By Eze Nwamadi, Ogbonna Asadu and Ezema Igwenunu
Whatever remained of Chijioke Edeoga’s misguided bid for the governorship seat of Enugu State had come to an abrupt end on May 25, 2022, after the PDP gubernatorial primary where Peter Ndubuisi Mbah deservedly emerged the governorship candidate of the party. Chijioke himself knew he had met a dark alley in his governorship bid. Left with no option, he bowed before Peter and kissed the dust off his feet. He knew clearly he and his illicit overambition had been rounded up. He had no option than pledge support to Peter Mbah. The dismembered carcass of his support base was gathered and handed over to Mbah, and in a press release, Edeoga pledged his support to the highly celebrated go-getter, Peter Mbah, an oil mogul, who has distinguished himself in the downstream oil sector.
Edeoga was jobless after he had served as an aide to President Jonathan, a job he reportedly handled so ineptly that Jonathan had wanted to sack him but then patiently waited to ease him out on the expiration of his tenure. It was from such political doldrums that Governor Ugwuanyi pulled Chijioke, his cousin, and made him a commissioner in his administration. It was a kind of rehabilitation as Ugwuanyi gave Chijioke a lifeline. His Excellency,Governor Ugwuanyi, was minded to fully get Chijioke rehabilitated. Little did he know that iniquity had crept in on Edeoga in the process of time, such iniquity as was found in Lucifer, an archangel, who had thought to ascend to the throne of the Most High, the iniquity of desperate overambition. A man under such rehabilitation had overnight developed dangerous overambition. No one knew Edeoga was coveting Ugwuanyi’s throne. Arrogance and all manner of debauchery had taken infernal grip on Chijioke. The spirit of Absalom reigned in him. He would convert government magazine to his personal property and also would use the said LG News Magazine to defraud the 17 local government chairmen in Enugu State to the tune of over N2 billion as was recently uncovered by some investigative journalists. As a matter of fact, that is left for the anti-graft agencies to handle.
Chijioke would also hijack and misappropriate Governor Ugwuanyi’s media team for his inordinate governorship bid without paying them a dime. Even the monthly honorarium due to the team was often misappropriated by Chijioke. If any of them raised an eyebrow, he would cajole and intimidate them with the subtle threat that he would soon become the governor of Enugu State, and that anyone who would not fall in line would have themselves to blame.
Edeoga had known quite clearly that he would not emerge the candidate of the PDP, but he had thought to gamble it and leverage his relationship with Ugwuanyi to play most foul for it. He knew also he did not have the financial war-chest to prosecute his governorship bid, but had hoped Ugwuanyi would bankroll it for him in his sense of clannish infantilism. Edeoga gave the media team two terms of reference: to present him as a saint and to cast slur on any other aspirant for the governorship position. He knew that Peter Mbah was a frontline aspirant and so had devoted much energy to churn out false and damaging claims against the brilliant young transformational leader. Edeoga stopped at nothing in his bid to create wrong impressions about Mbah, using the media team he had hijacked. In spite of all that, Peter took Edeoga to the cleaners and won the gubernatorial election resoundingly.
Following the emergence of Peter and other choice candidates of the PDP in the state, some disgruntled politicians of Nsukka extraction who failed at the PDP primaries ganged up against Governor Ugwuanyi and the party. They teamed up with the Nwodos who had yet to divest themselves of their arrogant claims to the leadership of Nsukka cultural zone, even when they have provenance in Ojobogene, Udi North. The Nwodos quickly saw in Chijioke, married to their disabled daughter, a willing pawn to trade with in the political marketplace. Desperate to be governor without anything to offer, the zeal without knowledge called Chijioke Edeoga reneged on his pledge to Peter and scurried to Labour Party.
Meanwhile, Capt. Evarest Nnaji, Odengene, had taken a position already in the Labour Party before Edeoga’s misadventure in the party, for the party was favourably disposed toward Capt. Evarest Nnaji. However, the Nwodos muscled Edeoga in and against the procedure railroaded him down the precipice of a most unconscionable charade of gubernatorial primary whose clear intent was to foist Edeoga on the party willy nilly and then exclude Capt. Evarest Nnaji and Davidson Nnamani, another aspirant from Ikem in Isi-Uzo, who himself also had lamented Edeoga’s betrayal.The Nwodos were alleged to have convinced Peter Obi to back Chijioke’s candidacy against the wish of the national working committee of the party which was poised to organize a free and fair gubernatorial primary in Enugu State. Obi had regretted backing Edeoga when Edeoga’s many illicit dealings and dirty lifestyle were laid bare to him. Edeoga would sully Obi’s saintly candidature untill Obi saw through his chicanery and then distanced himself from Edeoga in line with the advice of one of his strategists, one Iyare from Edo State.
The gentleman, Odengene, went to court to to seek redress for his exclusion at the kangaroo primary election through which Edeoga had purportedly emerged the candidate of Labour Party in the state. While the matter was in court, Edeoga, like an impostor he is, was busy gallivanting from one place to the other, castigating Governor Ugwuanyi, Chimaroke Nnamani, Peter Mbah and Odengene in the name of campaign. He had no manifesto to unveil like Peter Mbah. His own manifesto consisted in the contrivance of willfully damaging imaginary fictions against his opponents. He recruited some weather-beaten, diminished, deteriorated and exhausted ne’er-do-wells like Ikem Okuhu and Aniebolam Nwamu, who call themselves journalists, and gave them the brief to attack Peter Mbah and anyone who supported him. He would organize a take-off campaign at Eha-Amufu that recorded dismal attendance and then would schedule another at Nsukka and lie to the people that Obi would be there in order to attract a crowd. Of course, the crowd gathered in anticipation of Obi’s areival, but dispersed in anger when they realized Peter Obi would not be there, contrary to the deliberately made up false impression Edeoga and his partners in dishonesty and deceit had created. The fact is that Peter has clearly distanced himself from the debased personality Edeoga has cut for himself, and now avoids him like a plague.
On Wednesday, 9th November, 2022, Justice Evelyn Maha of the Federal High Court Abuja in a rulling over the case Odengene had filed, nullified the kangaroo primary election that foisted Edeoga on Enugu Labour Party and ordered a rerun of the gubernatorial primaries within 14 days in line with one of the prayers of Capt.Evarest Nnaji, Odengene,in the suit he had filed.
This judgement has implications. First, it is a clear sign of the dead end of Edeoga’s uncultured politics of brigandage, media rascality,debauchery, victimization, usurpation, machination, calumniation, deceit, emotional instability, belligerence, animosity backbiting, gossiping, altercation, and all known vices associated with Edeoga.
Second, Capt. Evarest Nnaji is likely going to emerge the governorship candidate of the party in Enugu State. He is favoured by majority of the Labour Party stakeholders who are reportedly eager to ease off the miasmatic load of an Edeoga as the candidate of the party and the obloquy his debased person has brought to bear on the party. It will also be a heave of a sigh of relief for Peter Obi whose trunk is getting curved for trying to wriggled out of Edeoga’s odious association with himself.
The greater implication,however, is that Labour may not field a governorship candidate in Enugu State, since going by the electoral law, the time for primaries has already elapsed in essence of which Labour Party is time-barred. This has precedents in Zamfara and Rivers State. The only option left for the party is to appeal the judgement of the high court, but that also may not mitigate the circumstance, as it was clear that the primary which produced Edeoga was faulty, and it is likely that the appellate court will sustain the judgement of the high court. Meanwhile, since Edeoga is not in the good books of a greater number of the party stakeholders, especially at the national level, it is likely that the party may not appeal the judgement. They might want to try their luck with Odengene, who is far better than Edeoga. A member of the national working committee of the party had anonymously said that Edeoga was like a knife whose two edges were blunt. Edeoga lacks both character and capacity and so could not have represented the choice of the party. He is like a porcupine with sharp thorns all over its body.
Howsoever it may be, one thing is clear. Chijioke Edeoga’s Luciferian politics has come to an abrupt end. His nuisance value has been contained and his odious self has been stamped out of Enugu politics. It is the dead end of his pugnaciously vexatious brand of infantile politics. His camp mainly of Nsukka sulking politicians is gradually being depleted. Many of them are returning to the PDP. Edeoga is done and undone.
