Former Senate President, and former Governor of Imo State, Chief Evan Enwerem, is dead. He was pronounced dead at the National Hospital, Abuja today. The cause of death was not immediately released as at the time of going to press.

Pointblanknews.com gathered at the National Hospital Abuja, that doctors are still working on the autopsy report of the late Imo State Governor.

Enwerem was the first Senate President in the political dispensation, sequel to the return of the military oligarchy to the barracks signified by the May 29 handover date. He was the sixth since independence. He benefited from the scheme of the Olusegun Obasanjo-executive to lame and gag the federal lawmakers, which in Mr. President’s thinking was to avoid any opposition from that quarter that could hamper government business. He was preferred in the in-house election that determined who occupied the office over and above the man bookmakers had positioned for the favor – Dr. Chuba Okadigbo.

Before he became Senate President and even thereafter, Enwerem has never been a household name. He was not a political neophyte, either. A former governor of Imo State, he had similarly proved bookmakers wrong when on the platform of defunct National Republican Convention (NRC) he defeated a better known candidate of the rival Social Democratic Party (SDP), Dr. Ezekiel Izuogu.

Enwerem as Senate President was docile. He was evidently a protégé of Obasanjo. He found it difficult to win the respect of the majority of his fellow senators. It has been alleged that Obasanjo bribed senators from the then All Peoples Party (APP) and the Alliance for Democracy (AD) to support Enwerem and outnumber the clique of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that wanted and worked for Okadigbo to be enthroned. No one has thus far come out to refute the allegation.

In time, Enwerem got himself entangled in a controversy over his appropriate first name, since it was uncovered that a certain Evans Enwerem had been convicted by a court of law in the immediate months after Nigeria’s independence. The Senate President had put up a spirited defence that the Evans Enwerem convicted was his twin brother, who had once died. His own name he gave as Evan Enwerem. His defense convinced no one.

After months of denials and allegations of criminal record and falsification, rounds of partisan political fights and intrigue, Enwerem was toppled November 18, 1999. Enwerem, a survivor a previous impeachment fight, lost this time in an overwhelming vote cast by his colleagues; 90 senators of 109 voted to impeach him. Only two voted against the impeachment. The others missed the historic vote or simply abstained.