GOV OKOROCHA'S TRAVAILS:IT'A PREDICTION FULFILLED

From my archives: The Genesis of Gov.Okorocha’s political travails: It’s Prediction Fulfilled.

(First published in March 2017).

Imo 2019 GOV Poll: Why Okorocha should have Option B

Buhari’s Disdain on Imo Governor

Several months ago, in a post on my face book wall, I did advise Governor Okorocha to begin to restructure his APC ahead of the 2019 governorship election in Imo State. I made it known to him that my intensive investigation showed that in 2019, some external and internal forces would descend on him in a frantic bid to snatch the governorship ticket from him. In fact, everything will be done to wrestle him to the ground and snatch the governorship ticket from him and hand it over to an anointed   candidate of his political enemies in the APC. The  battle  for Imo 2019 APC Governorship ticket will be between Governor Okorocha and the ASO ROCK

It is pathetic that Governor Okorocha does not seem to know how bad President Buhari feels about him. There is abundant evidence that what happened to Senator Bola Tinubu in 2016 in the governorship primaries in Edo and Ondo States will be a child’s play to what will befall the IMO APC in 2019. You recall that in the 2016 governorship primaries in Edo and Ondo States, some powers in the Aso Rock ganged up against Senator Bola Tinubu to shortchange his preferred governorship candidates. After a titanic battle, Senator Tinubu managed to retain his preferred governorship candidate in EDO State, but in Ondo State, the ASO ROCK group overpowered him and imposed their candidate on the APC. Unless adequate proactive measures are put in place, what happened to Senator Bola Tinubu in those two States will be   meted out to Governor Okorocha in 2019.

Today, in the APC, Imo State, most of   the So-called APC chieftains are not on the same page with Governor Okorocha. They are not party faithful, rather, they are party monitors whose interest is to monitor and watch every step of Governor Okorocha in order to take advantage of any shortcomings or lapses which they can capitalize on to make some political advantage. This is why you will never see most of them defending the governor’s policies in any forum. So, it is left for him to be proactive in order not to be disgraced out of office by those he accepted into his APC as political refugees. The governor should be commended on the sacking of one of those Judas Iscariots who had served as Chairman of a State tertiary institution in Imo State, a couple of day’s ago. The man was publicly humiliated out of office after he had declared open a  convocation ceremony as Chairman of Council and he was publicly derobed and humiliated out of office when in his position, another person was swiftly anointed as Chairman before his very eyes. This is the only way we can bring sanity to the political class in Imo State. Some of our politicians have become professional Judas Iscariots who sell their zones to the highest bidder on every election year and they mount the dais to point fingers at other zones as the cause of   the inability of their zones to produce governors. Now that one of them has been given ignominiously kicked out, let’s hope others will learn from this episode. There are so many of them who are still hiding there as members of the APC with the intention to cause panic and   disgrace the governor out of office in the fullness of time.

I have been having a strong sense of premonition that we may witness a  reoccurrence of what happened in the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP)in IMO State in 2007 .On that occasion, the party preferred to forego having a governorship candidate on the grounds that    the governorship candidate of the party was not acceptable to the top hierarchy of the party, PDP,  in Abuja and Imo State. Perhaps, the only difference in the APC primaries of 2019 may be that the preferred candidate and choice of ASO ROCK may be rejected by Douglas House Owerri. If that happens, Governor Okorocha may have a big crisis in his hand, if not properly managed. This may add Governor Okorocha’s name in the list of governors who could not produce a governorship candidate/governor of their   choice before leaving office. At our own level of politics in Nigeria, it is very lamentable for a governor to fail to secure second tenure or to fail to produce a successor governor of his heart’s desire. This is our level of politics and his detractors are desperate to humiliate   him out of office in such a manner that he won’t produce   his choice of successor.

Let us not forget that the crux of this discussion is President Buhari’s pathological hatred on Governor Okorocha. In order to humiliate Governor Okorocha, the South East was totally sidelined in President Buhari' first appointment of   over 40 members of   his Kitchen Cabinet. That skewed appointment was a deliberate gambit to humiliate Governor Okorocha in order to present him as a politician who has no clout in the APC and should therefore be ignored by Ndigbo. In order to embarrass Okorocha the more, a professor of Education and the Governor’s in-law was appointed a junior Minister in the Ministry of Education, where he was a mere assistant to the main Minister who is said to be a Journalist. Can you imagine a Professor of Education and former Vice Chancellor   of a university now playing second fiddle to a journalist , more so, in his principal area of specialization-Education. This is one of the ways they humiliated Governor Okorocha   but neither the Governor   nor his so-called faithful could decode the message.

While Governor Okorocha who is the face of APC  in the  South East   could not have a full minister for his State, other States in the zone who are not APC have full ministers, not Minister of State. What can be more sad than this barefaced   show of cruelty and hostility to a party man who spent a humongous amount to run the affairs of APC in the South East and beyond. Yet, it was Governor Okorocha’s intervention in the South East that reduced the volume of votes for President Jonathan in the 2015 election, thus paving the way for the victory of Muhammadu Buhari. If the pattern of voting in 2011 was the same as in 2015, the South East would have made up the difference of 2.5 million votes which PMB used to defeat GEJ. In spite of this , President Buhari and his APC have continued to demonize  Governor Okorocha.  President Buhari appears to be intimidated by the political curriculum vitae of  Governor Okorocha and he is mortally afraid to the extent that he feels   that Governor Okorocha is a man that should be avoided and kept at arm’s length, lest he pulls the chestnut out of the fire.

Now, take a look at a small portion of Governor Okorocha’s political profile:

(1)In 1999, he was a PDP Governorship aspirant in Imo State. He was tactically edged out  of the race through intrigue and manipulation. There is a School of Thought which holds that Owelle Rochas actually won the PDP Guber primaries of 1999.The allegation was that Owelle Okorocha was dumped because the elders of the PDP were intimidated by the young age of the mnan and they were uncomfortable with his bravado and independent mindedness. They dumped him in preference to a candidate who could be malleable.In fact, the the then National Chairman of the PDP,Chief Solomon Lar, had issued him with an official letter endorsing him as the PDP candidate in that election of 1999.

(2)In 2003,Owelle Okorocha was a Presidential aspirant of All Nigeria Peoples Party(ANPP) where he was among the few that had the courage to slug it out with Muhammadu Buhari in the energy-sapping primaries;

(3) In 2007, he was Presidential aspirant of the PDP.In the primaries, he emerged as a runner-up to the eventual winner, the Late President Umaru  Musa Yar’Adua;

(4) In 2011, Owelle Okorocha defeated an incumbent governor of Imo State, Chief Ikedi Ohakim. The task of defeating an incumbent governor in Nigeria is not a task for the faint of heart. This feat is very rare and far-between in Nigeria.

(5) Again, in 2015 he successfully defended his 2011 victory and emerged second term governor of Imo State, in spite of negative predictions by bookmakers and political pundits;

(6) In the same 2015, he was one of the Presidential aspirants of the All Peoples Congress(APC). Where he came second to Muhammadu Buhari.

(7) He was former Chairman, Nigeria Airspace Management Agency(NAMA),

(8)Member ,Federal Character Commission .

(9)Former Adviser to the  President on Inter-Party Affairs ;

(10)Although he is the only governor of the APC in the South East,, he is the National Chairman of the APC Governors’ Forum and several others.These are some of the political feats of Governor Okorocha that make Buhari to develop goose pimples when he hears Governor Okorocha’s name, yet the man is so full of passion  for President Buhari.

TRADITIONAL TITLES :Governor Okorocha holds numerous titles from various clusters including Owelle Ndi Igbo and Dan Jekan Sokoto .He is the Omorodun of Yoruba land, the Okala of Uhie, theTalban Gwagwalada andUban Talakwa(Father of the poor) and several others.

In conclusion, it is my sadvice that in the points adrumbrarted above, it is my advice that Governor Okorocha should look beyond the APC or have an OPTION B in his 2019 political agenda .Present realities confirm thar President Buhari will not be favourably disposed to allowing Governor Okorocha a free hand in the choice of the party’s governorship flagbearer in the 2019 governorship debacle.

Although, I am not a political party card-carrying analyst, I have made this analysis so that Imo State will not be embroiled in political crises between   governor and ASO ROCK as was the case in 2007 .It’s the crisis of governorship succession in 2007 that caused Imo State to be mired in a cesspool of fratricidal political turbulence from 2007 till now. In that election of 2007, a governorship candidate from another political party who was eventually declared winner of the 2007 governorship poll was imposed on the outgoing governor after serving for eight years. Since then, Imo State has never known peace and we must guard against a reoccurrence. So, my interest here is to alert political parties to open their eyes so that the rat will not eat what belongs to a man that is awake. It was DEE Sam Mbakwe, PH.D who amplified the maxim :”Oke anagh eri ihe onye mu anya ” which means : ” The rat does not eat what belongs to a man that is awake.” To be forewarned is to be forearmed.

(END OF VIEWPOINT).

Culled from WEEKEND NIGERIAN HORN OF MARCH 10, 2017 page 5 Also Whitepaper Newspaper and social media platforms .

MY COMMENT :I am glad to report that every prediction   made in that viewpoint about a year   ago   has become actualized with   computerized accuracy. Governor Okorocha was warned   but he paid no heed to the prediction. Since a broken bottle has no nmekwantansi , Governor Okorocha should stop regretting over some of the avoidable mistakes he made .There is   no need crying when the head is off.

Perhaps, the biggest mistake of Governor Okorocha is to have taken an action which is abysmally a negation and gross violation of his own doctrine of OHASIERISM.

What is Ohasierism ? Ohasierism is Governor Okorocha’s own philosophy which or maxim which states that when the public cooks for an individual , such individual cannot consume   all the food but no individual can cook enough food to satisfy the public’s demand for food.

JOHN MGBE

johnmgbe@yahoo.com