For the umpteenth time,
Anambra
State is embroiled in a man-made
crisis, staged to arrest the peace and progress of the state. Predictably, the
provocateurs of the present crisis are the same as the ones that have spent a
great chunk of their active time sowing dread, confusion and disorder in
Anambra for the greater parts of the present dysfunctional democratic
dispensation. This time around, and having been mauled on the crooked and
dastardly fronts from which they wanted to access power, the purveyors and
midwifers of frictions in Anambra have decided to waylay the state governor and
ensure that he does not have a budget to work with. By slashing the proposed
budget of
Anambra
State
by close to half, the message from the characters behind the present impasse is
that since Anambra people have rejected them, they would ensure they pull the
entire house down on all. They are pulling all stops, including blackmail and
sabotage to ensure they go home with their sordid victory in tow and they care
less what happens to the interest and well being of Anambra people in the
process.
It does not take a stargazer
to know that after he was disinvested with his phantom gubernatorial mandate
after only fourteen days in power, Andy Uba, a ranking member of the desperate
political colony hewn out by former president Obasanjo in his desperate effort
to destroy and lay waste Anambra State for his pleasure and for the benefit of
his minions, would not go home and hug his ill-fated fate. It does not take a
clairvoyant to predict that after indulging in several legal pranks and
judicial intrigues that came to irreparable grief, a fellow that received the
assurance from the devilish order that reigned, 1999 to 2007, and who had been
generously mobilized with looted state treasury would go home and warm himself
waiting for a clearly unpredictable and uncertain March 2010, when he would not
be availed of such sham parody as happened on April 14 2007 to try his hand on
lording over Anambra State. With a hand-picked 30-members state assembly, joint
colleagates in the bizarre fraud of April 2007, it would be wishful thinking
believing that Andy Uba, with so much false under-lays on his private and
academic lives and with loads of plundered cash in tow, will let Peter Obi who
pierced through his fool’s haven with landmark court judgments, to reign in
peace. I don’t know what the impression of the Obi camp was on this but I
believe that any regime that does not indulge in vanity would have prepared for
this day. Any regime that is worth its name would have factored that Uba would
not have been the happiest fellow when the Supreme Court has thrashed
thoroughly the fool’s paradise which Obasanjo, Maurice Iwu and the repertoire
of thieving do-gooders with whom Obasanjo wrecked and subdued this country
constructed for him. So, Obi and his government must have been adequately
prepared for this day when the state assembly, under the thumbs of Uba
hirelings has decided to crumble Anambra for their principal, without whom and
without whose corruptive touch in power they would not have been where they are
today.
For those who are unaware of
the cause of the present impasse in
Anambra
State, Governor Peter Obi presented a
budget of N84.2 billion to the house for the 2008 fiscal year. Without looking
at it twice, the house downed the budget to N57.6 billion and thereafter
started tinkering with it in a move that smacks of working to the question from
the answer. One of the highlights of the butchering exercise was the
downsizing of the budget for
Awka
Capital
Territory from N1 Billion to N200 million and
the budget for the development of
Onitsha
from N1 billion to N300 million. Also the Andy Uba house raised its own from N284
million to N1.3 billion. That amounts to its sense of budgetary discipline and
states in unequivocal manner the reason why these vampires are fighting the
Peter Obi government. It seems that having more than secured for themselves;
the house targeted the social and infrastructural projects being handled by
Governor Obi otherwise one would have believed that an altruistic approach
would have involved cutting the proposed house expenditure by the commensurate
degree of the budget cut. One of the fellows in the present rofo rofo fight is
one Ikenna Mbazulike Amechi, son of Chief Mbazulike Amechi, one of the Andy Uba
campaigners as his ill-fated gubernatorial campaign lasted. The fellow is
alleged to have shamelessly appropriated over ten projects to himself in the
present budget proposal. One would have thought that a house that is driven by
the love of Ndi Anambra would have given Obi the challenge of meeting his
ambitious projection instead of sawing through his proposals in a manner meant
to cripple governance and make Obi look ineffectual. In this way, the brain
behind this needless crisis hopes to make a case for the governorship in 2010
and possibly achieve his life ambition to govern
Anambra
State.
Funny enough, one of the
hirelings that are fanning the embers of this orchestrated crisis has come out
with a specious and tendentious allegation that each of them in the state house
of assembly was offered a princely bribe of N50million and choice plots of land
by the state government to pass the budget but curiously, they rejected such
offer. It must be that they are receiving a heftier inducement from the
trillions Uba was alleged to have lifted from licking the arse of Obasanjo. But
in their desperate attempt to employ blackmail to stave off the public
indictment that trail their selfish action, they forgot that Obi has acquired a
political ‘notoriety’ for not spreading state largesse to appease the
cash-and-carry whims of the type of fellows that fire the pins of the present
impasse on Anambra. Even as the state government has dismissed such bland
allegation as frivolous and unfounded, not many people are ready to invest that
lie with any modicum of credibility because Obi, through his crusade, has made
it easier for Nigerians to know the truth in what is happening in Anambra State,
which is no more than the war between a prudent apostle of sane politics and
rapacious buccaneers who would not mind if state treasury is thrown open to
finance their gluttony. What is happening with the state budget presently is
not different from this continuing crusade. It is just that given the desperate
nature with which Uba pursues his goal of governing Anambra, it comes in
different forms and manners. We have seen the childish manner the election
process in Anambra was rubbished to throw up the ill-fated mandate of Uba. We
have seen the crash at the Supreme Court where his purported election was ruled
as non-existent. We have seen the puerile antics of Ifeanyi Okonkwo that earned
him a public internment at the hands of the Supreme Court judges. We have seen
the crash of a desperate suit asking the Supreme Court to reverse itself. We
have also seen the laughable parody of the court of appeal trying to rule on a
matter that has long been settled by the Supreme Court so as to hand Andy Uba a
fashionable lollipop to make him happy and now we are seeing the budget drama
being enacted by Andy Uba’s fawners that flatter themselves as members of the
Anambra State House of Assembly. It is still unfolding and who knows what the
next scene looks like.
It is heartening that so many
prominent Anambra people, tired and fed up with the turn of the political game
Obasanjo and his cronies subjected their state to and buoyed by the fact that
the Obasanjo years of infamy are gone for good, are standing up to resist this
plot. It is encouraging that some members of the state assembly have risen up
to protest being used by the desperate power mongers in Anambra to continue
holding the people of the state down and have issued disclaimer to the unseen
events in the Anambra State House of Assembly. They are now known as group of
eleven and they have vowed they would never allow Uba and his domestic servants
masquerading as state assembly members to continue holding the state hostage
for their personal ambitions. It is even noteworthy that the PDP has risen in
revolt against Uba and his state assembly cronies and a bigger faction of the
PDP, peeved at the dangerous use Uba has employed the state assembly, has risen
strongly to disavow the eminence of Uba in the PDP and the role he is employing
some members of the state assembly for. Among this faction if the most
prominent member of the PDP in Anambra and former Vice President, Alex Ekwueme,
Senator Annie Okonkwor, former godfather of Anambra PDP, Emeka Offor and Tony Nwoye,
the Uba-installed PDP chairman of
Anambra
State. It is much more refreshing that
genuine stakeholders like apolitical leaders, religious organization, traders
unions, student bodies, professional bodies have risen with one voice to
denounce this dirty politics that targets Ndi Anambra and stands to benefit the
last vestige of the cabal that Obasanjo left behind to oversee the complete
ruination of Anambra.
Anambra has reached a stage
where it has to rise with one voice to demand the permanent rustication of the
Uba brothers and the severing of the umbilical of crisis with which he had
sworn to ensure the state is completely grounded. Now that the man that fangled
and sustained him has gone, Ndi Anambra and indeed all Igbo must subject the
character, Andy Uba to a public audit involving his person, his finances,
education, history and scruples. Again, let Ndi Anambra explore the possibility
of mass recall for the impostors who neither represent the face of good
governance nor the general good of Ndi Anambra. For as long as they live and
draw their lifeline from the vessel of vice, who I armed with limitless stolen
funds, Anambra will continue to be in one distractive and needless crisis or
the other.
Peter Claver Oparah.
Ikeja,
Lagos.
E-mail: peterclaver2000@yahoo.com
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