By Innocent Chukwu

The much anticipated Enugu Labour Party mega rally has come and gone with the high expectations of Obidients dashed away as a result of the incompetence and unpopularity of the sacked governorship candidate of the party in the state, Chijioke Edeoga who still parade himself as the guber candidate. The discreditable outcome of the event, which took place on Wednesday, January 13th, 2023 further validates the fact that Edeoga has no electoral value, as most of the people who attended the rally were fans of the presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi.

In the history of political engineering, the state chapter of a political party is conventionally saddled with the responsibility of mobilizing her members for political rallies, especially a very significant event such as a presidential rally, but due to Edeoga's incompetence, he could not play a simple role of a governorship candidate he claim to be. Moreso, Edeoga neither received Peter Obi at the airport nor join the campaign train to the program they had at University of Nigeria, Nsukka ahead of the rally at Okpara square.  

Obi has in the past few months gained incremental support from Nigerians across the nation. This is evident in the massive turnouts being recorded at his campaign rallies as he move from one state to another. Unfortunately, the situation was not the same in Enugu State, capital of the southeast as the presidential rally which took place at Michael Okpara square witnessed the worst attendance so far in the history of Peter Obi's rally. Instead of according Mr. Obi a heroic reception in Enugu, the Labour Party presidential rally was more like a child's play. 

Some of the reasons which may have led to the disgraceful outing ranges from Edeoga's hatred for Mr. Obi, lack of fund political muscle to organize such event, inexperience of the key player in Enugu State Labour Party, poor publicity, none acceptability of the purported guber candidate by the masses among others. An interaction with some members of Labour Party at the venue of the rally revealed that a lot of people were not happy with the shabby nature of the rally laced with poor attendance. To them, the outcome fell far below their expectations. 

According to one of Obi's fans who lamented the poor turnout of people, the Enugu State rally was supposed to be the mother of all the rallies held so far, but the event was marred by poor attendance, which most people believe it was due to the controversial nature of the embattled state guber candidate of Labour Party, Mr. Chijioke Edeoga and some of the state executives of the party.

Another irking part of the circus is that the leadership of Labour Party in Enugu State, their candidates at all levels and major stakeholders of the party failed to mobilize their members and fans to receive their presidential candidate on arrival at the Akanu Ibiam International airport, Enugu. It is either they were not in tune with the itinerary of Mr. Obi or Obi intentionally avoided Edeoga and his corrupt group in order not to stain his hard earned reputation. Recall that series of negative reports against Chijioke Edeoga had earlier emerged, ranging from allegation of incompetence, to the #2bn Enugu LGA News magazine scam, mismanagement of Isi Uzo LGA fund, homosexuality, among others.

Those who know Edeoga very well will not be surprise at the poor outing of Labour Party in Enugu State because he has never been successful in anything he does. Chijioke Edeoga is synonymous with failure and always fail in assignments given to him. Edeoga as a sadist may not have forgiven Peter Obi for refusing to recognize him as a guber candidate. It is possible that Edeoga and his cohorts intentionally didn't want to mobilize their handful followers for the rally as a payback to Peter Obi for refusing to take picture with him recently at the birthday ceremony of Chief Nnia Nwodo despite Edeoga singing "candidate, candidate, candidate..." into Peter Obi's ear like a toddler learning to recite a poem.

Edeoga is just an opportunist who is trying to ride on Peter Obi's wings to achieve relevance. Apart from being stingy, Edeoga lack financial capacity to sponsor his campaign. A source close to Edeoga's camp had earlier revealed that recently, the sacked Labour Party guber candidate drastically reduced his campaign movements due to paucity of fund to fuel their vehicles as the sudden hike in petrol pump price is biting hard on them.

Obviously, Labour Party is yet to have a gubernatorial candidate in Enugu State and Peter Obi is aware of that and smartly avoided Edeoga once more by refusing to introduce him as the party's governorship candidate during his visit to Enugu.