Ernie Onwumere
It is often asserted in elite public discourse that opinion is free, however info are sacred. This piece is the expression of an opinion anchored on the sanctity of fact. There is the reality about Jos ‘99, the lie informed towards Jim Nwobodo, and the highway Ndigbo refused to stroll in 2023.
I used to be within the room the place the reality started to unravel. In 1998, I served as Media Strategy Manager for Dr. Alex Ekwueme’s presidential marketing campaign, working below the Director of Media and Publicity of ALEPCO, Prince Tony Momoh. I used to be on the PDP National Convention in Jos on the 14th and fifteenth of February, 1999. I communicate, learn and write Hausa. I say this on the outset as a result of what follows right here is just not rumour, and as a result of a half-truth has been allowed to develop legs and stroll amongst Ndigbo for a lot too lengthy.
Let us start with the context that the storytellers all the time pass over. By the time the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) gathered in Jos, the army had already made up its thoughts.
Chief Olusegun Obasanjo had simply been launched from jail, granted a state pardon, and had held personal conferences with President Abdulsalami Abubakar and General Ibrahim Babangida. He was the person the troopers had chosen to succeed them. Jos was not likely an election; it was a formality dressed within the robes of democracy.
The statistics informed its personal story on the main. Chief Obasanjo polled 1,658 votes. Dr. Ekwueme took 521. Alhaji Abubakar Rimi managed 195. Chief Jim Nwobodo scored 47. Mr. Francis Ellah had 16, Chief Don Etiebet 11, and Dr. Olabode Olajumoke 5. Read these numbers once more. Even if Ekwueme and Nwobodo had stood apart and pooled each vote they commanded behind a single challenger, the end result wouldn’t have shifted by a single delegate. The race was determined earlier than the ballots have been counted, and it was determined someplace far from the marketing campaign podium.
But how did the army’s desire show itself? Openly, within the basic election that adopted. President Obasanjo misplaced his polling sales space. He misplaced his ward. He misplaced his native authorities. He misplaced his state, each on the governorship and on the presidential stage, to the Alliance for Democracy. And but he was elected President of Nigeria. Why? It is as a result of the army males who had dominated us for fifteen years noticed in him the chief they may belief with the keys.
What performed out in 1999 was captured completely by Barr. J.S.P. Nwokolo in his now well-known ‘Ekechago nku Ukwa’, which means the breadfruit has already been shared behind closed doorways earlier than the villagers arrive. By the time the group filed in, the parts had been apportioned and the plates cleared.
Which brings me to the lie.
It is being mentioned, quietly in some locations and loudly in others, that Chief Jim Nwobodo spoke in Hausa on the Jos conference towards Dr. Ekwueme, or towards the Igbo curiosity. That is just not true, and I can say so with authority as a result of I understood each phrase he uttered. The video of the conference speeches nonetheless exists; anybody who needs to check this declare might go and watch it.
What Jim Nwobodo did was communicate in Hausa, however not for any candidate and not towards any candidate. He spoke in Hausa to canvas for his personal votes. He didn’t assault Dr. Ekwueme. He didn’t de-market anyone. He promoted himself, which is exactly what each politician who mounts a podium at a conference is there to do. To convert that right into a cost of betrayal is just not historical past; it’s sheer mischief, and it’s the sort of mischief that prices a folks their readability on the very second they want it most.
So, if Jim Nwobodo is just not the perpetrator, who’s?
Of course, it’s not the person who spoke Hausa to ask for votes in 1999. The males accountable are our personal brothers within the PDP who, 25 years later, offered the longer term of the South East for a plate of porridge. They are those who ought to carry this burden, and they realize it.
Let’s ponder what was positioned of their fingers. After eight years of Muhammadu Buhari, a northerner, the expectation throughout the size and breadth of Nigeria was that the presidency would return to the South. Within the South, the South East had waited the longest and had given essentially the most to the PDP with out ever being rewarded with the ticket. The celebration’s structure and its unwritten conventions recognised zoning between North and South because the glue that held it collectively.
In 2022, the celebration arrange a thirty-seven-man zoning committee below Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State, ostensibly to formalise what all people already knew. Instead, the committee beneficial that the ticket be thrown open, pleading the exigency of time and the advantage of advantage. In plain language, the PDP informed the South East that its flip didn’t matter. NEC ratified it. Zoning died on the supply, and with zoning useless, the sector was flooded with northern aspirants who had the construction and the cash to dominate a main. Atiku Abubakar, a person of means who had run a number of occasions earlier than, walked by means of the open gate.
But right here is the half our folks dislike listening to. An injustice is just not the identical factor as a defeat, and the South East was not solely wronged; it was careless. Going into that contest, the PDP’s strongest maintain in your complete nation was the South East: three governors, 13 senators, greater than thirty members of the House of Representatives, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, and a mass of celebration members.
That is just not a begging bowl. That is a bloc succesful of dictating phrases to any candidate who needed the nomination. It was by no means deployed as one.
Peter Obi was the strongest South East contender and the one one with real nationwide enchantment, and he misplaced the prize in 3 ways. First, he waited too lengthy to behave decisively contained in the celebration. He remained within the PDP till late May 2022, mere weeks earlier than the primaries, by which era the zoning battle had already been misplaced and the northern bloc had consolidated behind Atiku. Had Obi campaigned earlier and louder for zoning, he might have compelled the celebration’s hand or break up the southern bloc earlier than it was too late. Instead, he was seen as passive whereas the choice was being made round him.
Second, Obi by no means coordinated the South East into an unbreakable entrance. The area’s governors, legislators and delegates have been divided; some leaned in direction of Atiku, others hedged, and no person welded them collectively. A united South East, with 5 governors and a strong delegate base, would have been far tougher to disregard even in an open contest.
Third, when the struggle grew laborious, Obi walked out. He resigned from the PDP and moved to the Labour Party, gaining a nationwide platform and a motion, however surrendering the celebration construction within the course of. Inside the PDP, he retained no skill to affect delegates, negotiate, or struggle to the final spherical. The celebration learn his exit as give up, and events all the time do.
Others merely jumped ship. Dave Umahi noticed the gang-up and left the PDP. Professor Chukwuma Soludo, for his half, was by no means half of the PDP in any respect. Meanwhile, our governors within the South East, males like Okezie Ikpeazu and Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, endorsed the present Minister of FCT Nyesom Wike. In that circumstance, the function Wike performed in making an attempt to cease Atiku was politically appropriate, and it’s a lesson our folks would do nicely to emulate reasonably than condemn.
The tragedy is that the South East couldn’t maintain a line even when holding it served its personal curiosity. Millions of voters adopted Peter Obi out of the celebration, the PDP misplaced the South East to the Labour Party, and it misplaced the presidency to the APC. A celebration that had the numbers, the historical past, and the ethical argument to provide a president of South East extraction selected short-term calculation over long-term belief. It deserved what it obtained.
And what of the person who truly received? Love or detest him, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu gives one thing uncomfortable to study. In the build-up to the APC main, the ticket was thrown open, like the identical open discipline that swallowed the PDP. But Tinubu didn’t sit and anticipate consensus, and he didn’t petition anyone for equity. As a grasp strategist, he bulldozed his manner by means of, declared his ‘Emilokan’ (it’s my flip) mantra, and went additional than anybody thought prudent by working a Muslim-Muslim ticket. He fought his political battle and he emerged, regardless of each effort to push him down. Whatever one thinks of him at the moment, his methodology is instructive.
That is the lesson of Jos ‘99 and of 2023 alike. Power is just not given. It is taken. The breadfruit is shared earlier than the villagers arrive, and the one defence towards that historical association is to be seated on the desk early, in a single voice, with the urge for food to eat.
Thus, the half-truth informed towards the Igbo about Jos ‘99 can not maintain. But neither can we conceal behind it. Chief Jim Nwobodo was not our saboteur. Our saboteurs sat in our personal caucus, and they wore our personal Igbo names. That is the plain fact, interval.
Ernie Onwumere, a model communication guide writes from Ikeja
