A Divided Opposition

Governor Chime of Enugu State

The rank of opposition political parties in Enugu State is divided over a bitter leadership tussle
By Anene Ugoani, Enugu
All is certainly not well with the Conference of Nigerian
Political Parties (CNPP),
Enugu State chapter; it has not known peace since it conducted a chairmanship election last March. Disputes over the outcome of that election have led to the emergence of two factional chairmen. And several efforts made by the Enugu State government to broker peace have so far been fruitless.
Before trouble set in, The Source was told, chairmen of all registered political parties in Enugu State, belonged to an umbrella union called the Conference of Chairmen of Registered Political Parties (CCRPP). The then state chairman of the Alliance for Democracy (AD), Casmir Ngwoke, was the pioneer chairman of the CCRPP. When the Enugu State Governor, Sullivan Chime, appointed Ngwoke his Senior Special Assistant (SSA) on Inter-Party Relations and Conflict Resolution, he was succeeded as chairman in the CCRPP by Casesar Mbonu.
Mbonu and his executive committee (Exco), did not, however, last in office as members of the union protested his leadership style, alleging that over six million naira in the common purse had been misappropriated. Thus, the party chieftains saked the Mbonu-led exco and set up an interim committee with Lady Chinwe Nzegwu (JP), as sole administrator.
In the course of managing the crisis in the union, Lady Nzegwu constituted a disciplinary committee to probe the alleged missing funds and to dispense punishment to erring members.
Adonys Igwe, state chairman of the Republican Party of Nigeria (RNP), was the chairman of the committee, which in its report indicted four members of the Mbonu-led exco over the alleged embezzlement of funds. Those indicted became livid and send a petition to the Enugu State government protesting their innocence and accusing the Ngwoke-led former exco of actually misappropriating the ‘missing’ funds. Ngwoke promptly denied the allegation.
Aside from setting up a disciplinary committee, the sole administrator ordered the conduct of a chairmanship election in a bid to find a substantive successor to Mbonu. The state co-ordinator of the People’s Mandate Party (PMP), Foster Eneh, told The Source last week in Enugu that one of the chairmanship candidates in the election, Igwe, alongside six of his supporters, boycotted the election. And that in the end, Ikechukwu Nkoloagu was declared winner.
Eneh said that inspite of the outcome of that election, Igwe has been parading himself as the chairman of the union and presenting impostors to the state government in place of the state chairmen of the political parties. He recounted how the Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Martin Ilo, invited leaders of the political parties to the Government House in his bid to resolve the crisis.
At the meeting, he said, Ilo told them that although the government was not interested in who became the chairman of the association, it would, however, appreciate an amicable resolution of the crisis. Ilo, he went on, asked Ngwoke who was present at the meeting, to intervene in the matter and see how best peace could be restored in the union of political parties.
Eneh told The Source that at the end of a second round of meeting with the SSA on Inter-Party Relations and Conflict Resolution, they adopted two resolutions: that the executive committees of the two factions in the crisis be dissolved to pave way for their merger and that a fresh chairmanship election be conducted.
“Now, we have agreed to merge and to participate in the fresh chairmanship election. But Mr. Adonys Igwe, the self-appointed chairman, and the PRO of his faction, Reverend John Nwobodo, are opposed to the merger and the conduct of the election. The SSA has tried his best.
“For peace to return, there must be an election. And Igwe must stop feeding the government with falsehood and presenting people who are not state party chairmen to the government. We would also want government to invite all the state chairmen of the political parties in order to get to know them, instead of allowing Igwe to keep on parading impostors every time”, Eneh said.
The state chairman of the People’s Salvation Party (PSP), Donatus Obieje, spoke in the same vein. Describing the coming together of chairmen of political parties as a welcome development, he narrated how the party leaders met with the SSG over the crisis.
Obieje: “The SSG being a good and sincere person, welcomed both parties to the crisis. He advised us to go and put our house in order and that the government would carry everyone along. He said the government would not like to hear of crisis within the CNPP. And then, he asked the SSA to go with us to his office and see what he could do.
“After listening to both parties in his office, Prince Ngwoke, the governor’s SSA on Inter-Party Relations and Conflict Resolution, found out that we have a leadership problem. In the end, we agreed, in the interest of peace, that the executive committees of the two factions be dissolved so that a committee be set up to screen all the state chairmen of political parties with a view to weeding out those who are making false claims,” he said.
Obieje, a one-time Deputy National Publicity Secretary of AD, and a member of the screening committee which was later set up, said some of the party chairmen appeared before the committee while some ignored the invitation extended to them. The work of the committee, he said, was progressing well until Igwe “imposed” six new members on the original three-member committee.
In protest against the imposition of additional members on the committee, Obieje disclosed, he decided to stay away from the sittings of the committee. The former AD deputy spokesman suggested that the quickest way to achieve peace in the CNPP was to allow the original three-member screening committee to finish it work and submit a report to the SSA on Inter-Party Relations.
However, in an interview with The Source, Igwe, the embattled factional chairman of the CNPP, said most of the “noise makers” are not even members of the CNPP. The applications they wrote to him seeking to be members he disclosed, were still being considered.
Igwe: “The sin I have committed is that I want to do justice by insisting that anyone who calls himself a state party chairman must be screened. My insistence on the screening exercise is as a result of our findings that some of the people who are claiming to be state party chairmen have long been expelled by their political parties. We also discovered that some letters of identification presented to the screening committee by the so-called party chairmen are forged.
“They obtained the letters of identification from the Ogbete Market and the business centers around the IMT. Let me tell you, most of these people who are making noise are members of the CNPP faction led by Alhaji Olapade Agoro. They went to Ibadan and met with Alhaji Agoro. And the man has been planning their inauguration. The CNPP I lead in Enugu State, is loyal to the group led by the former governor of Kaduna State, Alhaji Balarabe Musa. He has recognised us”.
Igwe said he and six other state party chairmen who were unhappy with the leadership style and trouble in the old CCRPP, left to form the CNPP in Enugu State, with the blessing of the national secretariat of the parent body in Abuja. After the formation of the CNPP, he went on, 21 of the state party chairmen decamped from the CCRPP to the CNPP, leaving behind only 11 state party chairmen.
When members of the CNPP he led and members of the CCRPP, led by Vincent Nnadi, he said, met with the governor at the Governor’s Lodge, the governor pleaded with the CCRPP members “ to collapse” into the CNPP because he preferred to deal with a group that has a national outlook. Following Chime’s appeal, the 11 members of the CCRPP later joined the Enugu State chapter of the CNPP, brining the membership strength to 32.
On March 24, 2008, he said a chairmanship election was conducted, with the 32 political parties participating. When the votes were counted, Igwe polled 27 votes out of the 32 votes cast at the election. He said it was not true that he and six other state party chairmen loyal to him boycotted the election, as Eneh told The Source.
Since his election as chairman, he said, the CNPP exco led by him, has paid courtesy calls on Governor Chime, the speaker of Enugu State House of Assembly, Eugene Odo, the factional chairman of Enugu State People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Vita Abba, the director of the State Security Service (SSS), the Commissioner of Police (CP), the NTA, the FRCN, and the chairman, Enugu State Independent Electoral Commission (ENSIEC), Chief Abel Nwobodo.
It was the CNPP under his leadership, Igwe told The Source, that presented a memorandum to the Electoral Review Committee (ERC) at its public sitting in Enugu. And that the Chime administration had invited the CNPP to a handful of events, contending that the invitations alone amounted to government’s recognition of the CNPP.
Igwe likened the efforts of party chieftains who decamped from the old CCRPP to the CNPP to overthrow him and his exco, to a situation where settlers in a place are bent on displacing the natives from their land. “These people who say I am not the CNPP chairman do not even have party offices. It is the party office of RPN, my own party, that we have converted to the CNPP office. The governor has, however, promised to provide us with an office,” Igwe told The Source.
When Igwe was asked to assess the Chime administration, he said it has done beautifully well in the over one year it had been in office. “If it were to be a written examination, I will give the administration 95 per cent. Its performance record is there for everyone to see”, he added.
But can the CNPP in Enugu State still provide a vibrant opposition to the Chime administration in the light of the existing cordial relations it has with the government? Igwe said the prevailing friendly relations would not prevent the opposition parties in the state from performing their traditional role of keeping the party in government on its toes. His words: “At the moment, the CNPP is asking questions about the structures the Chime administration demolished at the Polo Park and IMT area. The CNPP will soon make its position on this matter known. We must ensure that justice is done and that those affected by the demolition are provided alternative place to carry on with their business”.