Owerri lockout of Igbo leaders: The inside story

Owerri lockout of Igbo leaders: The inside story
Politics, Special Reports Oct 6, 2010 By OCHEREOME NNANNA
This report which was first published in Saturday Vanguard of last week is reproduced for our readers’ delight

FINALLY, the day for the staging of a political summit of Igbo political leaders came on Monday, September 27, 2010 at Owerri.

However, it ran into a hitch when, the night before the event, the major stakeholders arrived from Abuja and other places only to learn from Chief Chyna Iwuanyanwu, the Secretary of the Igbo Political Forum, IPF, the organisers of the summit, that from the look of things, the Conference Hall of the Hotel Concorde, venue of the event that had been paid for two weeks earlier, might not be available.


From right: Prof Charles Soludo, Senator Ken Nnamani, Chief Simeon Okeke, Dr. Alex Ekwueme,Chief Achike Udenwa, Dr Sam Egwu, Mrs. Chinwe Obaji, and Senator Ben Obi outside the Hotel Concorde, Owerri venue of the Igbo Summit, where they were locked out, last week. Photo: Hill Ezeugwu
The hotel management and security officials had been instructed to lock it up and refuse the participants entry into the hotel.

Iwuanyanwu also disclosed that when he arrived in Owerri Airport on Friday, September 24, he was accosted by a couple of State Security Services, SSS, officers, who advised him to allow them to escort him into town for his own safety. However, the presence of a large number of his own “men” made the security men to back off and instead follow him into Owerri in a red car.

According to him, he decided to report to the SSS office in Owerri to know why he was being harassed.

Iwuanyanwu also told our reporter that he decided to have a meeting with Governor Ikedi Ohakim, whom he suspected as the brain behind the move to scuttle the summit.

He said: “When I got to the government house, I was made to wait for four hours before the governor came down, and after a hasty exchange of pleasantries, he informed me that the summit, if allowed to hold in Owerri, would jeopardise his second term ambition.

I told him that we were not here to support any candidate for president in 2011 as feared by some people, but that we were here to give the Igbo people an opportunity to deliberate and agree on the best way to get the best deal for our people in 2011 and to table our demand for the presidency to be zoned to the Igbos in 2015.

But the governor would not listen. He said they were about to enter a Security Council meeting to review the situation. We parted ways on that note.”

By the time the delegates had arrived in Owerri, they decided to hold the main meeting in the night knowing that the venue would not be available the following day. It was during the meeting that everything was concluded and the communiqué drafted.

The decision to hold the gathering outside the lawns of the hotel was partially to rev up the propaganda value of the lockout and partly because most hotels in Owerri, when they learned that the state government was not positively disposed to the meeting being held in Owerri, refused to rent out their conference halls for fear of being blackballed by the Ohakim government, the biggest customer of the many modern hotels in the town.

On Monday, September 27, at about 11 am, as if on cue, the big wigs, led by former Vice President Dr Alex Ekwueme, began to converge at the Hotel Concorde premises.

When they had formed a large body, they proceeded to the door of the hotel where, of course, as predicted, they were not allowed entry. Then they sensationally decided to hold the summit in the blaze of the morning sunshine.

There were no chairs. In fact, two loudspeakers and a microphone powered by the popular ‘I pass my neighbour’ tiny generator were quickly procured, at least to enable the gathering and their fascinated onlookers hear what was being discussed.

In his opening remarks, Ekwueme, who was chairman of the occasion, reiterated that the summit was organised to give the Igbo people a chance to decide how to approach the unfolding transition programme.

He expressed his dismay that anyone would want to stop any group of Nigerians from meeting, adding that it was against the spirit of democracy and constitutionalism.

Okeke also stressed the non-partisan nature of the gathering, pointing out that members of the campaign organisations of the various candidates of the various political parties were among the delegates.

The aim, he affirmed, was for the Igbo people to brainstorm and explore the most viable means of achieving the zoning of the presidency to the South East in 2015, the only means of bringing to a close the ugly memories of the civil war which ended 40 years ago.

He condemned the action of the authorities, lamenting that it was curious that groups from the North, West and South-South, and even Jonathan’s supporters were allowed to peacefully hold their meetings while Igbos were being harassed in their own land from meeting and discussing their political future.

Professor Chinwe Nora Obaji, in a stirring speech, lamented that in spite of the contributions of the Igbo people and the fact that Igbo ingenuity and professionals are in high demand across the globe, Nigeria continues to sidestep the aspirations of one of the nation’s largest ethnic groups to serve at the highest level, forty years after the civil war ended

The communiqué emerged and was distributed barely a few minutes after the one hour event was brought to a close. However, the Imo State Government officials distanced Governor Ohakim from the lockout saga.

The only officer who agreed to speak on record, Mr. Henry Ekpe, the Chief Press Secretary, told our reporter on phone from Abuja where he and his principal were at the time the event was unfolding, that the “order from above” did not emanate from Ohakim.

“If the security agencies felt that there was a threat to law and order and they stepped in to the stop any gathering that is their business. It has nothing to do with the governor.

He has no control over the security agencies, and the management of Concorde is not under the control of the governor. It is a private business. We cannot answer for their actions”.

The inside stories

It is time now to go below the surface and explore the undercurrents that led to the lockout and staging of the summit under the sun. You have guessed it correctly; it was old fashioned politicking at play, with jostling for prime positions by vested interests over the 2011 polls.

The IPF belongs to the flank that supports zoning and the emergence of a northerner as president in 2011. One of the high officials of the Governor Ohakim government who spoke to me described it meeting as “a summit of Anambra politicians for (General Ibrahim) Babangida, which should have held in Awka or Enugu.

They brought it here deliberately to cause confusion.” To say it was a summit for Babangida was not quite correct. The correct way to put it is that they were pro-zoning political actors, which means they do not support the President Goodluck Jonathan aspiration for president in 2011.

For instance, Senator Ben Obi is the Director General of the General Aliyu Gusau Presidential Campaign Organisation.

The pro-zoning Igbo politicians have argued that it is only through it that the demand for the emergence of an Igbo president in 2015 can be possible, adding that if Jonathan succeeds in setting aside zoning and wins in 2011, zoning would die.

In so doing, the Igbo people would be “cheated” again, after zoning was used to heal the June 12 wound of the Yoruba and the agitations of the Niger Delta. The forty year-old wound of the Igbo nation would fester on.

All the pro-zoning politicians were prominent actors during the civil war, and forty years after the war, they want assurances that they would see the end of the conflict in their lifetime through the emergence of an Igbo president in 2015.

On the other hand, Udenta Udenta and Ben Obi, in discussions with this writer, expressed their belief that the North have proved to be promise-keepers in their dealings with the Igbo.

According to them, when the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) and the National Council for Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) went into an alliance after the NPC won the 1959 federal elections, the Igbos shared power with the North almost equally, producing the ceremonial president of Nigeria and juicy cabinet positions that compared well with those of the North.

That alliance forced the Action Group into the opposition. Again, twenty years later in 1979, after the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) won the presidential election and the Nigerian People’s Party (NPP) agreed to enter into an Accord with the North, it enabled the Igbo to produce the nation’s Vice President barely nine years after the civil war, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and several senior cabinet positions.

Again, the West-based UPN, which scored the second highest votes, was relegated to opposition.

A divided house

The Igbo elite are going into the transitional politics of 2011 with a divided house. Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo, led by Ambassador Ralph Uwechue, has held several meetings with the Ijaw National Congress led by Chief Wolfe Obianime Atuboyedia in Yenagoa and both sides agreed to support the President.

No Ijaw group has come to the East for any meeting, though they have visited the North and West. EK Clark holds meetings with Jonathan Igbo supporters in his house, but has never visited any of their residences. This seems to justify the Jonathan camp’s claim that “when the time comes, the Igbos will line up”.

The governors of the South East, a day to the Owerri Summit, had also endorsed the president. Late in August, a group of pro-Jonathan political actors, such as Chief Mbazulike Amechi, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, Dr Chukwuemeka Ezeife and others held their summit in Enugu and threw their support behind Jonathan.

The argument of the pro-Jonathan Igbo leaders is equally convincing. According to them, assisting Jonathan to get elected in 2011 would go a long way in healing the wounds inflicted on the relationship between the Igbo and their Minority neighbours in1952 after Professor Eyo Ita, Leader of Government Business in the former Eastern Region, who was poised to emerge as the Region’s first Premier, before he was displaced by Dr Azikiwe after the latter failed in his bid to become the first Premier of Western Nigeria. Since that period till date, the Igbo people and their minority neighbours have lived like cat and mouse, undermining one another’s political interests, forging partnerships with distant allies and creating deep hurts on one another.

They also believe that if Jonathan wins next year’s election, it would put an end to what they term “Northern arrogance of power and oppression of other Nigerians”.

They argue that it is the only chance Nigeria has to usher in a new beginning, as a Jonathan presidency that is not based on tribal or sectional fundamentalism is likely to work toward the restructuring of Nigeria to remove ethnic or sectional domination. They also claim that Jonathan, as a “neighbour” and in-law, would not ignore or neglect Igbo interest.

All these do not detract from the fact that this Igbo is giving Jonathan unsolicited support, and some are obviously doing so because they are eyeing PDP ticket or jobs or contracts after the race, without any special package for the common good of the Igbo nation. It would appear that the two camps may not be able to close ranks.

It is probably impossible

From Vangaurd Newspaper