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It is fascinating how the All Progressives Congress (APC) bulldozes its way to electoral victory against all odds. I speak of the South East region where the party gave Labour, the favoured newcomer, a run for its money. According to an Enugu Metro analysis, the APC ran neck and neck with Labour in the Senate elections, each winning six seats apiece. APC retained its two governorship slots by winning Ebonyi State for the first time in a competitive race. Only in the House of Reps election did Labour blow other parties away, winning 21 seats to APC’s eight. Still, APC managed to beat the PDP, which had only six seats to show for its 24 years of dominance in the region.
So, when we say kudos to APC, it is not about the presidential election, subject of a court case. Instead, the amazing performance of the ruling party in the region says much about its tenacity over a 10-year period. The APC established a beachhead in the region 10 years ago, precisely March 2, 2019, through ex-Governor Rochas Okorocha. This was the day that Okorocha, elected on the platform of APGA, turned turncoat, ditching his sponsoring party to join APC. Although PDP later took back the state following Okorocha’s exit, the Supreme Court found a way to restore the APC back to power.
The Okorocha Act signalled the first stage of progressive degeneration for the behemoth called PDP in the South East region. A second death knell sounded at Abakaliki in November 2020. PDP governor and chair of South East Governors’ Forum, Dave Umahi, also did an Okorocha in Ebonyi by pitching political tent with APC. After failing in the project to contest for the Presidency he quickly returned to his native state to put his APC house in order. And he succeeded in retaining the state for the party, garnishing the clean win with a Senate seat that he snagged for himself.
Thanks to the efforts of Umahi, Uzodinma and Okorocha, the APC has become the dominant party in the South East region. This is a shocking turn of events that most people have not realized as they soak in the euphoria of the Labour Party razzle-dazzle. From being a haram in this region, the March 18 governorship election left APC as the only party with control of two states in the five-state enclave.
Now that APC has established a firm foothold in the region, what next? What will be the impact of this seismic shift? What effect, if any, will the new APC dominance have in this region, and how will it benefit the people of the region? Are there benefits and drawbacks to the turn of political events in the region?
The biggest benefit for now, when Bola Tinubu is sworn in as President, is that the South East expects to be awarded the presidency of the Senate. Certainly, the APC performance positions the region to get the Senate Presidency that should be theirs by zoning. But will it? The precedence of 2019 – when the South West took both the vice presidency and speaker positions – should advertise the uphill battle ahead. It is also instructive that qualified candidates from the South East, based on ranking – Senators Orji Uzor Kalu and Osita Izunaso – will have a hard time convincing their ambitious colleagues from other regions to allow them to occupy the seat. At the last count, a third of the senators want the Senate’s top job.
The biggest drawback appears the fragmentation that has occurred. Governors from four independent political parties will oversee affairs of the five-state region from May 29, 2023. The four include APC (Ebonyi and Imo), APGA (Anambra), Labour (Abia) and PDP (Enugu). This fragmentation should be a potential cause of worry for southeasterners – for many reasons.
Firstly, the region may increasingly find it harder to speak with one voice on national matters. Since the exit of Mr. Peter Obi as Anambra governor and chair of South East Governors Forum, there has been poor cohesion in managing the politics of the region at both regional and national levels. Obi, a lone APGA voice, was elected chair of the forum and made a decent show of leading them on matters affecting the region. However, his successor, Willie Obiano, effectively turned his back on the forum, habitually sending his deputy to Enugu to show a token presence. He was more interested in promoting whoever was the President than looking in to see how he could collaborate with his brother governors on their ambitious plans for development of the region. From Imo State, both Okorocha and his successor Hope Uzodinma, toed the same line, leaving PDP governors of Abia, Enugu and Ebonyi to soldier on.
The situation worsened when Ebonyi’s Governor Umahi and chairman of the forum defected to the APC on a wild goose chase for the presidency. To be fair to him, Umahi did continue to lead and maintain a reasonable presence on the forum, especially on matters of security in the region. But the forum lost its bearing and has tottered perilously on the brink of extinction ever since. With four governors of different party ideologies and haughty individualism in the saddle, it remains to be seen how the forum can reconvene as a purpose-driven political pressure group and development enabler.
In its heyday, the forum sponsored the South East Development Commission, with an ambitious goal to get it recognized by federal law so that the South East would begin to derive similar benefits like the Niger Delta and the North. But the law was shot down at the National Assembly. This left the Bart Nnaji-led group to scramble for what it could patch up from in-region human and material resources. Although it received enthusiastic support from international development institutions, the commission, like the Governors’ Forum, has progressively deteriorated. A late attempt to woo a disinterested Anambra State Government gave current Governor Chukwuma Soludo joint chairmanship of the commission. Although Soludo made the appropriate noises before becoming governor, he does not appear to have looked in on the commission that he jointly heads since his swearing in.
In all probability, the chairmanship of the forum will go to Imo, which will have the oldest in office as governor after May 29, 2023. How he is able to rally his incoming colleagues and the Anambra governor to forge a common front for the region will, in the final analysis, determine the impact of the new APC footprint in the region. Already, the new brooms at the National Assembly are scrambling for both Speaker and Senate presidency roles. Can they find out which of them the region has a better chance of snagging in a free and fair contest? Thankfully, it is no longer a matter of the APC not having adequate South East representation in the incoming 10th Assembly.
