Iwu Vs Nnamani

Comfort Obi

Former Senate President, Senator Ken Nnamani, is in trouble. It is no surprise. He is talkative. He never misses any opportunity to assert and/or flaunt his importance. Based on Nigerian standards, Nnamani is a democrat. These are easy credentials to acquire in Nigeria. All you need is to be anti-government – whether the government has done well or not. Play to the gallery. And atimes, which is becoming alarming, wage a war against the Nigerian state, while at the same time, lining your pocket. Then, you’d be celebrated, and invited to every meeting of the civil society.
Nnamani did not become a democrat by fighting the Nigerian State. He has a bit of a radical streak in him, but I like to believe that he is not interested in the break-up of Nigeria. Perhaps, one can accuse him of playing to the gallery atimes. But all-in-all, he is a child of destiny.
He shot into national consciousness gradually, and things just fell onto his laps. His journey began in his state, Enugu, where, thanks to the Ebeano political machinery, a baby of former Governor Chimaroke Nnamani, now a Senator, he became a Senator.
Barely a year at the Senate, the then Senate President, Senator Adolphus Wabara, stepped on the famous banana peels which saw the Igbo changing the occupant of the Senate President's seat as if they were changing their under-wears. Against all permutations, Nnamani became the Senate President. From that point, his destiny shone like diamonds. And then, he played the master stroke.
It came during the ill-advised desire of former President Olusegun Obasanjo for a third term in office. We may, one day, perhaps, hear the true story of how it was aborted by the Senate, but Nnamani took the glory. Once Obasanjo was defeated, Nnamani’s popularity hit high heavens. It entered his head. And soon, he began to even challenge his own party, the PDP. While still the Senate President, he said he still was not sure whether or not to accept the offer by the rival ANPP to be its Vice Presidential candidate. Anyway, he left the Senate on a high note. And became a democratic symbol. He was invited to the right meetings, to speak to the right audience. When he launched a collection of his speeches as a Senate President, every who-is-who, including former Heads of State, were there. That upped his profile the more, and ambition too!
Quite often, he contributed to national discourse, and granted interviews each time his opinion was sought. Not a few people felt he was talking too much, and often over- reached himself and his capabilities. He set up a democratic institute with headquarters in Abuja. I don’t know what impact it has made, but the last time I read about it, a gale of resignations had hit it. Yet Nnamani continued to ride high. Until Tuesday, January 13 when his democratic balloon was punctured. His nemesis is the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. His problem was his talkativeness.
It started with an interview he granted where he not only ran down the chairman of INEC, Professor Maurice Iwu, held him responsible for all Nigeria’s electoral woes, but said he had actually planned to arrest him but for the expiration of his tenure as the Senate President. Iwu has had a lot of bashing since the 2007 general elections, but he has always held the view that he conducted the elections against all obstacles thrown at him. Once, he had hinted, without mentioning names, that some politicians did not wish for the election to hold. But INEC pushed to, excuse this cliché, the wall, has now revealed that our democratic symbol, Nnamani, was the one who did not want the election to hold. Interpretation: All his claims to democracy are fake. Firing from all cylinders, INEC, through its spokesperson, Andy Ezeani, alleged that Nnamani is picking on Iwu because Iwu denied him his desire of becoming Nigeria’s President, albeit, in an interim capacity. INEC: "The time has come to present the facts to save the nation from being misled by those who worked hard to undermine the polls but are now strutting nationwide as heroes of democracy.” The facts?
INEC: “At the thick of preparations for the 2007 elections, with the tussles in the ruling party and the legal tussles challenging various aspects of the electoral process, Chief Ken Nnamani, who was the Senate President, approached Professor Iwu with a rather awkward request. Nnamani requested the chairman to take a stance that the elections were not feasible at the scheduled time due to a combination of political and logistics reasons."
Why? Again, INEC: “If the elections were postponed and the tenure of then President Olusegun Obasanjo expired on May 29, 2007, he, Nnamani, being Senate President, and Number three person on the hierarchy of political leadership, would automatically become President of the country in an interim arrangement…”
Indeed, INEC alleged that Nnamani even played the ethnic card in order to convince Iwu. He told Iwu, allegedly: “We are from the same place. It would benefit our people.” But Iwu dashed Nnamani’s ambition. For that, INEC insists, Nnamani has not forgiven Iwu, therefore the attacks. And there are also the matters of a contract scam and an electoral fraud against Nnamani according to INEC. They are as follows: Using proxies for INEC contracts, and a well-documented case of waylaying electoral materials meant for the Enugu State 2007 governorship elections.This is serious.
Nnamani has offered a weak response: The allegations are hogwash, he says. But for the first time, he is not talking forcefully. And Senator Arthur Nzeribe has put a lie to his denial. INEC is right, he says. We should applaud INEC for telling us how it was. Obviously, Iwu does not want to be the former President, Ibrahim Babangida, who keeps saying that even though the buck stopped on his table, there were prominent people, especially from the South west, who put pressure on him to annul the June 12 1993 presidential elections, presumed to have been won by the late Chief M.K.O. Abiola. Till date, he has not made such names public.
While we await the next round between Nnamani and Iwu, there is a lesson for the former Senate President. And it is in the old wise saying: “Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.”