By Nick Opara 08038747372
Anyone who knows or remembers how the Imo State Chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was formulated, organized and mobilized (1998 and 1999^is enmeshed in a certain sense of nostalgia by the intelligent and efficacious manner in which the present-day mobilization efforts of the Imo PDP is progressing under the courageous leadership of Chief Jerry Chukwueke, the Ohamadike of Owerri people.
One remembers the “persuasive and inclusive” platform under which the founding members of the Imo PDP successfully mobilized and co-opted the voting masses of Imo State away from the popular and mammoth UNCP which had metamorphosed into APP, and which enabled the Imo PDP to sweep the polls in 1999. Incidentally, the joy of victory was very short-lived as Chief (Dr) Sir Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu MFR, the financially and politically mammoth opposition Imo APP leader executed an equally mammoth and brilliant razzmatazz using his nationwide power connections acquired by him in the course of his presidential campaigns under the Babangida/Abacha epoch, to catapult himself and his opposition APP into PDP Board of Trustees and into total control of the victorious PDP. The resultant spin-off was the jettisoning of many I-mo PDP foundation members into relative obscurity, and the birth of the genre of “aggrieved persons”. This genre of aggrieved persons was masked by the euphoria and thrills of victory and so continued to grow until 2007.
An attempt to solve this problem of “aggrieved persons” failed when one Alhaji Waziri Kazim, the PDP peace ombudsman, carved Imo State into serfdoms which later became known as the “Kazim formula zones” whereby party chieftains operated like czars in their various zones and domains. The czars soon developed their own selfish agenda which came to become diametrically opposed to the overall unity interest of the party as at the beginning of 2007.
What happened in 2007 can best be described as the “Araraume debacle”. Unaware of the enormity of aggrieved persons and disgruntled elements within, even the top leadership of, the party, the gubernatorial primaries of 2007 proceeded in a macabre fashion which pitted Imo PDP against the party overlords at Abuja. After Senator Araraume defiantly won the Guber primaries as well as the Re-run. Guber primaries, it became clear to Abuja that Araraume could not be dislodged within the Imo PDP fabric. And so, Chief Ikedi Ohakim was transplanted to the opposition PPA at the general elections and the supposed PDP Guber victory was manipulated away from Araraume to Ohakim in the PPA on the condition that he (Ohakim) would return to the PDP after victory.
This bizarre political transplant operation had an unanticipated side-effect:- it bred maggots of discontent within the PDP. Governor Ikedi Ohakim’s New Face Organization tried but failed to stem the tide of discontent. Imo PDP leadership and grassroots split into 4 groups:- the “PDP State”, the “PDP Alliance”, the “PDP Federal” and the “Action Alliance”. Some PDP leaders and grassroots also migrated to APGA. It became fashionable to lambaste the PDP and to openly engage in sabotage and anti-party activities. Governor Ohakim found himself increasingly over-stressed by PDP discordancy to the extent of losing- his composure and temperament even in the conduct of public affairs. The stage was now set for the political accident that brought Owelle Rochas Okorocha, himself an aggrieved, disgruntled PDP leader who had fled to APGA, as Governor of Imo State. Owelle Rochas Okorocha had managed to harness many members of “PDP Federal”, “PDP Alliance” and “Action Alliance” to beef-up APGA in his meteoric ascendancy to Douglas House.
Thus, as at June 2013, two years into the Rochas Governorship, Imo PDP was a party in complete and total disarray. Its depleted membership felt completely confused, humiliated and demoralized. For once, PDP members had forgotten the thrills of victory as they were now soaked in the agony of defeat; members openly flirted with Rochas’ Rescue Mission for appointments, contracts and motley, sundry favours. Even the elected PDP members of the House of Assembly who, by the way, constituted the vast majority in the Imo House of Assembly, swallowed “hook, line and sinker” everything Rochas to the disobedience and detriment of the PDP. The Imo members of the National Assembly were not left- out as some of them hobnobbed to with persons and interests that are detrimental to the PDP and the Presidency. This was the situation some four months ago when Chief Jerry Chukwueke game into the arena as Chairman, Imo PDP Mobilization committee.
The young, ebullient and charismatic Jerry Chukwueke who is an American-educated intellectual and a highly successful business mogul inherited what would easily be classified as a daunting, seemingly impossible task, which many people ran away from. The brilliant youngman approached his task in a very simple way which I can formulate as an intelligent mobilization tripod:
1. Restore the pride and self-confidence of the Party by invoking survivalist existentialist political paradigms;
2. Posit to Imo PDP that the chaotic misrule of Governor Rochas Okorocha has not only vindicated the PDP but has finally restored and re-entrenched the PDP in the governorship paradigm of Imo State come 2015, and
3. Scan the political arena and sweep-up all PDP members former and new, old and young, big and small, leader and grassroot, man and woman into the PDP “common fold” in a march toward victory in 2015 both in the Imo Guber and the Presidency.
What began, in my mind, as a personal pursuit of curiosity and self-amusement easily metamorphosed into an analytical mind-frame as I eavesdropped on the first two rallies I attended. I was amazed at the sheer eloquence of Chief Jerry Chukwueke and how the audience would break into songs not the pre-paid party sing-song of hired women but the spontaneous genuine songs of joy of “morale-high” party followers. For a change, PDP members are awakening from their supposedly demoralized slumber, and are now eager to stand-up and be counted. The supposed depletion of party leadership and “active happening” members and Youths appear to have dissipated. There is a renewed eagerness to attend rallies and meetings not to talk of the sumptuous availability of food and drinks. The Imo PDP is beginning to rediscover its fabric; more and more former party members are re-joining the PDP at each Mobilization rally.
More importantly, the particulars of Rochas’ misrule and they are many are increasingly highlighted to illustrate the need for party re-consolidation so as to retrieve Imo from what is clearly portrayed as increasingly self- inflicted Imo State poverty, joblessness, planlessness and alienation from the Federal centre; the faulty and obtuse free education policy which has dragged Imo State to the bottom of educational achievements in present- day Nigeria; the promises of tarred roads, hospitals and schools which have not been delivered and which can never be completed in the less than one and half years remaining of Rochas’ administration. The list goes on and on, not to mention the cornering-up of Local Government funds, -Internally Generated Revenue and the colossal number of billions of naira said to have been borrowed by the present administration and expended in a most unaccountable and reckless manner devoid of Due Process.
It is amazing to see how PDP members emerge from these rallies fully convinced of PDP victory in 2015 both in Imo Guber and Nigerian Presidency. The wounded lion is back, roaring. Thanks to Chief Jerry Chukwueke and his Mobilization Team. Kudos Jerry Chukwueke. So far, so good.
