Ezuruezu Mbaise’s Naked Dance Over Iri Ji Mbaise Incident

Opinion

By Peter Claver Oparah

Whatever I felt about the shameful and obviously stage-managed development in Ahiazu Mbaise during this year’s political Iri Ji was well captured and better delivered in the article by Nze Mark Odu, the erudite estate valuer and famed traditionalists in his aptly-crafted piece, ‘Emeka Ihedioha’s Show of Shame’. Even as I enjoyed the unputdownable view from Nze Mark Odu, I refrained from honouring bare political way farers with my attention till I read the advertorial from a group called Ezuruezu, which styles itself as the mouthpiece of Mbaise nation. The advertorial titled, “Iri Ji Mbaise 2014 And The After Math”, was placed in Daily Sun, Monday, 25th August 2014. At best, it was a sloppy hatchet job as the group made no effort to balance their very pejorative and jaundiced views. Bias and prejudice was dripping through the length and breadth of the advertorial and you wonder if this group took into consideration the feelings, interests and opinions of those who are not in PDP in arriving at the decision to serve as body bags to partisan warfarers in PDP. I will excerpt from the advertorial for the sake of brevity. Who set Ezuruezu on this clearly mercenary war against Governor Okorocha? Ejikwam ogu o! To say, I and many other Mbaises are disappointed in Ezuruezu is to state the obvious. Where it should adopt sobriety and good reasoning, it chose to get itself mired deeply in one sided partisanship. By its desperate effort in approving this shameful act, I wonder what impression it is creating for its well known patron for whom it is doing this belittling job. I wonder how they want other people from outside Mbaise to look at their candidate. I wonder what image they want to cut for the Mbaise man in the larger Imo State polity. It is a shame of an egregious proportion!

Hear Ezuruezu Mbaise, “We saw this coming when the traditional rulers, who actually invited the Governor to the ceremony, decided, against tradition, to introduce politics into the revered cultural festival by involving the state government officials in the central working committee of the Festival. Following from this, the other politicians, not wanting to be overshadowed mobilized their supporters with banners and jingles, in tow and stormed the venue of cultural festival and turned it into a political event ”. Sho? So the presence of a governor was all it takes to take such a cultural festival to a political event? So invitation of governors now defile the Iri Ji Mbaise cultural festival or is enough to signal other politicians to start for war so as not to be outshined?

If I may ask, when did Ezuruezu deign it a taboo inviting governors to the Iri Ji festival? Ever since a governor that is not PDP came to power? If this is not so, why had this same Ezuruezu been tolerating mostly PDP politicians to the Iri Ji festival but deemed the presence of Okorocha as taboo; enough for it to signal to other politicians to prepare for war so as not to be ‘outshined’? In the past, the same Ezuruezu had invited former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, former governors, Peter Odili, Achike Udenwa and Ikedi Ohakim to the sacred Iri Ji festival when they were in power and had indulged in obscenely cavalierly politics during such ceremony that made many people scorn and shorn the political Iri Ji as against the sober and meaningful cultural Iri Ji. So when did Ezuruezu, now fully enlisted as a wing of the PDP, suddenly wake up to the reality that inviting sitting governors to the festival violates whatever sacredness and sanctity it feels their political jamboree commands?

Lets quote further from Ezuruezu’s advertorial, “We recall also the Governor’s behaviour at this year’s Oru Owerri festival where, for no just cause, he insulted out illustrious daughter, Distinguished Senator Chris N.D. Anyanwu, MFR. To add salt to injury, the State Governor on 14 August, 2014 went to Uvuru to lay the foundation stone of a Campus of Imo State University, an action meant to spite the Mbaise nation knowing fully well that over thirty years ago, during the Chief Sam Mbakwe regime, our people in cooperation with our brothers from Ngor Okpala LGA, donated over 50 hectars of ;and for the construction of a full fledged Imo State University, and not a campus of the University. Chief Mbakwe laid the foundation stone for the university.”

I have read Senator Chris Anyanwu refute the impression groups like Ezuruezu propagate that Governor Rochas Okorocha’s allusion to ‘those that slap and throw slippers on their husband would not rule Imo State’, refers to her. So why is Ezuruezu, in furtherance of its commissioned mission for the PDP and desperate to paint Okorocha black, insisting that Chris Anyanwu fits into the description the governor made at Oru Owerri? This leaves one wondering if Ezuruezu is on a mission to destroy all those standing against the desire of its principal backer at the moment by insisting that the description fits Chris Anyanwu.

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On the IMSU site ground breaking issue, which is hurting Ezuruezu but elicited tremendous joy in the hearts of every patriotic indigene of Mbaise, you can hardly believe the disoriented reasoning of a body trying frantically to reflect the jejune position of its partisan patrons on such a laudable feat as the ground breaking ceremony in Mbaise. You wonder how such epochal event assaulted the sentiment and vested interests of Ezuruezu that it provided reasoning for the disgraceful showing of August 15 they are trying to defend. Before Ezuruezu subsists its narrow political interests with the larger interest of Ndi Mbaise, was Ezuruezu ignorant of the fact that the Medical Campus of IMSU had been operational in Orlu for long? Come to think of it, Ezuruezu said that Chief Mbakwe laid the foundation stone of Imo University in Uvuru nearly thirty years ago, what had happened since then? What level of work had been done by about nine governors that have ruled Imo since then before Okorocha such that Okorocha’s ground breaking ceremony has provoked such blinding repulsion and revolt from the members of this social club called Ezuruezu?

In the over thirty years Ezuruezu quoted in their advertorial, twelve had been the years the PDP whose demeaning interests Ezuruezu serves and seeks to project in this outing, ruled Imo State. So, what level of work was done for the twelve years Ezuruezu cavorted with PDP governments in Imo State? Udenwa with whom Ezuruezu wined and dined rather built the Medical Campus of IMSU at Orlu but Eziriezu felt insulted probably that Okorocha did not perhaps annul the medical campus so that the entire university could be located in Mbaise such that no other campus exists elsewhere. What a cheeky and clearly misguided reasoning by men that seek to promote their personal interests as those of an enlightened race as the Mbaise nation? Pray, why was it difficult for Ezuruezu’s PDP to even erect a signpost in its twelve years in power, to at least, enact a memorial for the people that Mbakwe once laid the foundation stone of Imo State University in Uvuru? Ezuruezu’s PDP has been in power at the centre for sixteen years and today, Ezuruezu and such other like organs of PDP are all over Mbaise boasting of how they will deploy federal might to awe and overwhelm any person on the way of the PDP for whatever mission it is pursuing in Imo, why has it not impressed on Ezuruezu and its patrons to leverage such federal might to erect any meaningful project or institution (even if it is a department of any school) in Mbaiseland? Is their federal might expressive in how it meets their selfish ends and with which they mislead the people through such biased and clearly pejorative intervention it is making by this commissioned effort?

Still hear Ezuruezu; “Following from the above, there was no incident at this year’s Iri Ji Mbaise Festival to warrant a first citizen of the State, a father of the State to storm out of the Cultural Festival and order his security men to teargas our visitors and spectators”. I may be wrong but in all the newspaper reports of this incident and in all the first hand oral reports of the event and of course the narratives of both the Governor’s and Ihedioha’s sides, I have never read where it was reported that guests and spectators were teargassed, talk not of the governor ordering his security men to tear gas visitors at the event. This leaves you wondering how low Ezuruezu can descend to tarnish the image of the Mbaise man, create unnecessary enemies for him outside Mbaise land and imperil the larger Mbaise interest in Imo State for whatever restricted benefits it aims to corner from whoever it sought so desperately to please by such procured job. Who really is Ezuruezu Mbaise serving when it wears the toga of partisan politics and strains itself to appear beholden to very narrow political interests?

If you probe deeper why Ezuruezu deigned no scruples pulling off its shirts and jumping into the murky waters of politics stark naked, you don’t have to search far before you find one of the most compelling reasons in Ezuruezu’s advert, “Recall that the State Governor has severally rebuffed our several requests for a courtesy visit since he came to power. He has also refused to attend the Iri Ji Mbaise Cultural Festival until this his last year in office”. And there you have it, as an erudite professor is wont to say.

•Oparah, Ikeja, Lagos. E-mail: [email protected]

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