By BENJAMIN NJOKU
Chief Ewie Aimienwauu is the Director General of  the Campaign Organization, PDP Governorship candidate  in Edo State, Major General Charles Airhiavbere(rtd) and also, a one time governorship aspirant in that state. A successful businessman,  politician, culture administrator and philanthropist of great repute, Aimienwauu  here relives memories   of  his rise from grass to grace.

I was born to a family of a Headmaster and Head teacher. So, my early life was about education and education and education. I often say I was brought up in the agrarianisation culture. I attended Auchi Polytechnic, where I studied Business Administration and Marketing at the Higher Diploma level. Thereafter, I secured an appointment with the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture.

I worked with one of the parastatals under the ministry, National Council for Arts and Culture(NCAC) for close  to thirteen (13) years.

Chief Ewie Aimienwauu

While I was working in NCAC, I handled the administrative and personnel departments in addition to the marketing of Nigerian handicrafts  both at home and abroad. I visited a lot of countries and had the opportunity  of placing our local handicrafts side by side with handicrafts from other African and Asian countries.  And it was a very  rewarding experience.

During that time also, I had the opportunity of being involved in the organisation of Miss Lagos carnival contest as well as  the Lagos Carnival. At that time, it was a collaboration between my NGO and Baric Brazilian  airline, but  when the airline left the country, the programme ran into some logistic problems.  Nonetheless, I have continued to work in the areas of  social-cultural development, human capital development and emancipation of the people.

At the end of my civil service career, I went into business in 1995, as a transporter, a farmer as well as carrying out my philanthropic activities.  I had huge investment in urban transportation and poultry farming.

In the same year, I had invested in over 90,000 birds farm called December Farms Limited and an urban transport company. So, when the option of early retirement was given by the former army leader,  President Ibrahim Babagida, I took it in good faith and proceeded to early retirement. That year too, I had  my first daughter in the UK. I also lost my father in the same year. It was tragic, but the real tragedy  was that my partner broke the news to me that our company which we set up with more than $1million had eventually gone bankrupt.

As a matter of fact, I  had no money either to bring my stranded family in London back home, nor to bury my deceased  father. I wept and wept but nobody came to my rescue. One day, I entered my car  and the driver asked where we were going to. It was then  I realised that I had neither job nor an office a boss to report to every morning.

There and then, I approached one Mr Alon Nelken  who allowed me to set up a shop outside his new mega plaza.  As a result, I sold my luxury cars and started a car hire service in front of the mega plaza in order to make ends meet.

Not accepting defeat,  in 1998, I tried my hands in politics, which I would want to describe as a process of showing my interest in the upliftment of the well-being of my people. As God would have it, in 2005, I started my campaign to become the governor of Edo State, under the platform of the PDP. At that time, I had started doing private and commercial property business in Lagos.

But in 2006, having sensitized the people of Edo State, in respect of my aspiration, innate politics and  my desires for the people, unfortunately, I later bowed to the wishes of the PDP in the state. I stepped down and supported Professor Oserheimen Osunbor. Since then, I have been involved in active politics.

In all my years in politics,  I have come to find out that Nigerian politics need more people who are empathic, more exposed and gentle in character.

Whereas people  say I ought to be a priest,  and not a politician, I always say to them that both professions start with the letter “P”, and that they are all about the ‘speaking business’ and emancipation of the people. So, whether a priest or a politician, I fit into both descriptions.

Politics is challenging

Political life had been very challenging. Challenging in the sense that the fundamentals are basically wrong. The fundamentals in Nigeria are so discordant that at the end of the day, everybody finds it  more convenient to condemn the politicians as well as the endeavour, insinuating that politics is a dirty game.

Of a truth, experience has taught me that where we are dealing with 70 percent  of  ignorance,  of disease and  of poverty, then, there can be no rounded democracy. The views of the man or a woman who lives on less than one Dollar per day cannot be rounded because he has personal problems to tackle. His attitude to life is more of survival than that of engagement.

The platform  for politics which are the people does not exist in the sense that the people we have are  essentially illiterates.

A lot of the other people who are the elites are so concerned with their personal survival and that they cannot express objective views on the one hand, and on the other hand, they  are in the ‘extreme’,  they are so puritan in their ideas that they almost have lost touch with reality.

So, we have to rely on the experiences of the elder statesmen to guide us and also, to provide us with the basic framework within which we operate. That also, has provided its own downside effect, hence the acronym of God-fatherism has come to stay in Nigerian politics.

The other problems, I have identified  are again not unrelated with the three basic problems I have enumerated earlier. But again adult sufferage cannot be exercised or expressed when the issues are not understood. So, politics in Nigeria, have been about personalities rather than the issues. That brings about the need for development agenda for the country because the direct product of a political process is forming a government.  And the bottom-line of forming a government is to implement an agenda that has been articulated through a political process that is called manifestos.