*Fresh facts emerge on Onyebuchi’s impeachment

Enugu—THE new Deputy Governor of Enugu State, Rev. Raphael Nwoye, will be sworn in today inside the Executive Council chamber, even as the last may not have been heard concerning the impeachment of the former Deputy Governor, Sunday Onyebuchi by the State House of Assembly.

Governor Sullivan Chime delivered a master stroke with the appointment of the new deputy governor, an outcome of a consultation between Chime and stakeholders from Nkanu East Local Government Area which included Pastor Sam Iyiogwe, the Council chairman and Mr. Chijioke Nwachukwu, the Local Government chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Nwoye and the impeached Onyebuchi hail from the same clan in Isiogbo Nara of Nkanu East. Both, it was gathered, are somewhat related. Many observers have commended Chime for retaining the seat not only in the same local government area but in the same community.

Today, the people are bracing up for the reign of Nwoye which will bring fresh perspectives to governance in the state, especially with his experience as a former council boss, an ex-commissioner and a cleric.

But the last may not have been heard of the cold relationship between Chime and his erstwhile deputy which culminated in Onyebuchi’s ouster. But behind all the brouhaha of running a poultry, one of the major reasons why the former deputy governor was sacked was due largely to his blunt refusal to represent his boss at state and national functions.

Chime himself told the state PDP caucus on July 26, 2014 that his deputy had made it a habit to refuse to represent him at functions or carry out other directives. According to the governor, “over time, my deputy (Onyebuchi) was finding it difficult to represent me at functions even when so clearly directed. He saw representing me as a favour and not a constitutional duty.

“The one that broke the camel’s back was the meeting of the South-East Governors Forum. When I got a message from our (Forum) chairman, Governor Theodore Orji of Abia State that he had scheduled a meeting during my vacation, I reached across to my director of protocol and directed him to ask the deputy governor to represent me at the meeting.

“I was quite shocked when he called back later to say that my deputy said he wasn’t going to represent me at the meeting because I did not tell him that I was travelling. I was taken aback because not only did I tell him, I also announced it to the entire executive council members and it was part of the media briefing at the end of that Exco meeting. Meanwhile, my deputy was part of the meeting.

“I said I wasn’t interested in who said what and then asked my director of protocol to prepare a manifest detailing that he was to represent me and send same to him. True to his word, my deputy didn’t show up. He preferred to go and play football on that Sunday.”

Insubordination
Of course, there were other instances of the insubordination of Onyebuchi and refusal to take directives from Chime. “He (Onyebuchi) always gave excuses of being sick at many other times he was asked to represent the governor but what happened in those times was that other officers of government would be sent to cover the same functions. The difference this time around that Onyebuchi plainly sent words back to me that he was not going to be at the South-East Governors Forum meeting. He carried out the threat.”

On his return from his two-week vacation, Onyebuchi approached the governor to ask for permission to travel overseas. At this juncture, Chime, as he told the caucus, asked his former deputy why he thought he should grant him the request to travel. “But he hit back and asked me to also give him one reason why I should not grant him the permission to travel,” Chime told the caucus members.

It was at this point that the governor told the then deputy governor that it was obvious they could both not work together again.

According to Chime, “there’s no way you can allow someone as important as your deputy stand behind you when he is obviously working against you; not at this time that we’re going into (electoral) battles.”

One other clear case of Onyebuchi’s unwillingness to play any other meaningful role, as Vanguard learnt, was during the last campaigns for the December Local Government polls, the fourth to be conducted by the Chime administration. Chime led other government and party functionaries in the campaigns across the seventeen local government areas.

However, Onyebuchi gave an excuse that he was ill and did not take part in any of the campaigns except the last one in Chime’s Udi Local Government Area. Meanwhile, he was attending other social events even outside the state during this period. The embarrassment was more telling when the campaign train visited Onyebuchi’s Nkanu East Council where the programme had to be adjusted because the then deputy governor was not around to address his people.

With these developments, it was predictable that the parting of ways between Chime and Onyebuchi was imminent. Curiously, Onyebuchi has continued to allege that he was impeached because of his interest to contest the Enugu East senatorial election.

Sympathy
His mission was to whip up sympathy and cause as much confusion that would compel the public to mount pressures on the House to drop the charges or for the investigative panel to set him free.

Senator Ken Nnamani, the former President of the Senate put the matter in proper perspective in an interview published in Vanguard Newspapers on August 29, 2014. “I am from that senatorial zone,” said Nnamani “and the deputy governor is not a threat to anybody’s political ambition. He has never vied for councillorship, he has never vied for election before. All of a sudden, he thinks he has become a threat in a senatorial race, it is most unfortunate. I don’t think there is any relationship between his so-called ambition of wanting to become a Senator and his predicament. He is not a threat to anybody at all and I am sure he knows that himself. I don’t see how he could have jumped and won a senatorial seat. Based on what? It is not possible. In a free and fair election, he cannot consider himself a threat to anyone.”

Onyebuchi’s defence
Again, in his defence to the charge of running a commercial poultry in his official quarters at the Government House,  Onyebuchi claimed that Governor Chime was running a bigger poultry in his own residence. He also alleged that in his capacity as Acting Governor (while Chime was on leave), he (Onyebuchi) had received and approved a memo from the Chief of Staff for the release of funds for the maintenance of the Governor’s “ poultry and piggery”.

According to our Government House source, “this is yet another lie told by the former deputy governor because no such memo was ever written and we challenge him to produce a copy especially because he admitted that copies of all other documents he attended to as acting governor were still in his custody.”

Also, Onyebuchi had made huge efforts to create the impression that he was impeached for owning a poultry farm. His offence was not that he operated such a poultry farm but that he did so within his official residential quarters in violation of laws of the state where he is the number two citizen.   He had also refused to relocate the birds when the relevant government agencies and personnel went to plead with him to do so.

According to Chukwudi Achife, the chief press secretary to Chime, “the deputy governor’s claims that Governor Chime runs a poultry in the Governor’s Lodge is most unfortunate and surprising. This is because it is patently untrue and the deputy governor knows better.

“It is important to clarify that the said Agric unit is not within the Governor’s residential premises but a unit in Government House which has other units like the Press unit, drivers unit, among others.”