It is hardly surprising that Chief Tony Anenih, patriarch of the defunct Social Democratic Party, SDP, and Leader of leaders of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has gone back into battle immediately after accepting to be the Chairman of the PDP Board of Trustees -to wit; to reposition the party for the challenges of the future.

Ironically, Anenih’s first assignment now is to curtail the excesses of the PDP governors and also the inordinate ambition of a number of his agelong opponents in the party. Accepting to head that organ of the party, Anenih is again on the defensive from those who doubt his resolve to help wrestle control of the country and his party from the vile-grip of a determined cabal.

He will also have the newly assembled opposition forces of All Progressive Party (APC) to contend with, in a seaming war of Philipi and an epic battle of who governs Nigeria come 2015 and beyond.

At 80, Anenih is an unusual warrior. It was the June 12, 1993 election that foisted on  Nigeria the illegal regime of Earnest Shonekan, the Sani Abacha dictatorship and made the Babangida regime to step aside. Anenih believes that the future of Nigeria rests on equity and fair play within the levers of power rotation as enshrined in his party’s  constitution though it has never been sacrosanct.

This new political struggle will probably be his most important since 30 years ago when he hosted the meeting of the nascent National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in Benin-City. The outcome of this struggle would also determine the totality of his career and that of his other colleagues who gathered to chart a new course for Nigeria in the 1994 constitutional conference. “The creation of a six geo-political zone for Nigeria is a panacea for a greater Nigeria”, they proclaimed.  The result of that great epochal struggle is first, the creation of the six geo-political zones; second, the coming and sustaining of our democracy. This is the same Nigeria of today where a segment feels it is still their inalienable right to determine who governs. Everywhere you turn, there is rot and evidence of decay and despair.

Yet Anenih has been winning battles, but he is yet to win this war. In a segment of the northern conservatives, he will face a formidable opposition forged in the crucible of reaction.

And the APC and all those who seem to be pursuing some anti-democratic agenda may be doomed to find in Anenih and his colleagues a formidable phalanx. We shall be witnessing an encounter between forces of a democratic Nigeria and the forces of reaction. ’This last battle is bound to be brutal and protracted. When an irresistible force meets an immovable object,  one of them will have to give way.

Preaching the sermon of a democratic Nigeria the other day, Anenih declared, “yes together we can make it”. Yes, together, our party and this country can be great in our life time; together we can say enough of political gerrymandering and incessant return to the circle of tomfoolery in the name of political brinksmanship; together we can make our votes count, neither allotted nor annulled by a pack of human wolves in human skin; and, above all, together we can make a society, where we can all be judged no longer by the geography of our birth but by the content of our character. The country is almost attaining this feat in the new face of President Goodluck Jonathan transformation agenda being experienced in the road sector where Anenih’s political son, Arch. Mike Onolememen,  holds sway.

There is no evidence that this man from “the heartbeat state” had fought in any military expedition, but as leader of leaders, he looks sometimes as  if he had, as he often sits quietly in the front bench of executive meetings with crossed legs and iinfections  smile.  Watching him doodling on his seat, one sometimes had a suspicion that Anenih is not happy with the slow pace of development in his country and, in his usual address to his colleagues, he never forgot  where we were coming from as a country. One of the  southern politicians to make his mark in modern Nigerian politics, he showed quite early that he had a strong will, it is  probable that his religion, Christianity, is  the main factor in his life which has instilled in him a strong belief in fate. As he told this writer at the national constitutional conference in 1995, “the authority to rule is in the hand of God”. He has indeed made his mark in producing presidents and leaders in this country.

For Anenih who, in his surgical political career, has produced two presidents, Chief Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’
Adua and the incumbent Jonathan Goodluck,  in addition to the undiclared MKO Abiola who emerged from the June 12, 1993 election, and four governors from his Edo State namely, Dr. Ogbemudia, Chief Oyegun, Chief Igbinedion and Professor Osunbor, politics is not just an occupation but  also a calling; he embraces it with deep passion and profound love for truth and humility. These are some of his attributes that may come to play in this second coming.

*Okharedia lhimekpen is a Benin-City based public affairs analyst.