Ikenna Ideagu

Former Member of PDP BoT, Senator Joy Emodi, recently joined the APC. Ikenna Ideagu x-rays her political antecedents and pedigree, concluding that like an eagle, her landing in APC portends great hope for a party that has perennially struggled in the South East region.

You cannot plant greatness as you plant yams or maize, writes the late literary legend, Chinua Achebe. “Whoever planted an Iroko tree – the greatest in the forest? You may collect all the Iroko seeds in the world, open the soil and put them there. It will be in vain. The great tree chooses where to grow and we find it there… so it is with greatness in men” he emphasises.

Among the Igbo also, it is advised that whoever is so fortunate to see the eagle should appreciate it profusely, for it is not an everyday bird. Its eyes are designed for clear vision and long-distance focus.

It is tenacious, fearless, and ever ready to dare. And while smaller birds flee from storms, the eagle displays its splendour and soars with storms. Not only is it a high flyer (as high as 10,000 feet), it doesn’t corrupt itself with rotten meat. 

It symbolises honesty and truthful principles. Thus,  it is held in high esteem by virtually every tradition around the world. And when it lands, it is a good omen, its landing is greeted with joy, signalling strength and rejuvenation.

Expectedly, therefore, Senator Joy Emodi’s recent landing in the All Progressives Congress (APC) has elicited a lot of glass-clinking in the ruling party and a grave sense of loss in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which continues to haemorrhage amid crisis.

  That Emodi has continued to matter in and out of office testifies to Achebe’s position that greatness is not what could be bought with money or automatically conferred on anybody by political position. True greatness comes from long years and pedigree of character, integrity, and impacting humanity at every given opportunity.

A lady from Benue had once narrated, long before Emodi became a household name in Nigerian politics, her encounter with the amazon. They had attended a national convention of the Congress for National Consensus (CNC) in Kaduna State during General Sani Abacha’s ill-fated transition programme.

Hundreds of party women had thronged Kaduna for the convention. Emodi lodged at the Hamdala Hotel on Independence Road (Now Muhammadu Buhari Way).   Returning to her hotel room after a meeting that evening, she saw women sleeping along the corridors and available corners.

ALSO READ: Ekiti 2022: PDP commences sale of forms September 13

Although she didn’t know them, she threw her suite open, inviting the women to fill up every available space in her apartment- bed, sofa, rug, etc. She also saw to their welfare. As simple as this act might have appeared to her, the emotions with which the woman recounted the experience leaves one in no doubt that Emodi symbolises great leadership to her.

Instructively, it is a way of life that accounts for her grassroots appeal, political longevity, and status as a politician for all seasons. This is also the secret of her survival in the shark-infested waters of Anambra politics.

  For instance, she met stiff opposition when she wanted to represent her people at the 1994/95 Constitutional Conference. Her “sins” were her principled life and not having money to throw about. But while her opponents were busy throwing money about, she was busy campaigning at the grassroots and only cooked for her campaign team. Yet she trumped her opponent, a prominent man, winning over 70 per cent of the votes.

Emodi gave a good account of herself at the conference. In her 60th birthday interview, she recalled how the likes of Dr Olusola Saraki, Senator Barnabas Gemade, Prof Jubril Aminu, Dr Abel Ubeku, among others, discovered her leadership attributes at the conference. They were to later rally support for then young Emodi to emerge the National Legal Adviser of the newly formed CNC.

When it was also time for the gubernatorial election, they felt that she would make a good candidate and governor in Anambra and enlisted the support of key players in the state like Prince Arthur Eze.

Those familiar with Anambra politics would always confess that but for Abacha’s death and the truncation of that transition programme, Emodi was coasting home to victory as CNC had already cleared all the House of Representatives seats and overwhelmingly won the local council elections.

She later ran for the governorship in 1998/1999 on the platform of the All Peoples Party (APP), during the General Abdulsalami Abubakar transition to civil rule programme, but was rigged out in a clear daylight electoral robbery.

Her journey to the Senate as the first female Senator from the South East in 2003 was not also easy. Even when she contested and won, the PDP/INEC replaced her and those of the other PDP senatorial candidates like Senator Ben Obi with people, who either never purchased nomination forms or vied for other positions entirely. But at the end of the day, she got back her mandate and became the first Igbo woman to be a Senator

Her courage and principled stand on issues stood her out in that 5th Senate. While she was loyal to the PDP and Chief Olusegun Obasanjo-led administration, she was more loyal to her conscience and Nigeria. Several insiders have remarked that she was one of the few Senators that neither touched the alleged N50 million Third Term largesse nor a dime from the anti-Third Term movement.

  But Emodi was later to pay for her seeming stubbornness as she faced all manner of roadblocks in her bid to return to the Senate in  2007, but she trumped them all. She also defeated the real candidates at the tribunal only for one  Alphonsus Igbeke (who never really contested the election) to undo her at the Court of Appeal in a bizarre judgment that seriously dented the judiciary at the time.

  As Special Adviser to former President Goodluck Jonathan, Emodi brought her unimpeachable integrity and the respect she enjoyed among the lawmakers to bear.

While she held sway, no executive bill failed in the National Assembly, all presidential nominees as ministers, ambassadors, chairmen and members of Commissions, etc. were confirmed, except one minister and a commissioner.

The 2013 National Budget was passed on 20th December 2012, a record time since 1999 and about a day or two earlier than the 2020 and 2021 budgets erroneously thought by many to be the speediest.

Emodi deserved to serve till the end of that administration, but elements within the presidency felt that she was too pro-National Assembly and its leadership. In reality, however, she only refused to pander to unnecessary conspiracy theories against the legislature or engage in needless antagonism.

She was ultimately sacked unceremoniously in 2014. Interestingly, with her sack, Jonathan could no longer venture into National Assembly until the end of his administration. Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweal presented the 2015 national budget. Despite all, Anambra people saw how she fought like a tigress for Jonathan’s failed re-election bid.

It was no doubt in recognition of her sterling credentials in the legislature that the former Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki appointed her Chairman of the National Assembly Service Commission. Unfortunately, it was eventually not consummated until it was overtaken by events.

Meanwhile, the surface of Emodi’s political journey cannot be scratched without a mention of her days as a student activist and a disciple of Malam Aminu Kano and his socialist, egalitarian and masses-oriented politics or her election as Chairman of the “Belawa Hall” at the University of Nigeria Nsukka where she bagged both a BSc. Geography Education and later an LLB. Degree.

She was an Executive Secretary, Anambra State Capital Development Authority and a member of the Nigerian delegations to the famous 1995 Beijing Conference, Third African-American Summit in Senegal in 1995, the ECOWAS Parliament, ECOWAS Parliament Election Observer Mission to Sierra Leone, a member of the International Leaders Forum (ILF) and Nigerian delegation to the Democratic Party’s national convention in Denver, Colorado, USA in 2008. Given her passion for education and exploits as Chairman Senate Committee on Education, she was appointed UNESCO Focal Person in Nigerian Parliament.

During the 2006 visit by former United States First Lady, Laura Bush, the USAID Mission Director described Senator Joy Emodi as “one of the most dynamic and influential women in Nigeria today”.

Meanwhile, although many have not hidden their grief over Emodi’s decision to switch allegiance to the PDP, they have not also hidden their belief that given her antecedents, an only conviction could have propelled her. Besides, as Achebe would write, “If we fall back, can we complain that others are rushing forward?” If PDP refused to lick its lips, why should they begrudge the harmattan (APC) for doing so on their behalf?

Adadioramma, as she is fondly called, is an  Ijele Nwanyi and political hurricane in grassroots mobilisation and appeal, hence the landing of this eagle is a good omen for the APC in the South East, but an unarguably big loss to the PDP.

Ideagu writes from Onitsha

Vanguard News Nigeria