By Ikem Okuhu
It had always been my wish to serve my people; my State and my dear country Nigeria. For somebody that detested politics, this could sound strange. But I have always wanted to be useful to my country, contributing to what could be seen as positive change.
I have always felt there are better ways of dispensing governance than what we have been experiencing in Nigeria and although I feel very reluctant to involve in the dirty, often acrimonious politics played in Nigeria, I have always felt that given the opportunity, I could make measurable positive impacts.
I am one of those who think what we have in Nigeria is not democracy, but a democratised dictatorship; a queer system where the leaders ostensibly owe their sovereignty to the people but conduct themselves in ways that suggest they are not responsible to them throughout their stay in office, until perhaps the next election cycle.
These dictators abide by the rules of ascension, to the cosmetic extent of subjecting themselves to elections, but negate all the prescriptions of responsible leadership afterwards. The language is democracy during elections but the practice is prebendalism shortly afterwards.
Our peculiar brand of governance begins and ends at the expansive Government House dinner table (the type former President Olusegun Obasanjo said was “Come and Chop”), with the masses getting crumbs, morsels and occasional lumps dropped largely for window dressing purposes or for the “higher” strategic political ideal of keeping the estate quiet.
People rarely strolled from outside to this dinner table. You’d have to have an invitation cooked by long lines of godfathers. Alternatively, you may decide to queue patiently, yet dutifully, performing all manner of odd duties for those already on the dinner table, hoping and praying to be remembered one day.
I had no godfather. I am also very poor at singing songs. In church, when I decide that attending was important, I follow the choruses in my mind; my raucous voice a potential threat to the tranquility to the downward decent of the holy spirits. If my voice wasn’t good for praise and worship in churches, imagine just how it would sound to the ears of human beings – political human beings for that matter.
I was therefore eminently not qualified to be in government, going by these two very mandatory criteria. But somehow, I found myself in government, or should I say much more accurately, almost in government.
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Date was May 13, 2016. I cannot forget the day because it was my birthday. I happen to have the rare good fortune of sharing the same birthday with my wife. For this reason, work was half day and, with friends lined up to host us, I had made it back home early. It was around 11.00pm when my phone began to ring.
To my utter shock, it was Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi that was calling me.
A few things that had happened just weeks earlier made me reluctant to take this call. I had been given his phone number by a friend of mine who had noticed my strong editorial position when these things were happening who had also asked me to call the Governor, and although I collected the phone number and saved in my phone but did not call for reasons that will be understood later in this text.
The call came in twice.
Twice I refused to pick.
To properly premise this phone calls and what happened afterwards, including my journey to Enugu State Government House, it is important to start from the very beginning.
Until the period leading up to the 2015 General Elections in Nigeria, I did not know who Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi was; never heard of the name even. It was during this period that a close friend of mine by name Ike Ezugwu, had created a Facebook group named Gburugburu….(I cannot remember exactly but he had a number of such pages, with some of them bearing a name, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi for Governor Enugu State) and invited me to join.
Around the same period, I had discussions with another friend, Malachy Agbo with the end being for us to return home and play some roles in the elections that was close by as a means of negotiating a stake in the coming government.
I did not know any of those being mentioned as potential candidates and so didn’t take Malachy’s advice seriously, but my discussions with Ike Ezugwu was to eventually reveal the identity of one of the actors, by name Hon. Ifeanyi Lawrence Ugwuanyi, who at the time, I was told, was a three-time member of the House of Representatives, representing Igbo Eze North/Udenu Federal Constituency in the Nsukka cultural zone of Enugu State.
I wondered aloud why I had never heard of such a person before then, given that I have at least heard about all the other actors who were contesting the governorship of the state with him at the time. It also bothered me that I had never heard his name mentioned as a member of the House of Representatives.
That I did not know him did not amount to anything. In the end, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi did not only emerge as the flagbearer of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the State, he also went ahead to win the election and was sworn in on May 29, 2015, along with President Muhammadu Buhari and 31 or so other freshly minted governors of other states of Nigeria, with the exception of Anambra, Ondo, Edo and Osun States.
I must admit I wasn’t paying due attention to what was happening in my home state at the time and this didn’t change even after the 2015 elections. I had more than a handful, building my publishing and Public Relations business while also investing in Agriculture and food processing.
But by April 2016, one month to the first anniversary of the government of Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, the unthinkable happened and my attention quite significantly rivetted to my state.
That was when bloodthirsty criminals that eventually got branded with the generic name, “Fulani Herdsmen” struck at Ukpabi Nimbo, an agrarian community in Uzo Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State, killing more than 20 people, mostly in their sleep.
The Social Media was awash with gory pictures of terribly butchered bodies from this attack; men, women and children were photographed in various depressing stages of heartless dismemberment. I could not understand why such a thing could happen? If you followed what I mentioned in Chapter 1, you’d understand why I felt badly bruised.
Before this incident, we were used to reading of Fulani/natives clashes in Plateau, Kogi and Benue States and never imagined it was something that could strike that close to home. Uzo Uwani is a neighbouring local government area, still in Nsukka zone. In fact, Ukpabi is less than 10 kilometres from my home and my fledgling cassava farm was just about to experience its early flourish not far from the scene of this inexplicable mass murder.
This was how The Punch newspaper captured the story that same evening on its website:
“20_killed_as_Fulani_herdsmen_invade_Enugu_community”
(Excerpts from Ikem Okuhu’s new book, ‘Eighteen Months in Neverland: Chronicles of My Daze in Government’)
• Okuhu is a Journalist, Brand Expert and Author.