The leadership recruitment architecture in the entire South-East region is atrocious. The process isnt configured to produce the talent and capacity to drive the aspirations of the people known for outstanding entrepreneurial activities.
The above was the summation of my thought This morning when a dear friend chatted me up on the trending video of Hope Uzodinma’s response when asked what his vision for the state was as an aspirant. My friend had observed, rightly too, “Your moneybags, in my view, are cruder, emptier than most and SE politics seems to have a disproportionate number of successful moneybags politicians than other regions. It is a problem common to all the regions, but worst in the SE.” He expressed apprehension that, “You know, I have always believed that Igboland is the region most likely to descend into dictatorship in case Nigeria splits. Dictatorship or the worst form of authoritarian rule.”
In response, I affirmed that this is simply because the current political leadership in the region is made up of desperadoes who made money without enterprise after the civil war. Leadership was not this transactional in the region especially in the first and second republics. The only possible exception is Anambra. And the evidence is there for all to see. Ironically, their liberation was providential. Recall the Ngige saga?
If you read how Ifeanyi Ararume, for instance, was given the APGA governorship ticket in Imo State, before the last elections, over the like of Sam Amadi, Frank Nneji, and Dr Ike, you will weep and wail.
He was not a party member from the get go. He lost out in the APC succession struggle and snaked into APGA on the eve of the primaries and reportedly doled out “ego oji” (money for kolanut) to the party’s national leadership mainly drawn from neighbouring Anambra.
After the election on March 19, which he fittingly lost, the greater loser being the party that lent him its platform, Ararume swam back to his natural habitat. This week, he’s been seen in warm embrace with the “new trained driver” in town.
So if you see the outrage over the defection of the opportunists in the Imo State House of Assembly to the new ruining party, as someone called, it’s in the character of the emerging political leadership in Igboland. I can exempt a few like Enyinnaya Abaribe but I must insist that the current political leadership in Igboland, as a collective, is the worst ever that have been.