QUITE recently, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, the National Chairman of the ANPP, generated a divertional media controversy, away from the actual statistics of the potential strength of his party in Ebonyi State.

He alleged that the Governor of the State, Chief Martin Elechi had conjured a swarm of ghosts and witches to prevent him and his party from staging a presidential rally at Abakaliki and from there capturing the state in April 2011 as destined by God.

Both of them could be said to belong to two extremes of the same generation with Martin Elechi at the elder pole and Onu at the younger. Both received good  education in different missionary schools and universities abroad.

So they are intellectuals and academics of sorts, well grounded in their different disciplines: Onu in chemical engineering and Elechi in political economy. Before this, it was widely believed that Onu was Elechi’s student at the Presbyterian College (Presco) Abakaliki, just as the retired Inspector General of police Ogbonnaya Onovo was.

Philosophically, both of them are to the right of the ideological spectrum. But while Elechi is a purist and a perfectionist with a deep passion for excellence, discipline, transparency, modesty, honest and accountability, Onu is imperatively bourgeois in world outlook, unrepentantly neo-colonial in life style with streaks of Narcissism, youthful exuberance, Epicureanism and infantilism.

As politicians, both men played different roles at different times in the creation of Ebonyi State. Both of them have been governors: Onu for Abia during the military rule of the so-called Third Republic; Elechi for Ebonyi almost four years after the end of military rule. Their methods of rise to power also differ: Whereas Onu was literally hand-picked by military and commercial god-fathers to run and win in Abia, Elechi warmed his way to the Ebonyi Government House, after a nation-wide electoral process.

Onu served half of his tenure as Governor and was deposed from office by a coup d’etat. Several years later Elechi defeated Onu to become the Executive Governor of Ebonyi State which he remains till date by the grace of God. Onu has a record  for being a professional governorship aspirant, that is a politician with an eye for executive party office at the national level.

Today he is the National Chairman of the ANPP but he would not leave Ebonyi or Martin Elechi alone. His new tactics is to occupy a Government House by proxy, by sponsoring an ANPP guber candidate, Senator Julius Ucha. So the struggle for power between Onu and Elechi continues in other ways. But since Onu did not win when he played directly with Elechi, there is hardly any hope that he would ever defeat this man by proxy.

The Onu-Elechi rally palaver is quite deep and not superficial as reflected by the media which have focused on  misleading perspectives and conclusions. However, the so-called controversy began when Dr. Onu, announced that the kick-off of the party’s presidential campaign would be in Abakaliki, his own state.

Governor Elechi reacted promptly by clamping a ban on the proposed ANPP presidential rally in Abakaliki.
Onu’s possible plan in his capacity as Chairman of his party was allegedly to inflame ethnic sentiments, to mobilize the cream of Nigeria’s most conservative political elite along those lines, to boost his dwindling political image at home with the presence of such crowd of party members and to enrage PDP supporters, especially the youth in the city, with his prepared inflammatory speech against the Governor. But Governor Elechi’s political machinery pre-empted this and took prompt measures to keep him at bay.

In an impromptu state-wide radio broadcast in Abakaliki, he advised the ANPP chieftains to hold their rally elsewhere, describing Abakaliki as “a small provincial capital struggling to measure up to the status of a capital and inadequate for state function”.

Elechi further accused Onu of having a nefarious agenda to pull down the present administration of the state by causing a breakdown of law and order, all aimed at making the state ungovernable.

Elechi also alleged that Onu’s plan was designed to force the Federal Government to declare a state of emergence in the State, having planned before then to make the forthcoming general elections in the state rowdy, riotous and visibly lacking in credibility.

Governor Elechi also alleged that ANPP had mapped out various strategies to accomplish its evil agenda, including waging a vicious propaganda against him; the massive arrests of key supporters of the Governor and government; sending them to Police Zone 6, Calabar for interrogation, detention and possible imprisonment; burning of the PDP party structures in rural areas as well as brutal attack on its adherents; tearing and burning of the Governor’s posters and billboards.

Finally, Elechi made it clear that although he could afford maximum respect and protocol for Governors of Borno, Kano and Yobe states, who are his personal friends, he would not extend  similar treatment and hospitality to the National Chairman of their party, Dr. Onu, an indigene of the State, for his questionable political conduct.

Before running into conclusions, we must note that Governor Elechi is the Chief Security Officer of the State. He has intimate knowledge, information, data and statistics on the centrifugal political forces and personnel that threaten stability in the state.

More than four times within his short-tenure as Governor, criminally-minded politicians armed ethnic civilians with sophisticated military weapons to destroy each other, just to prove to the federal authorities that Elechi could not provide security for Ebonyians. It was mainly such men, some of them in the National Assembly who returned from guerilla warfare to seek election as governor, senators, and representatives under the ANPP.

With such men who believed in elections as battles and politics as warfare, the rally is not in the traditional democratic sense as we speak of it. Recollect what happened at the PDP Suleja rally-the celebration of democracy with explosives and bomb-blast, only a few days after Elechi’s revelations and fears.

I believe that Elechi acted based on the proverb that once bitten, twice shy. And that the intelligence agencies and the media in particular should listen to him more attentively and closely.

Given the central role allegedly played in the Ezillo crisis by their National Chairmam, this cabal does not aspire to victory through the ballot box, but through bullets and gunshots. If the Federal Government does not listen to  Elechi now, it might be too late next time.

JMr. JAMES ONWE, a commentator on national affairs, writes from Abakaliki, Ebonyi State.