The past few weeks, just immediately after the outcomes of the Enugu Peoples Democratic Party (PDP’s) primaries held sometime in May this year, have witnessed defeatist upheaval and uproar from a very minoot but violent political gang who, predictably, abysmally lost out having been resoundingly and outrightly rejected by the people of Enugu State based on their odious antecedents in both the private and public sectors. 

To save their faces from the heavy blow in which they were contemptibly banished into political oblivion, they had to resort to the ailing All Progressives Congress’ blame game rather than pandering to the mortifying thrashing by better candidates with unassailable backgrounds and track records. 

Their design was to quickly cast aspersions on the governor of the state, Hon. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi as responsible for their debacle. The narration trailing their path now which they have been selling to their few gullible supporters is that Governor Ugwuanyi refused to accede to their demand that another Nsukka person be considered for governor in 2023. Interestingly, they have been traversing the old Nsukka Zone to whip up sentiment especially from the uninformed and untrained educated bedfellows like them to demonize a man of peace. 

In doing this, these notorious serial political failures have employed unprintable names to describe the governor and other people who are not at home with their rascally infantile politics. Spurning hatred and inciting calculated seditious statements to blackmail the state government is now their stock-in-trade. Ugwuanyi has become a nightmare to them that they suffer extreme high blood pressure whenever they see, walk, drive and make use of his legacy projects littered across the state. They’re driven crazy that, despite their exhausting efforts to bring the name of the governor and other PDP members to disrepute and cause members of the public to shun them having severely injured their characters and integrity, the opposite result is being achieved. The more they are bent in tarnishing Ugwuanyi’s image, the more popular and endearing the governor becomes. 

It's even more saddening that some of the arrowheads engineering these campaign of calumnies are the very people Governor Ugwuanyi rescued from abject poverty when they squandered the little money they stole from public offices on women. Ugwuanyi, once described by a former PDP governorship aspirant, Captain Evarest Nnaji as a man of ecumenical substance who would always use the window open to him to avenge the misdeeds of his enemies to rescue them instead. In 1 Samuel 24 – 28, King David had the impeccable opportunity to deal a fatal blow on his tormentor, Saul, but he refused. He would rather take a godly path and sued for peace. That’s what Governor Ugwuanyi is known for. 

When the now self-imposed embattled Labour Party’s governorship candidate, Mr. Chijioke Edeoga, and the beleaguered Enugu North Senatorial Zone’s candidate under the Labour Party, one Okey Ezea from Igala descent, were dying of hunger and almost ruined into political extinction having been jobless, it was the same vilified Governor Ugwuanyi that resurrected them, and like a father, went in search of these prodigal sons, forgave them their self-inflicted iniquities, kissed and maintained their lifestyle to a reasonable, dignified life. For Mr Edeoga, who has been adjudged the worst commissioner consecutively for three years, Governor Ugwuanyi bailed him out of economic and political coma even when his kinsmen rejected him for his dark antecedent as an elected public officeholder. Yet after being fed by the governor to stupor, he is out to challenge his maker. Edeoga has been junketing radio stations in his desperate bid to impose himself as the gubernatorial flagbearer of the Labour Party. He uses every opportunity to castigate Governor Ugwuanyi, who incidentally made him, even when callers would remind him he had nothing to offer the state having failed woefully as a Commissioner for Environment. 

It's even more interesting that Okey Ezea is living at the mercy of the governor. He comes to Lion Building in the night to beg for money, and the ever merciful Governor Ugwuanyi will look at him with pity and fund his stomach. And the bible says, “And Jesus has pity on him”. That’s what Ugwuanyi is doing. It’s on record that Ezea is on a monthly salaries from Ugwuanyi’s act of magnanimity. However, it’s the same ungrateful Ezea, inebriated with Okpara and okpeye, that is accusing the governor of weaponising hunger. It’s quite ironical! 

One would be alarmed to learn that both the embattled Edeoga and the beleaguered Ezea have been described as lawyers. That could have been a black market procuration of title because these fellows know no road leading to the court. They lack the understanding of the law since they have phobia for the pages of legal text. Otherwise they would have appreciated the magnitude of their crimes as espoused in chapter 7 of the criminal code dealing with sedition. Accusing eminent personalities like Distinguished Senator Chimaroke Nnamani, former Governor of Enugu State, and Rt. Hon. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of murder, in a state with ungenerous leaders, the criminal code and cybercrime law could have been activated. Edeoga, Ezea and their rudderless supporters could have been cooling their heels in Abakaliki prison with severe punishment.

Again, the governor, in his usual peaceful gesture, allows these felons to scavenge. Now, they’ve taken their rampages in the Church of Christ, accusing and blackmailing the church and raining curses on the priests of God. It’s time for the body of Christ to wake up and fight these anti-Christ, and send them back to the abyss of darkness. Whether the labouring party, or their embattled self-imposed candidates likes it or not, Enugu State will remain PDP and the people will vote massively for the party.

Dr. Asadu Idigi wrote from Opi, Nsukka.