Reconciliation: Why Tinubu Should Start‎ from Imo State

Perspective
‎Imo State governor, Rochas Okorocha’s endorsement of his son-in-law as his successor has torn the All Progressives Congress apart in the state, writes Ethelbert Okorie
 
Amid certain skepticisms over the Ahmed Bola Tinubu-led All Progressives Congress (APC) reconciliation committee, two notable incidents that are bound to have unsalutory effects on that mission have already been recorded. One is the pulling down of a house belonging to Senator        Suleiman Hunkuyi by agents of the Kaduna State government headed by Nasir El-Rufai.
Before the incident, there had been altercations between a faction of the APC in the state, led by the senator and another loyal to the governor. Amid the imbroglio, El-Rufai was reportedly suspended from the party by the Hunkuyi-led faction. It is for this reason that many observers believe that the destruction of the senator’s house was a ploy by El-Rufai to get even with Hunkuyi.
The governor’s camp has, naturally, denied this, citing as reason for its action the senator’s failure to comply with extant laws governing the erection of buildings in the state. If we add this to the fact that there is also no love lost between El-Rufai and another APC senator from the state, Shehu Sani, it becomes almost obvious that one of the states the Tinubu committee will be heading to early in its assignment is Kaduna. Kaduna will be up in the list because the issues in the state’s chapter of the APC have been able to attract the attention of the national media and hence, the national leadership of the party.
But this cannot be said of the second incident which took place in Imo state where Governor Rochas Okorocha has, according to reports, formally endorsed his son-in-law, Mr. Uche Nwosu, as his possible successor. Nwosu is married to Chief Okorocha’s first daughter and currently serves as the chief of staff at the government house, Owerri. The purported endorsement in Imo, just like the Kaduna demolition, came just a few weeks after President Muhammadu Buhari had appointed  Tinubu to head a reconciliation mission within the APC, from the national down to the ward level.
The Imo endorsement did not come to the people of the state as a surprise because the governor’s ‘body language’ had, for upwards of one year at least, revealed that that was where he was heading to. Expectedly, the development has led to a major upheaval not only within the APC but in the entire state. A fourth night ago, there was a physical combat between supporters of Nwosu and Okorocha’s deputy, Prince Eze Madumere, whom a section of the party has been urging to join the 2019 gubernatorial fray. According to reports, it was by sheer act of God that no lives were lost during the clash even though many, reportedly, sustained severe injuries.
As things stand, there are fears that more of such clashes will occur in the weeks and months ahead for the simple reason that the Nwosu endorsement has taken the political temperature of the state to an all time high. Still, the state is daily inundated with a spate of endorsements of Nwosu by different groups of people believed to have been recruited by the governor’s camp for that purpose. More significant is the fact that the Imo endorsement is not an intra party (APC) affair. It is a matter which has attracted the furry of citizens across the state, irrespective of partisan affiliations.
Within the APC, it is the culmination of more than two years of intra party rancour between two clearly delineated factions; one of which is led by Okorocha himself. Beyond the APC, the endorsement is seen by the generality of the people of the state as the grand outcome of the governor’s methodic and sustained disdain for those whose affairs he has had the rare privilege of presiding in the last seven years. For this effrontery to even contemplate handing over to members of his immediate family, after ruling for eight years, Imolites, regardless of partisan affiliations, are totally enraged. They see the governor as merely making good his remarks during his electioneering campaigns in 2011 that he was merely condescending to want to govern the state. In short, for the people of Imo state, the move by Okorocha to impose his son-in-law on them as their next governor is one perfidy too many.
But as usual, the peace-loving people of the state are going about it with level headedness. It is this same reason that has kept the intra party squabbles in the Imo APC outside the notice of the national leadership of the party and consequently, made the latter to believe that all is well within the Imo APC. This erroneous impression arises simply because the other key leaders of the party in the state have chosen to handle the matter with maturity. Unfortunately, the governor has not seen the reason to reciprocate this gesture. His rambunctious mannerisms have always tended to put not just the APC but the entire state in the news but for the wrong reasons. His tendency to run both the party and the state as private estates has finally resulted in this grand assault on the collective integrity of the entire people of the state, known as the most sophisticated in the entire country.
Put in a different language, it will not be out of place to state that the uncommon level headedness with which other key Imo APC leaders chose to go about the problems created for the party by Okorocha’s style of administration has not paid off. Perhaps if these leaders had resorted to the tactics of an eye for an eye and for a tooth for a tooth, the first instruction President Buhari would have handed to Tinubu would have been to head to Imo without any delay. But it is not late. I pray Tinubu to begin his assignment with Imo state. Once there, he should endeavour to ask the right questions from the right source. Of course, he will fail if his first call will be at the government house because they will not let him go further from there.
The intra party crises in Kaduna, Kano, Oyo, etc. are, to borrow a certain slogan, “family affairs”. Not so in the case of Imo. There, it has gone beyond the party to assume a pan-Imo dimension that may cost the APC a lot. In Kaduna we may have El-Rufai versus Hunkuyi; in Kano it might be between Governor Ganduje and Kwakwanso; else where it might be between the governor and a certain minister. But in Imo state it is between Okorocha and the entire state.

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