusts and their patrons because it has ensured a bare harvest for them for the period he has been in power. He has shunned the greed of the unabashedly hungry political charlatans that fool themselves as stakeholders and has focused mainly in attending to the ravaging needs of the whole, which have been abandoned for the long period governance has gone on recess in Anambra.

Curiously, Obi is paying dearly for this cardinal sin as 2010 approaches. In a country where the cankerworm of corruption and political patronage has become the norm, Obi is being criminalized for not unlatching the doors of the state treasury to free loaders to feast on. He is being made to pay for not leasing out the state to build a political structure and for this, he is being made to arrest his dream for an encore in a 2010 he practically wrestled from these denizens of political filth. In a land where nauseous aberrations have become epitomes of acceptable behavior, this rare specie of political and financial prudence is being tongue-lashed for ‘not being a good politician’ and therefore undeserving of a second term in office. In a country where good politics has to do with an incumbent filching his state dry, it is a popular feeling that Obi would not get a second term, not because he had not performed well, not because he had stolen the resources of Anambra but because he did not feed the idlers that pose about as political stakeholders in Anambra. One can even feel the elite conspiracy in the gathering cloud of mischief that are aimed at stopping Obi in 2010, which is no more than a protest that a governor that should sit in wait for their elastic interests, is abandoning their narrow ends to attend to the wider interests of the whole.

This is the reason why no one should be surprised that a pot pouri of questionably rich mandarins are now positioning themselves to take over Anambra and are engaged in a do-or-die warfare for their businesses. We should not be surprised that dark forces ranging from those that made more monies than the richest states from just attending to the libidinous needs of the former president, those that raped the state in the interregnum Obi was illegally removed, those that were forced on Anambra through devilish oaths and allegiances and glorified successful traders are now bandying together in an elaborate illicit alliance to unseat Obi. This looks like a common denominator binding all those that have vowed that Anambra will never again be ruled by someone that ‘neither eats nor allows others to eat’.

So let no one be deceived on the heightened propaganda war going on in Anambra State now. Let no one be deceived of the alliance of the bad, the worse and the ugly in Anambra and their ill-tempered propaganda aimed at ensuring that Obi does not get a second term and that one of their ilk, who will ensure an unfettered feast for them is brought to power. Let no one be carried away by the yellow effort to make an issue of the N250million allegedly found in the car of some operatives of the Anambra State government in Lagos. For a governor who retuned over N1.6 billion security votes when he was impeached and a hefty N36 billion in the treasury of Anambra State at that same period and who owned series of thriving busi

nesses including a bank before he became governor, it amounts to a syndicated and poor insult to insinuate as the desperate forces that have gathered on Anambra presently did, that such was evidence of financial recklessness of the governor. Let no one be deceived on the orchestrated tension that has been visited on Anambra State as 2010 approaches. They are nothing but desperate effusions of those that want to take Anambra down the valley of despair from where it is being pulled out.

It should be put straight that if these dark forces succeed in overwhelming Obi in 2010, and this may be the case, given the fraudulent electoral system in place in Nigeria, it was made possible because of Obi’s subscription to a people-oriented, incorruptible template of governance and not because he had not done well to give Ndi Anambra a result-oriented and accountable governance. At the grassroots where it should matter were we to have an accountable democracy, Obi has a groundswell support in the grassroots that should give him a comfortable victory in 2010 but ours remain a mad game manned by hirelings and racketeers who would gladly subvert the system to ensure their anointed lackey gets to power. This should be a challenge to all Anambrarians, both at home and in the Diaspora and they should take it up to decide which state they want; either the peaceful and settled state of the present or the chaotic and prebendal state of the immediate past.