By Tahav Agerzua
On Friday, July 19, 2024, one of Benue’s prominent political actors, Honorable Terwase Orbunde, celebrated his birthday. Although he served as Chief of Staff to former Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, before he resigned to contest election in 2023, there was no public fanfare to mark the event. Of course, some of his political allies, supporters and friends put out messages on social media to wish him well. However, many silent observers may have quietly posed the question, what is the man’s political future?
Mr. Orbunde read architecture at the University Jos, where some of his contemporaries in the early 1980s recall some of the roles he played in the student union politics of the institution.
He had been admitted to read remedial sciences. One day, he overheard some students complaining that remedial students were not allowed to vote during student union elections, although they paid union dues. Orbunde was one of the agitated students who took up the matter and were invited to address the university’s senate.He led the team that presented their case and won, which then allowed remedial students to vote in union elections.
Later, at some point, Orbunde would emerge congress chairman to replace the elected president of the students’ union and, subsequently, led protracted protests on grounds of perceived gross injustice done to students, which eventually led to the closure of the university.
Before he could graduate, Orbunde became a regular guest of the security agencies. It also took students’ protest and subsequent setting up of a panel by the Unijos administration to probe the activities of the head of the Department of Architecture at the time on allegations of victimization before Orbunde would graduate.
The panel found the HOD guilty and recommended that he should be dismissed and banned from teaching in any Nigerian university.
Subsequently, General Ibrahim Babangida’s transition to civil rule programme would bring Orbunde to political limelight. He first sought nomination for the Kwande West House of Assembly seat on the platform of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and lost. That was in 1991. A year later, Orbunde emerged a member of the House of Representatives for the Kwande Federal Constituency on the ticket of the same party.
In the House, he was Member, House Services, and also the Banking and Currency committees, a powerful position, which was a fallout of his nomination of Chief Agunwa Anaekwe as Speaker.
Unfortunately, General Sani Abacha struck in November 1993, terminating the Third Republic dispensation and dismantling all political structures.
Orbunde returned to private business where he had found the lucrative business of obtaining essential spare parts from manufacturers overseas and supplying to Benro Packaging Company, first, and later the Benue Cement Company, Plc, before its privatization.
At this time too, he would consolidate on his political education by becoming a guest of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and also the House of Commons in London and, later, the African National Congress (ANC), in Johannesburg, South Africa.
With the demise of General Abacha in June 1998 and the announcement by his successor, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, that he would hand over power the next year, Orbunde emerged, once again, on the political horizon. He first served as deputy director-general of the George Akume Governorship Campaign Organization and ended up as the acting director-general who led the organization to victory.
When Orbunde was not featured in Governor George Akume’s governance team, he proceeded to Abuja and found a political role as chief legislative aide to Senator Anyim Pius Anyim, representing Ebonyi South. His major assignment was to spearhead Senator Anyim’s emergence as Senate President. When that task was accomplished, Orbunde became Special Adviser to the Senate President, a position he held until the end of that tenure.
In 2003, Orbunde made his first shot at Benue State Government House on the platform of the National Democratic Party. Following an unsuccessful bid, he returned to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), where he had been one of its founding members.
Three years later, he played a major role in the emergence of Dr. Gabriel Suswam as PDP governorship candidate, and his subsequent electoral victory as governor. At this time, Orbunde was part of the coalition that secured the blessings of President Obasanjo to take over the leadership of the PDP in Benue State. He became first the State Youth Leader, then Organizing Secretary, and ended up as the Financial Secretary of the party, reflecting the political turbulence going on then in Benue chapter of the PDP. He was one of those who brought the famous 12/13 and 7/8 formula of delegates that participated in the governorship and other nominations in other elective positions within the PDP.
Orbunde served as caretaker chairman of Kwande Local Government Area and Association of Local Government Chairmen (ALGON), chairman in Benue State under Governor Suswam as the first set under the administration.
During his tenure as chairman, he also chaired the Benue and Cross River Boundary Peace Committee and played a decisive role in sustaining peace at the Kwande border of both states. It was also during his tenure when the current Benue State Deputy Governor, Barrister Sam Ode, was Special Adviser to the Governor on Local Government and Chieftaincy Bureau that the indebtedness of councils in the state and bank loans were sorted out. After that assignment, Orbunde receded from political limelight.
Subsequent events that would propel Orbunde into political limelight once again had roots in 1995. One day in that year Samuel Ortom visited him while he lived in the North Bank part of Makurdi, the state capital, and told him that he would one day assist him, Ortom, to become Governor. Ortom approached him with the same request in 2012 and they started working on the Governorship Project until it was realized in 2015 under dramatic circumstances. When Ortom failed to secure the PDP ticket in 2014, Orbunde was one of those who negotiated and secured the nomination on the platform of the All Progressives Congress, APC.
Ortom as Governor appointed Orbunde as his first Chief of Staff. In 2018 when it became apparent that the APC would not make its platform available for Ortom’s re-election, Orbunde again played a pivotal role in the return to the PDP on which ticked Ortom got his second term and reappointed him to the same position.
As Ortom’s Chief of Staff, the media described Orbunde as his armour-bearer and Man Friday. He was seen as politically experienced with impeccable service records, dependable, trusted and humble. Many concluded that he would be the natural successor, more so that he came from one of the two areas favoured to produce the 2023 Benue Governor.
When, to the surprise of many, Ortom started playing political games by asking PDP stakeholders in the four local government areas in the Kwande and Jechira blocks to conduct a mock primary to produce one aspirant each, Orbunde beat all others to emerge first in Kwande.
Yet, Ortom would later handpick former Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Honorable Titus Uba,who came fourth in the mock primaries in his Vandeikya local government area, as his preferred successor.
Under the circumstances, Orbunde left the PDP for the APC and was one of those who picked the governorship ticket which cost N50 million. He happened to be the only one from Kwande local government to pick the form. Orbunde thus proved his seriousness as a major player both in the PDP and APC.
Indeed, Terdoo Kenti, the current Kwande APC chairman, described Orbunde as a game changer whose exit from the PDP would spell electoral doom for that party. “As a former Kwande Council Chairman myself, I can state categorically that the PDP lacks the capacity to appreciate a game changer like Orbunde, who they have treated shabbily but will soon reckon with the adage that you do not appreciate what you have until you lose it,” Kenti stated in a press release at the time.“Ortom will surely end up with political disaster in 2023.” This prediction made on May 4th, 2022, came to pass a year later. The PDP in Benue State under the leadership of Governor Ortom, lost the Governorship, two out of three Senators, 10 out of 11 House of Representatives seats, and secured only 10 seats in the State Assembly, where it had 22 out of 30. Ortom lost his senatorial bid and also failed to install a successor.
Elder Peter Ichull, former Special Assistant to the Governor, and an informed political commentator, stated recently on a chat group that “Terwase Orbunde’s exit from the PDP altered the political axiomatics in both Kwande and Zone A. Orbunde, an unassuming but deft political maverick with deep roots in Kwande and Benue politics, left his party in anger and spared no missile to shoot down its chances of winning 2023 elections.”
Although Orbunde did not clinch the governorship nomination, he proceeded to the national level where he featured in the Presidential Campaign Council in the Directorate of Special Duties, of the Tinubu Presidential Campaign Council. That the APC won the 2023 General Elections overwhelmingly in Benue State and across the country indicate that Orbunde’s political instincts are still right, alive and effective.
One year in office of the APC administration at the national level, which is Orbunde’s familiar terrain, one expected him to have landed a political job. Still, political watchers have observed that he is still expectant.
On Friday April 12, 2024 Orbunde survived a deadly gun attack during which he was shot on his right arm while his wife, Abigail, with her personal assistant, Patience Adokwu, were kidnapped.The Sun newspaper of April 24th, 2024 described the sad event in a feature story as coming “Back from Hell”. Orbunde ended up in hospital with broken bones and a big wound which are healing. An unspecified ransom from the N100 million demanded was paid and his wife and her assistant were released.
“We believe that God has spared our lives to fulfil his good purpose on earth, which includes standing up against crime and wickedness. Let me put on record that God has consistently delivered us from accidents and other challenges, including Covid-19. He sure has a purpose for all these,” Orbunde said in a statement after the incidence..
It does seem that politically all is not over for Honorable Terwase Orbunde, former member, House of Representatives, former Special Adviser to the Senate President, former council chairman, former Chief of Staff to the Governor, and governorship aspirant.
But for now, the question is that politically, whither Terwase Orbunde? Only time will tell.
• Agerzua wrote in from Benue