26th September, 2013
By James Akudike
Governor Peter Obi of Anambra State will leave office next March, by which time he will have completed two terms, an unprecedented record right from the time of the old Anambra State. He will unfortunately be leaving a state more divided than when he assumed office. If there has ever been a united and homogenous state in Nigeria’s history, it is Anambra. Not only are the people united by their full embrace of western-rite Christianity, they speak about the same dialect of the Igbo language and have virtually the same culture. There is practically even spread of modern development, with every subgroup parading a substantial number of highly accomplished individuals. Consequently, the feeling of inferiority complex in some people from certain very undeveloped areas which gives rise to a culture of violence against the rest of a given society is absent in Anambra State. It is difficult to make claims of this nature about any other state in Nigeria.
The bad news is that Anambra’s homogeneity and unity, which have been a remarkable pillar of the people’s progress for several decades, are now heavily threatened—thanks to Obi’s emergence as governor. Once known as “home for all” in the footsteps of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe who was Nigeria’s very accommodating first president, the state now provides the worst theatre of sectarian politics. Catholics and Anglicans are embroiled in politics of supremacy. Realizing that Catholics are in the majority in the state but the state chief executives have hardly come from within their fold, Obi has persistently played on the fear of domination. He has thus dragged so many priests and religious into the murky waters of Nigerian electoral politics. Yet, the Vatican has since the pontificate of John Paul 11 banned priests and religious from politics. Obi has manipulated the fact that a member of his family is a priest and another a nun to portray himself as pious. The governor habitually says the Rosary and other uniquely Catholic prayers in public places so as to grab attention.
May God forbid that Anambra may well be on the way to becoming Africa’s Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is where Catholics and Anglicans have for several decades engaged one another in a fight to the finish, and until the signing of the Good Friday Agreement on April 10, 1998, in Belfast, the relationship between Unionists and Republicans was very hostile, with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) launching attacks against British interests and the state. It will be most unfortunate if any person should, for whatever reason, return Anambra State to the awful days of debilitating sectarian politics in Igboland when Catholics and Protestants were at each other’s throats. The Catholic faith was introduced in Eastern Nigeria about 127 years ago by priests from Ireland, a country which waged a long and painful nationalist war against British imperialism. The Anglican faith, on the other hand, was introduced from the United Kingdom. It is easy now to see that the Catholic and Anglican priests took their nationalist war from their home countries to Eastern Nigeria.
To end the increasing religious cauldron in the East, Ukpabi Asika, then the East Central State administrator, decided in 1970 to take over schools built by Christian missions which he believed were serving as vehicles for religious intolerance. We deeply regret that Governor Obi does not care taking Anambra to the pre-1970 era in a desperate attempt to enjoy the support of the church with the larger number of followers.
Admittedly, Obi’s parochial politics should not have come to serious-minded people as a surprise. No sooner had he assumed office as Anambra State governor than he signalled he would play politics of divide and rule. In an effort to de-legitimise the government of his predecessor, Dr Chris Ngige, Governor Obi started the propaganda that all the roads Ngige built for the three years he was in office were in his native Idemili area. The governor knew very well that this was far from the truth, but he stuck to it. The whole idea was to set up the Idemili people against the rest of the state. It failed.
With the November 16 gubernatorial election approaching, our governor has pulled another parochial trick. He says his successor should come from the northern senatorial zone, arguing that his position is informed by equity because, according to him, governors have come from the other senatorial districts. Mr Obi is eager to ignore the fact that at no time have people from any part of the state failed to participate in the gubernatorial contest as candidates; and he is also enthusiastic to gloss over the fact that Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, the first premier of the Eastern Region, hailed from the northern district, just like Asika, administrator of East Central State.
To state the obvious, the people of Anambra have never cared about the senatorial districts of candidates and governors. What has always mattered to our people is the record of each person in question, and not primordial sentiments. Governor Obi’s campaign to have someone from the northern senatorial district (read Omambala or Anambra culture area) as the next governor is merely targeted at one person: Senator Ngige. Obi wants Ngige to lose all moral and psychological right to contest the governorship since he is from the central part of the state. But the people have not been impressed.
The supreme irony is that the Obi strategy of ensuring that the successor is from the Omambala area is backfiring. William Obianor, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) candidate handpicked by the governor and a retired employee of a bank where Obi was the chairman, is unknown even among his kinfolk. So many people prefer Dr Chike Obidigbo, the successful manufacturer from the area who has been chosen by the Maxi Okwu faction of the party as the authentic APGA candidate. Worse is that there are millions of Anambra people who despise the mentality of “we-against-them” which the governor is encouraging in APGA members in the four Omambala local government areas, thus making members in the other 17 LGAs in the state seem to band together against them. In other words, Governor Obi has unintentionally succeeded in setting up APGA politicians in Omambala culture area against the people of the whole of Anambra State.
Governor Obi inherited the leadership of a most united and homogenous state. But he has through electoral brinkmanship decided to make the people be as parochial and clannish as any other state in pre-bendal Nigeria. May God save Nigerians from their rulers.
•Akudike, an engineer with Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, wrote from Anambra State.