I
have watched with serious concern recent developments in the PDP in Imo
State. I have also paused, pondered and
wondered why Senator Hope Uzodinma has become the issue; the focus for
discourse and to an extent, the man who believes that he holds the ace on who
flies the PDP governorship flag for next year’s guber election.
Uzodinma
has not publicly said he is contesting for Imo Guber but his grip of the PDP
structure at the State level has compelled his colleagues in the party to fret
whenever he sneezes.
Former
Governor Ikedi Ohakim might have understood this factor and this perhaps influenced
his alleged visit to the senator to shop for support for his second missionary
journey to Government House, Owerri,
I
think Senator Uzodinma has been elevated to a status in the party that I
believe he will stare at himself in the mirror and wonder how he has suddenly become
a huge factor on who becomes the PDP governorship flag-bearer.
I
saw how the nerves of some PDP leaders and governorship aspirants rankled
immediately he made a move which did not even conclusively prove that he wants
to contest for the governorship of Imo State. I noticed that their body temperature increased
and this made me to embark on a mental stroll to wonder why it is so.
I
have watched Senator Uzodinma’s latest political dance-steps and I am convinced
that the Omuma born senator is not in the race for the Imo PDP governorship
ticket. I think he is just being technical or an economic politician who
understands the value of his “political investment” in the PDP in the State and
wants to reap huge political capital from it.
I have this feeling that he is only teasing his
Owerri and Okigwe brothers. He is only playing hide and seek game with some
Owerri governorship aspirants whom I understand he relates with very well and
at the same time, strongly bluffing off another aspirant from the same zone
whose sinuous tentacles is deadly like that of an octopus.
There are those in the PDP who are not smart
enough to understand the senator’s political dance steps, thus are fidgeting
that he has come to spoil the show for them.
I
can also deduce that the distinguished senator is taking advantage of the fact
that some of those who drive the PDP in Imo State are his political puppets.
Besides,
he controls the party machinery in Orlu Zone where almost those that make up
the party structure in the area are in his grip and not Achike Udenwa who
struggled to crawl back to the PDP after he suffered political bruises in the
APC where Rochas Okorocha decides who even puts on APC boxers and T- Shirts.
Udenwa
may be a former governor Of Imo State from Orlu Zone, but he remains a returnee
to the PDP. He once strayed away from the party. This is an inescapable fact. In politics, those who go on sabbatical leave end
up in losing political fraternity with their political soulmates.
Those who abandon their families and wander
like wanderers find it difficult to reintegrate fully as members of the family
even when they return home. They are seen as wanderers who are bound to stray away
when they see the need to do so again.
This is Udenwa’s ordeal in Imo PDP. He knows it but he cannot confess it. He once wandered away and there is no
guarantee that he will not leave again.
I am taken aback whenever Owerri leaders take
their case solely to him in Orlu Zone and ignore other stakeholders in the area.
If
Owerri Zone thinks Orlu is polarized on the issue of Imo Guber, it should put
on its thinking cap and have a rethink.
Let
Owerri Zone not be fooled by imaginations that its intention to produce the
next governor of Imo State will set Udenwa running against Hope Uzodinma. The
political events of 2011 should serve as a case study. Despite the fact that
Rochas Okorocha was not in the good books of key stakeholders in Orlu then, he
eventually got their backing when the chips were down.
However
when one looks at the present political scenario carefully, on the surface, it
looks like Senator Uzodinma holds the ace in Orlu Zone
PDP as regards the party structure. And
if he eventually decides to run for Imo governorship, it is a fatal blow to
aspirants from Owerri Zone.
Those
who propound this argument will quickly give you the political arithmetic of
how the senator will win the PDP guber primaries when you ask them. So, I will
resist the urge to join the discourse.
But I will advise that he listens to the voice
of reason and not obey the cacophony of voices from political loafers urging
him to contest for their selfish motives.
For
those who want him to run, they now say the Imo Charter of Equity exist only in
the heads of some dumb skulls. For them, the proponents of this are either
living in a fool’s paradise or simply hallucinating.
They
contend that it is not in existence. And because of their shallow thinking
blindfolded by the desperation to stroll to the seat of power, they say at no
time has each political dispensation in Imo State not witnessed governorship aspirants
from the three zones leapfrogging into the contest. To them, the Charter is a mumbo- jumbo crap and
political bullshit!
But for those who see red and do not say it is
green, a school of thought which I belong to, Owerri Zone is the weeping child
of the Imo political family. And a child
that weeps often will certainly cause discomfort to his parents and siblings.
And there is always a reason for a child to weep or cry. No child cries when he or she is not undergoing
one form of discomfiture. So, if the
weeping of Owerri Zone has not caused discomfort to sister zones in Imo State,
such as Okigwe and Orlu, then I wonder
if we share the same political umbilical cord as we are made to believe.
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