Egwu’s Politics And Ndigbo

Sam Egwu, the former governor of Ebonyi State is gunning for the chairmanship of the PDP and he has the support of former president Olusegun Obasanjo, a man he diligently served for eight years for that aspiration. The other day, he was shooting his mouth to condemn the European Union Electoral Mission Observer Group that roundly criticized the macabre manipulation his master Obasanjo and his lapdogs visited on the country’s electoral process last April. In doing this, he was playing the good boy to Obasanjo and perhaps reflecting his candidacy for the PDP chairmanship. He was doing the dirty job for which he raped and ruined Ebonyi State for eight years while ever ready to do the bidding of his guile master.

From the start, Egwu cultivated the deceptive image of a cultured academic that was really concerned about the poor, pitiable and backward lot of his state than the politics of power in Ebonyi State. He cut the image of one who shared the deep concern for the fissures of underdevelopment his state has been mired in and one who is genuinely resolved to use the resources of his state for the betterment of his state. For long, he hid behind the anonymity of the state to pass off as one hell of a good case among the irredeemable packs of parodists that were the PDP governors of the South East. For those who had never been to Ebonyi, Egwu was a darling angel and an achiever and this stood him in good stead as the battle for fortes with Anyim Pius Anyim lasted.

His victory in this dogfight, aided by the evil platoon of the man he sees as his god, Obasanjo, propelled him to try his hands on more laurels and before you can say it, Egwu had started seeing himself as the next best thing God created for the Igbo, after aki na ukwa. He enlisted fully as an audacious prefect of the Obasanjo School of mischief and was audacious enough to mask his self-serving interests in this war for self as Igbo interest. He did everything to demonize Anyim and any other person that dares cross his paths in Ebonyi and cultivated the image of one quiet, unassuming and achieving governor in the South East. But for all these, Ebonyi never appreciated from its humble state as the pangs of poverty and want ravaged that land with insatiable gusto. The best Egwu did was to fangle a plethora of pseudo policies and provoking the most devilish power-acquisition projects that availed him of limitless opportunities to enrich self at the expense of the few. Feasting on the modest political awareness and intellectual base of his state and backed to the hilt by the obnoxious machine of state terror Obasanjo deployed to his hirelings, Egwu became an instant clay footed god whose word was law in Ebonyi. From his humble three-bedroom apartment before he became governor, Egwu soon became the biggest property merchant in Abakiliki and made so much good for himself that he became so wealthy by all standards in a state that is still seen as one of the most educationally backward and poverty-stricken in the federation.

But it is in employing his resources in fighting Igbo collective interests and promoting Obasanjo’s personal interests that Egwu excelled. He never believed in nor aided any cause that stood to benefit Igbo while in office. In contrast, Egwu was prominent in any project Obasanjo and his evil court concocted to rubbish the Igbo and benefit its narrow cartel. It is for this servitude that Egwu is being shielded from trial for his well-known corrupt acts, which have taken Ebonyi, a state still ravaged by guinea worm after eight years of Egwu, to the lowest nadir of development. Whether it was in the dubious third term project, or the cannibalization of the Ohaneze to make it pliable to Obasanjo’s vile interests or in launching mind-wracking electoral fraud in Ebonyi, Egwu has been in the inglorious center, employing the hunger, greed and selfishness of a cartel of political vampires in Ebonyi State for his selfish mission. When other Igbo governors, certainly aware of their low worth, maintained silence on issues that benefit Obasanjo, Egwu would pout his mouth and promote such interests even when that meant insulting the Igbo. Urged by the phantom tale of ‘having performed’, which suited those that recruited him for those missions, Egwu believed that no land is sacrosanct for him to thread on in the process of achieving whatever interests he deigned to pursue. With the evil armada of his master massed behind him, Egwu perceived himself so invincible and is presently demonstrating the negative transformative effects of power. He remains a case study on how not to allow power to rule one, as he no longer sees himself in the light of a humble lecturer but in the light of one of the most powerful political powers in the country.

Egwu stoked the power of inferiority in his Ebonyi people that he almost convinced them they were not part of Igboland. During the ill-fated National Political Reforms Conference, Egwu mobilized his hand-picked representatives from Ebonyi State to that conference to take positions that were at variance with those of other Igbo. While Igbo went to the conference with the Pan-Southern demand for regionalism, the Ebonyi delegates were told to oppose this on the faulty belief that such would exacerbate the backward state of Ebonyi. To Egwu, what mattered was the honey pot he would preside over and not what positively affects Ndigbo. But under Egwu, Ebonyi remained the most under-represented state in federal positions and today is the only state that does not have a federal permanent secretary despite Egwu’s subservient disposition to Obasanjo and his political interests.

Egwu was so sold to the evil third term project that he was deigned ‘good enough’ to host the eastern session of the third term project. He was deemed such a good boy to provide the logistic and other tactical support for the success of the nebulous project and he never disappointed the promoters of the project with the elaborate state support he deployed to that project that stood to stymie the aspirations and interests of his Igbo people for an indeterminate period.

Egwu never stopped there, as he was the backbone of the group of unconscionable mercenaries that took over Ohaneze when Joe Irukwu was at the helm. He sustained that group in its ill-advised enlistment into the third term project and was so prominent in that group’s quest for tenure elongation, which introduced a strange dimension to the crises that wracked Ohaneze, as its so called leaders became hapless recruits to Obasanjo’s self-serving third term gambit. When that group, routed by the profound discontent of Ndigbo was overthrown through an immensely popular revolt, Egwu refused to buy that popular turn of events because that was injurious to his own personal political interest that was clinging on the success of the manipulative interests of Obasanjo. He remains a strong pillar of support to the distraught claim of this renegade faction to the leadership of Ohaneze.

When the race for the 2007 presidency peaked with the failure of the third term project, Egwu threw his feeble hat into the ring and was basking in the light of some self-sponsored exit polls that saw him as the best material from Igboland for the presidency, even when he was fresh from his support for the third term. Fighting to remain relevant, he was to exhume an octogenarian and courtesy of the scam election of April 2007, which he is striving to defend in very strange and untenable reasoning, he succeeded in forcing that one on Ebonyi people, still smarting from Egwu’s eight years siege. Soon after his commission expired, he was involved in a monumental corruption investigation by the EFCC but like any other pro-Obasanjo lapdog, the well-published case against Egwu was hushed up in very untidy circumstances.

With a mission to remain relevant on national issues, after he tasted the sweet aroma of power, Egwu is presently on the race for the chairmanship of the PDP after the East was denied of any worthwhile position in the present scheme of things by the masters he serve so diligently. For his present ambition, he has enlisted the support of the man and molten masters he had served so slavishly for eight years, has recruited dozens of image managers and has retched up political contractor to blare his trumpet. I don’t have any problem with that and I care no hoot whether Egwu becomes the chairman of the PDP, which is just a party position that exists at the pleasure of whoever occupies the presidency. But I have a problem with Egwu and company tying that ineffectual position to the well being of Ndigbo who have suffered from their hands since 1999. It is in realizing this self-serving political position that Egwu made his latest public outing on EU reports on the election, which is in tandem with the position of those that sponsor him for his present political dream. It is a bad verse that epitomizes the vain politics of Sam Ominyi Egwu and has worked to the detriment of Ndigbo.