Enugu 2023: Ekweremadu And His Zoning Antics

BY FELIX OGUEJIOFOR ABUGU
DISTINGUISHED Senator Ike Ekweremadu has a right to aspire to be governor of Enugu State – no doubt about that. It is his inalienable and democratic right to so aspire as it is, indeed, that of any other Nigerian or, for that matter, any Enugu State indigene.

A legal and legislative heavyweight, the distinguished Senator knows, as we all do actually, that not even the National Assembly (NASS) can legislate against legitimate ambitions. NASS certainly can’t legislate against any Nigerian aspiring to be governor or president, zoning or not.

So, there is ordinarily nothing wrong with Senator Ekweremadu’s decision to throw his hat in the ring and run for governor of Enugu State come 2023.What is wrong, in my view, is his attempt to discredit the existing leadership recruitment process in Enugu as a means of driving his own ambition.

There is something inelegant about his disavowal of zoning, for instance. I think it is wrong for the distinguished Senator to deploy a latter-day anti-zoning sentiment as a convenient excuse for his governorship ambition, being that he comes from the ‘wrong part of town’ in the context of Enugu 2023.

Yes, there is zoning in Enugu State and it doesn’t matter when or how it started. That it was never formally agreed upon by Enugu stakeholders is neither here nor there. The distinguished Senator knows, perhaps better than anyone else, that not all agreements are formally written – some just exist by convention or practice.

Even the British Constitution isn’t a formal document, as all students of politics know. The truth about Enugu in this political dispensation is that at the end of his two terms of eight years, Dr. Chimaroke Nnamani of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, as the first governor of the state in the Fourth Republic, handed over to Sullivan Chime who, in turn, handed over to Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi who, all things being equal, will complete his two terms by next year and also hand over to a successor, who will also be chosen through the same relay fashion that has come to define Enugu’s leadership recruitment process.

That is Enugu’s truth, irrespective of what former Governor Chimaroke had in mind when he chose to hand over to Enugu West instead of Enugu North on 2007 (perhaps, that is just how Providence wanted it).

Nor do I accept, going by Prof. Ekweremadu’s argument, that the decision by the Sullivan Chime administration hand over to Enugu North (Nsukka) in 2015 was dictated more by the spirit of equity and fairness (compassion, if you will) than by the imperative of zoning. No, I think the handover to Enugu North was simply inevitable, not least because it was also the right thing to do at that time – for the overall good of Enugu.

Pray, would Chime have handed power back to an Enugu-East person or to a fellow Enugu-Western at the end of his eight years in office in 2015? I hold the view that while the immediate past Enugu’s handover to Enugu-North was pragmatic, even a noble act, it was no favour; it was politics of realism at play.

Now, enough of the stereotyping already! When Senator Ekweremadu argues that what Chime did in 2007 by handing over to Ugwuanyi was not based on zoning but an action taken in the spirit of equity and fairness (read pity for Nsukka), is he still referring to the same Enugu North zone that had produced the first Governor of Enugu State?

If Nsukka had produced, way back in 1992, the first governor of the newly created Enugu State (when Abakaliki zone was still part of Enugu State), did the zone actually need the pity of the rest of Enugu to be able to produce, again, the governor of the State in 2015? Of course not.

It means, in essence, that zoning or rotation of governorship in Enugu State didn’t start in 2015 when Chime handed over to Ugwuanyi; it started in 1999 with the combustive Chimaroke Nnamani who set the ball rolling in his own uncanny way, and Nsukka was a beneficiary in 2015 of Enugu governorship on the basis of a zoning arrangement already in full bloom in the Coal-City State since 1999.

Even then, it is as if Senator Ekweremadu isn’t exactly sure how to frame this anti-zoning narrative of his. In one breath, he says zoning did not start in Enugu in 1999, so there has been no zoning in the State. In another, he says going by zoning, Enugu-West (his zone) has produced only one Governor (Chime) while East has produced Nwobodo, Onoh and Nnamani and Enugu North (Nsukka) has produced Nwodo and now Ugwuanyi. Therefore, the next Governor, come next year should (must?) come from the West and must be micro-zoned to Greater Awgu! Now, is there zoning or not?

It is contradictory still that while Senator Ekweremadu discredits zoning on the basis of senatorial districts (which are constitutional creations), he is all for zoning on the basis of cultural zones (which do not exist in the eyes of the law). That is to say that the latter zoning principle is the respected Senator’s own creation, conveniently engineered to justify his quest for Enugu governorship at a time and in a season such a quest is unlikely to fly – for the simple reason that he comes from the ‘wrong part of town’ in the context of Enugu 2023.

It is a different matter altogether whether rotation has served Ndi Enugu well or not – it may well be a subject of debate some day in Enugu’s Political history. But that is not even the argument Ekweremadu is advancing to make a case for his governorship ambition! And yet, as Christ was to say as evidence of His presence in the midst of the people (the blind see, the lame walk etc), isn’t the fact that Enugu is peacefully progressive and no one is feeling cheated, enough evidence that zoning has served the state well?

The pain Ekweremadu feels at his Greater Awgu not having produced the governor of the state is understandable – one can even sympathise with him. But that is an internal problem of Enugu-West to resolve; it cannot be an Enugu State problem, come to think of it.

If anything, it would, in point of fact, be highly impolitic, even foolish, for Enugu to jettison zoning by senatorial district basis which has served it well over time, for that based on linguistic sub-groups just to pander to the political interest of distinguished Senator Ekweremadu.

In any case, and without meaning to play the devil’s advocate, I note that while Agbaja produced the governor for only eight years, Greater Awgu has been Senator for 20 years and counting! And you ask, who is actually marginalising whom in this dispensation – between Agbaja and Greater Awgu?

I had actually expected Ekweremadu to interrogate the Enugu zoning principle in relation to its ‘re-entry point’ after the completion of the first cycle. For me, it would have been more principled for the distinguished Senator to argue that the second round of zoning could start from any senatorial zone.

He might have had more people buy into his argument. Even though he would still not have swayed the political establishment which, as the Igbo would say, has both the knife and the head of the chewing stick in matters like this, to tow his line of argument (Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi is systems, due process man who will give back as he was given). But, it would have sounded more credible and less selfish.

But to disavow zoning by senatorial districts and settle for zoning by sub-linguistic groups (cultural zones), as Ekweremadu has advocated, speaks to an unhealthy promotion of self-interest in a polity that can do a lot more with altruism.

– Abugu, a veteran journalist and publisher, wrote from Lagos