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nwokoyeac@hotmail.com Upper Marlboro, MD, USA

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OPEN LETTER TO HON CHINEDU NKWONTA: (PART I & II)

(PART I)

he more Anambra state try to solve its problems, the more we are being reminded that we have in our midst, our so-called educated lackeys and cronies like you humping from one politician to another. Have you no shame? Like a cameleon, you have changed your colors several times. You went from Peter Obi to Dr Chris Ngige, then to Dame Etiaba, back to Ngige and now to Andy Uba. Why can't you make up your mind which of the politicians is stronger. (Readers see Chinedu Nkwonta's "Finally, the Eagle Has Landed" of March, 10th 2007, "Dame Etiaba and I" of March, 7th 2007 and "Peter Obi, My Grudge" of February 26, 2007 all published in Nigeriaworld.

You story is like the story of the how the cat came to live with a woman. The cat saw the leopard chase away all the animals in the wild and the cat said, "aha, leopard is the strongest animal in the world, I'll go and live with leopard" But lo and behold, a lion came out and the leopard ran away. So the cat stated, "hmm, so lion is stronger than leopard, lion must be the strongest then, let me go and live with the lion then" Few days later, when the cat went out to hunt with the lion, a hunter came out and shot and killed the lion. The poor cat went to the man (hunter) and asked to live with him. Both went to the man's house to leave with the man and his wife. However, a quarrel ensued between the man and his wife. The wife took a pestle 'aka odo' and chased the man out of the house. The poor cat then decided that since the man was not the strongest person in the world after all, that it should go and live with the woman. That was how the cat finally settled with the woman, and that is why women keeps cats as pets.

In your effort to come back from your base to Nigeria for good, you decided to settle with anyone that will give you succor. There is nothing wrong with that, I have no problem with that. However, what I have problem with is that seem not to care about how that person comes to be governor, all you want is a piece of the cake. If the person cannot meet your selfish needs, you jettison him. You hated Obi because he will not oblige you and you were also jealous of his achievements in his short but eventful term. You had a personal axe to grid with him. You can only dream the position that Peter currently occupy. Your gripes with him is what we say in our language "Onodu ugo adighi egbe mma n'obi"-the kite is jealous of the eagle's position.

You openly (in Nigeriaworld) asked Ngige to consider you in his government when he wins, thinking that he would be returned as elected. But now that INEC has tried to scuttle Ngige, the popular candidate’s dreams, and declared Andy Uba to be the winner, you changed tunes again, regardless of the fact that the Anambra people you tried to rally around are the real people whose votes were discountenance in the effort to coronate Andy. You want Andy to consider you in his government.

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What if and when Ngige heads to the tribunal and have the tribunal nullify the election, and orders a new election? Don't you think that in any free and fair election, Ngige will win against Andy Uba even in his hometown, Uga? Do you not know that even with al his negative, Chris Uba will win over Andy Uba his brother, how much more Ngige or Obi or even Etiaba. Don't you at least know that Anambra state will be better served when all its candidates are given a level playing ground. If we chose a lunatic to rule us, so be it, but we have that right to choose.

By that time OBJ must have retired to his farms, and your new found hero, Andy, is on his own, then what? How about if Ngige wins a re-scheduled election? Or what if the Supreme court declares that Peter Obi has 3 more years left in his term that was usurped by Ngige, then what will happen? Are you going to go back to Peter Obi, whom you hated his guts.

I do not normally pay attention to ranting from professional lackeys-cum 'otinkpus' but because our proverb says that "onye nwanne ya na-agba ajo egwu na ogbo, oko iku anaghi ako ya"-one whose brother is dancing naked in the village square, will always continue to scratch his eyebrow. I have no choice than to write.

You are now trying to make peace among Anambrarians. Who made you a judge and a prince over the Anambra people. Let us say for the sake of argument that you are the new Zik of Anambra state, the what peace are you talking about? Who is going to war? You really believe that Andy won the election? What election? In the whole of Anambra, you are among the few that don't see anything wrong with OBJ plans to select his chief crony as our governor. By the way, OBJ can support anyone he wants to support, there is nothing wrong with that, but Anambra people have the last say. If Andy is so precious to OBJ and the latter has adopted the former as his son, why not OBJ settles Andy with the governor’s mansion in Ogun state? I guess OBJ cannot win his state even in his own election, how much more sponsor a candidate that will win. Have you ever wondered why OBJ cannot carry his state in 1999, 2003 and even in 2007? The result of April 14th in his own ward remains cancelled because his own people would not allow his party, PDP to rig. I learnt that PDP only scored 23 votes!

Or why can’t OBJ settle Andy with the proceeds of his Otta Farm where Andy sent some farm equipments through money laundered to the USA. It's a pity that Anambra people were denied opportunity to say whom they want to rule them, and you do not see anything wrong with it? The people you want Andy to rule and which government you want to be part of, you didn't even vote for or had the opportunity to vote for. Tell me that if you were allowed to vote, that you will really vote for Andy.

Finally, good luck to you and your Andy, but it is not over since our people are now wiser. Mark my words, the Election Tribunal will nullify the election in Anambra state and then re-schedule another election with all the cream of Anambra politicians and the best candidate will win. I will see your position change again like a thermostat.

(PART II)

I believe that though some of your opinions in your letter are flawed, you are still entitled to your opinion.

I agree with you that it is always good to make a difference as an insider rather than from the outside. I also agree with you that our state in in distress and needs all hands on deck to be able to pull through. I also believe as you do that we as people should not leave government in the hands of cabals who fight only for their own pockets.

However, where I disagree with you is the method and not the intent of the politician. To be clear, I love to see my state among one of the greatest states in Nigeria. I will go to bed a happy man when that happens. But as our people say, the tongue will not rest until the particle that is stuck on the teeth is removed.

We have the potentials to be great if we harness our human and material resources to achieve that common goal. Where I strongly disagree with you is the form and method of going about that. Remember Peter Tosh's song "Everyone is crying out for peace, no one is crying out for justice" According to Martin Luther King Jr. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”

Democracy is democracy everywhere. There is no shortcuts to democracy. To achieve democracy and to enjoy the fruits of good and accountable government starts from getting legitimacy, trust and confidence of our people. Trust, confidence and legitimacy comes when the people actually voted for you as their candidate. If the people did not vote for you or if you get to the government mansion through the back door, then you obtained the mandate by fraud. That is not acceptable to me and to any decent society. We cannot achieve good governance by folding our hands and hoping that our so-called leaders will do the right thing. If we want democracy, we have to demand for it and make our leaders accountable for the acts and omissions. We cannot get democracy on a platter of diamond, it cannot fall like manna from heaven.

Ngige's government to me was illegal, not minding the fact that he tried to uplift the state, not out of choice anyway but out of political survival, but whatever it was, we the masses were better off for that. Like I said before in my previous articles on the subject, the reason I didn't support Ngige was because of the method adopted to win election which was through rigging. No matter how you slice and dice it, it was an illegal government. I don't want to go the legality of all contracts or programs he carried out. But his government remained illegal. But everything his government did whether good or bad comes from illegality. No matter what good came out of it, it is still an unlawful government. Remember how King Saul lost favor in the sight of the Lord. God commanded him to destroy the Amalekites, but Saul went ahead and destroyed some of them saving King Agag, the King of Amalek and best of the sheep, oxen, fatlings etc on the pretext that he wanted to use them to sacrifice to the Lord. Samuel said to him “……to obey is better than sacrifice and to hearken, the fat of rams….” the remaining event with regards to Saul’s disobedience is now history.

According to Lord Denning "When an act is void, it is in law a nullity. There is no need for an order of the court to set it aside. It is automatically null and void without much ado....you cannot put something on nothing and expect it to stand, it will surely collapse....."

I do not question Ngige's heart. What I question was the method through which he became governor. Some will say that he is suffering the law of karma now as a result of what he and his cohorts including Chris and Andy Uba did to Peter Obi.

Same thing with Abubakar Atiku. The chicken is coming to roost. But good is good and bad is bad. They are welcome to the democrats side of the divide. However, one may not like Atiku or Ngige, but the doggedness they have shown in their individual battles can only attract admiration and they helped develop our rule of law and democracy. You can only admire their repentance to be on the side of the law this time. But now, if Ngige gets the court to nullify the election and goes ahead to win the re-scheduled election, free and fair, I'll support him 100%.

Same thing with Andy Uba. If he is confident in his own skin, let him jettison “mago mago” and OBJ/Iwu's connection, come to the people and offer your services. Let the better side win. I am not fazed by people's academic achievements. If you read one of my articles in 2003 titled "Odera Mbadinuju: Time is Ticking Away" published in Nigeriaworld on Friday, March 21, 2003, I said that Anambra people should look beyond academic qualification and that piles of degree a candidate has should not be the yardstick to measure how and who Anambra people should will vote for or how successful he would be as a governor. Education does not in itself accord one with leadership skills or make one politically savvy.

The fact that Andy does not have a valid loads of college degree is not my yardstick for measuring how successful he would be as governor. The fault I found was for him to go and buy questionable degrees that will accord him recognition among Anambra elites. My only quarrel about that was that he tend to be uncomfortable in his own skin. There are lots of leaders that don't have loads of degrees but who made good governance their watchword. I am not from Abia state but I learnt that Orji Uzor Kanu though not a “brainiac” but he performed creditably for his people and that was why PDP could not rig in Abia state against his candidate in PPA.

WASC is the basic qualification to be governor in term of education, so Andy is qualified on that score, however, if Anambra people wants him to be governor when he sells himself to them by saying "I don't have loads of degrees like other people, but this is what I have to offer you, I have A B C as my qualities" Then it's up to the people to decide. If the people give him the mandate, then bon voyage. It is the people that decides. The majority are mostly uneducated to the level of loads of degrees themselves.

Achievement of real democratic norms in Nigeria and anywhere in the world is rough and tedious. It is not a sprint but a marathon. We will surely get there in my life time. After all it took the developed world centuries to get there. United States is touted as the beacon of democracy, but group of people fought for that and fashioned out their model of democracy, they are not perfect, but they are much better than most democracies.

We cannot cut corners. I am not a born-again but I know that the bible said that the road that leads to destruction is wide and cozy but the one that leads to eternal life is rough. So is democracy, brother. Road to democracy is rough, tedious and bumpy. It would have been easier for Nelson Mandela to accept a conditional release from the Apartheid government in South Africa, but he rejected all the condition attached to his release. He refused and remained in prison for 28 yrs! Now South Africa achieved a majority rule, thanks to the activities of a group of men championed by the great Madiba. South Africans are now teaching us democracy, the same people we helped to fight off their racist colonialists! We went there to print our own ballot papers! Even all the Banana Republics in Africa are now coming to monitor our elections and to teach us democratic values. What a shame.

So I will not see any reason why we will lower our standard to offer ourselves cheap to all these shameless cabals. Your question was "do we leave the State in the hands of some idiots that will take us back into perpetual suffering"? My answer to you is: Who are those cabals? Your Andy is one of them. I cannot in good conscience support his government. "Alu bu alu"-taboo is taboo. We must all condemn it in its entirety. I don't question Andy's heart or motive, it is his modus that I am against. It is only God that knoweth the heart of every man. Even the devil knoweth not the intention of man. I don’t know what is in Andy’s heart since I am not God. I don’t care about what he says, what I judge is what he did to Anambra state!

During Abacha's time, people were flocking to Abacha and shouting to the high heavens that Nigeria needed a "home grown democracy" whatever that means. Democracy is democracy and comes with it the rule of law, transparency and accountability. Anything less is dictatorship and despotism. We cannot sell our dog and buy a monkey, both are squatting animals. We cannot denounce military rule and in its stead, we accept a neo-dictatorship. We can just as well, bring back the military, but we wouldn't because we are decent people and we'll make democracy work in our country and in fact in Anambra state.

Some people went into the government to change the government, when they came out, it was them that got changed by the govt. They lost touch with what is happening on the other side which is on the people's side. Well let's wait and see. But the evil the PDP government perpetrated against our people will not be allowed to stand.

Regards