How Ohakim’s Re-Election Bid Tore A Community Apart

By Chuks OLUIGBO

The 2011 elections have been won and lost, but their ripples will continue to be felt in a long time to come. In many places, for instance, the inordinate desperation of certain incumbents to retain their seats set in motion chains of irreversible reactions which left severe wounds in many hearts – wounds which one wonders whether even time, the greatest healer of all times, will be able to heal. Imo State was one of such places.

When I wrote “Why Ohakim May Win Imo Guber Race”, I did argue that all Ohakim’s appointees – the sitting 305 councillors and 27 LGA chairmen, chairmen and members of the development centres, commissioners, special advisers, senior special assistants, permanent secretaries, heads of parastatals, heads and members of committees, chairmen and members of board, and so on – would fight for Ohakim to retain his seat so that they too will retain theirs. And those who feed through these appointees would fight alongside so that they don’t starve.

This scenario played itself out in a certain community in the state. Here, Ohakim’s desperation literally ‘put a knife in the thing that held the people together’, to borrow Achebe’s wit. For security reasons, I shall not name names. Therefore, the community of my story shall hereinafter be designated Community. We shall use the letters of the alphabet to denote the two villages involved in that ugly drama that has set them at each other’s throat. Let’s call them Village A and Village B. For the characters involved, we shall name them as they appear.

Community is a key player in the politics of Imo State since it is the leading community in the local government area. The chairman of the LGA is from Community. Community also has a serving commissioner in the state. Let’s identify them with their positions. The LGA chairman will be Chairman, while the state commissioner will be known as Commissioner. Chairman and Commissioner, both staunch loyalists of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and Ohakim’s foot soldiers, are from Village A, the same village with the traditional ruler of Community, hereinafter identified as HRH. But Village A also has a certain woman who represents the voice of opposition. Reports say she is as an uncompromising supporter of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA. We name her Woman. Let’s also note that Village A has only one polling booth to which Chairman, Commissioner, HRH, and Woman belong.

Village B also has only one polling booth. Here, the village chief, hereafter to be known as Chief, is strongly APGA, with his entire household and half of his villagers. The other half decided to pitch their tent with the PDP, behind one of their sons who is a member of a development centre (we tag him Member), with the hope that he would get a bigger appointment as soon as he delivered his village to Ohakim. Both Chief and Member also share this single polling booth.

This was what happened. On the night of Monday, April 25, a day before the governorship elections, HRH called a meeting of all the people that belong to the same polling booth with him. At the meeting, he tried to persuade them to all vote for the PDP so that Ohakim would win 100 percent in their booth. This, he said, would ensure that Chairman and Commissioner who are already serving in Ohakim’s government retained their positions when the new government was formed. He said he saw no need for any opposition to Ohakim. Then he asked whether Woman, with all her opposition, could attract commissionership to Community. A man close by (let’s call him First Man) retorted that ‘women can be very powerful o!’ Another man (Second Man) slapped him. First Man slapped back and, in the fight that ensued, able-bodied young men there forcefully disengaged First Man from Second Man and gave First Man a general beating until they pushed him out of the gathering. Available reports say that First Man was too weak to come out to vote on the election day.

Then came the election day proper, April 26. On that day, First Man’s elder brother (let’s call him Elder) was arrested and detained by Commissioner. Why? Elder went to cast his vote like every patriotic Nigerian. The PDP agent at the booth tried to woo him to vote for the PDP. Elder was angry and told the party agent to back off and allow him to exercise his franchise as he wished. Commissioner overheard and got Elder arrested and detained. This has continued to cause a row in Village A as Elder’s family have begun to make serious allegations of marginalisation against them.

Then we go to Village B. Here, while voting was going on, Member, probably feeling that APGA was going to carry the day in his booth, sent his younger brother (Younger, for ease of identification) to cart away the ballot box. Younger, feeling he could not do it alone, enlisted some young men from Village A to help him. When they got to the booth, Chief’s step-brother (Step, for our purpose) tried to prevent them. There was a struggle. Step’s mother, a hypertensive patient, was coming to the booth. When she saw what was happening, she probably felt they were going to kill her son. She passed out and never recovered. As I write, she is lying in a morgue somewhere, dead forever.

Arrests have been made. The young men who were indicted are currently being detained while investigations are going on. Meanwhile, Village B is strongly up against Village A, accusing them of killing the dead woman.

In spite of all these desperate efforts, Ohakim not only lost in Community, he lost in the LGA as well as in the state. He lost his re-election bid. Ohakim may ultimately be compensated with a federal appointment, and that may cushion the pain of his loss. For Community, the wounds inflicted on it by men who got desperate in pursuit of another man’s ambition may continue to fester for many years to come...