NDI IMO, AGBASO AND OHAKIM’S RENTED CHORISTERS.
By Stephen Nwahiri.
It is easily understandable why Ikedi Ohakim’s Imo has suddenly become the oil block of Nigerian columnists and writers today. Simply, there is so much free money flying around. Same reason why Ohakim feels safe and comfortable running a government on the pages of newspapers. Equally the same reason why he has recruited a hefty column of writers and columnists into his regime. It is the same reason why he has not allowed whatever are his works to speak for his regime but the ceaseless forgeries of the many writers he has recruited and the countless others he freely provides for with resources needed to lift Imo State from the doldrums which his bare leadership has left it.
The fact that is constant in all the strange events that have made Imo the first port of call for cash-and-carry writers is that Ikedi Ohakim is in trouble and faces the prospect of retuning the stolen electoral cash pot he has been reaping from since May 29 2007. The fact is that the concoctions that gave him the undeserved mandate he is using now is about to be exposed for what it is-a conscienceless forgery that was meant to rob Martin so as to pay Ikedi. For long, he and his supporters have celebrated their loot and have waxed so sure that nothing will shake their hold. For long, he and his supporters have been on an extended holiday, based on the assurance of the professor of rigging that he will always be there to protect the same fountain where he has anchored his own benefits. They believed that Nigeria would continue on the atrophic stretch they constructed and nothing matters and endures than such absurd trajectories that produced Ohakim.
In recent times, I have read quite horrifying drivels by even some respected Nigerian writers. There is no doubt that these were well oiled efforts to save the job of Ikedi Ohakim but the strange fact is how otherwise reputable writers struggle to manufacture strange logics to support Ohakim and INEC’s jaded positions on Imo governorship. Most of them, who regrettably were in the forefront of the struggle against the annulment of the June 12 1993 election, are now inventing flighty reasons why such similar crime against Martin Agbaso and APGA and indeed Ndi Imo must be allowed so that their oil block will continue emitting raw cash for them. What a fallacy!. One of my friends who is taking note of these strange happenings has aptly predicted that this Agbaso case will certainly bring about the rise and fall of many in Nigeria and its journalism and I can’t agree less.
The convenient plank on where Ohakim, INEC and their hack writers anchor their hopeless case was that Agbaso ‘participated’ in the April 28 so-called repeat polls. They are stranded on the same wild reasoning that since Martin Agbaso ‘participated’ on the April 28 repeat polls, he has forfeited his right to judicially ask the court to return his stolen mandate. None of them has advanced which law states so, except the wild stirrings of the minds of the tricksters that have descended on INEC and has reduced that body to one extensive laboratory of vices. This convenient reasoning forms the crux of Ohakim’s fight-back against a very obvious removal by the judiciary. But he had argued this point repeatedly at the courts, up to the Abuja Appeal Court that threw away his diarrhead reasoning and told him to rather unravel the puzzle of how two elections cast same time and in the same ballot box were differently affected by concocted circumstances. The simple question Ohakim and his recruited jingoist have avoided is how such eight wonder of the modern world is possible. This is the poser Nigerians are waiting for them to unravel and not the free wheeling masturbation of pay-per-view reasoning that has now formed the pastime of Ohakim and his supporters.
But more significantly, Ohakim has failed to tell his propagandists that the case that has now gone to the Supreme Court was instituted on April 19, 2007 and that was long before Iwu brought his Mbano kinsman who is malleable enough to cede the main positions in Imo government to him and cooked the absurd forgeries that saw Ohakim to power. Ohakim has not told his paid writers that the case that he has now taken to the Supreme Court, to confirm my earlier position that it is the apex court that will finally decide the Imo governorship, predates even his Alice-in-wonderland emergence as Imo governor. They fancy themselves that the courts will just jump into bed with them if they say that, ‘hey, Agbaso participated in the repeat polls so why does he complain about the vicious annulment of the April 14 polls?’ But like Shakespearean wise and upright judge, the Appeal Court showed in very clear terms that they cannot be persuaded by such odd but convenient logic. They rather want to know the magic that ensured that violence chose to affect one of the two elections cast in the same ballot and at the same time and leave the other.
It is a common maxim that whoever comes to equity must come with clean hands. Ohakim, Iwu and the propagandist that now blare their sirens on very flimsy grounds and after the learned Appeal Court judges have ruled that they need to avail the court with this new electoral abracadabra that led to the annulment of the Agbaso mandate has come to equity with very soiled hands. They know they are not coming to equity with something near a clean hand and they are jittery that their house of fraud is collapsing quicker than they projected. Thank God, electoral disputes are not settled on the pages of newspapers, with buyable columnists as judges. If that was the case, I will submit that with the Imo treasury at his disposal, Agbaso will not stand any chance against Ohakim. But the judiciary has seen the great need to clear the polity of the malfeasance of Iwu and this was the magic Ohakim owes his emergence to. He should have known that the clock is ticking for him when the Abuja High Court ended Iwu’s mischievous efforts to ensure that APGA is wiped off the face of the Nigerian electoral system, through the same bare fraud, which has so far sustained him in office. Ohakim should have known that it was to protect the stolen mandate he is wielding that Iwu launched into his dirty and despicable plot against APGA and that once the game was up for Iwu on the APGA issue, his time as a pretender to a throne that never belonged to him, was up.
Having gone this far, the main issue is that Martin Agbaso is inching to get justice from the courts. He deserved this just desert because he was a victim of callous manipulation. It is the same crime that men who had hitherto opposed similar crimes against humanity, are being seduced to support for what they will benefit from it. The judiciary owes the nation a monumental duty to ensure that any electoral umpire does not commit such stupid, whimsical and asinine crime against Nigerian electorates in the future.
The central issue in the Agbaso case is that as the judiciary in the most difficult circumstances stood against the many manipulations built into the electoral system by Maurice Iwu’s INEC in concert with Obasanjo and the PDP, the judiciary equally owes Nigerians a duty to ensure that the people and only the people decide who governs them. On April 14, 2007, the people of Imo State decided to elect unto themselves a governor by name, Martin Agbaso and Iwu, Obasanjo and Udenwa thought otherwise. Citing superfluous reasons, they annulled the people’s mandate and rather chose for the people of Imo State, a certain Ikedi Ohakim. Like the thieves they were, they left a very stupid trail, which is the cancellation of the governorship election on the excuse that it was affected by unknown violence in an unknown place and committed by unknown people while upholding the assembly elections, cast at the same time, venue and indeed the same ballot box. Having looked at it from whatever possible angle, Ohakim and his men, together with the country’s judiciary and people of conscience know that there is no justice able way to resolve the issue and save the country such scams in the future than to return the Imo governorship to the rightful winner who is Martin Agbaso. Even if they don’t admit it, they know that Agbaso has an impeccable case and this is why the fear of Martin Agbaso has suddenly become the beginning of wisdom for Ohakim and his rented choristers.
There is no doubt that Ohakim and the people that helped him to power are so scared that for the first time, it is not for them to have a final say on who governs Imo people. Far from the childish showing of Ararume at the tribunals, they now see the real danger to their pretense to power and surely, they have the right to fear but Nigerian people have the right to have the final say in who governs them decided by them and not shameless electoral officers and their limitless bags of fraud. This is why the Courts should return Imo to Martin Agbaso because he is the original winner of the governorship election.
Stephen Nwahiri
Mushin, Lagos.
