By Eze Nwamadi, Ogbonna Asadu and Ezema Igwenunu
Whatever remained of Chijioke Edeoga’s misguided bid for the governorship seat of Enugu State had come to an abrupt end on May 25, 2022, after the PDP gubernatorial primary where Peter Ndubuisi Mbah deservedly emerged the governorship candidate of the party. Chijioke himself knew he had met a dark alley in his governorship bid. Left with no option, he bowed before Peter and kissed the dust off his feet. He knew clearly he and his illicit overambition had been rounded up. He had no option than pledge support to Peter Mbah. The dismembered carcass of his support base was gathered and handed over to Mbah, and in a press release, Edeoga pledged his support to the highly celebrated go-getter, Peter Mbah, an oil mogul, who has distinguished himself in the downstream oil sector. Edeoga was jobless after he had served as an aide to President Jonathan, a job he reportedly handled so ineptly that Jonathan had wanted to sack him but then patiently waited to ease him out on the expiration of his tenure. It was from such political doldrums that Governor Ugwuanyi pulled Chijioke, his cousin, and made him a commissioner in his administration. It was a kind of rehabilitation as Ugwuanyi gave Chijioke a lifeline. His Excellency,Governor Ugwuanyi, was minded to fully get Chijioke rehabilitated. Little did he know that iniquity had crept in on Edeoga in the process of time, such iniquity as was found in Lucifer, an archangel, who had thought to ascend to the throne of the Most High, the iniquity of desperate overambition. A man under such rehabilitation had overnight developed dangerous overambition. No one knew Edeoga was coveting Ugwuanyi’s thronegance and all manner of debauchery had taken infernal grip on Chijioke. The spirit of Absalom reigned in him. He would convert government magazine to his personal property and also would use the said LG News Magazine to defraud the 17 local government chairmen in Enugu State to the tune of over N2 billion as was recently uncovered by some investigative journalists. As a matter of fact, that is left for the anti-graft agencies to handle. Chijioke would also hijack and misappropriate without paying them a dime. Even the monthly honorarium due to the team was often misappropriated by Chijioke. If any of them raised an eyebrow, he would cajole and intimidate them with the subtle threat that he would soon become the governor of Enugu State, and that anyone who would not fall in line would have themselves to blame. Edeoga had known quite clearly that he would not emerge the candidate of the PDP, but he had thought to gamble it and leverage his relationship with Ugwuanyi to play most foul for it. He knew also he did not have the financial war-chest to prosecute his governorship bid, but had hoped Ugwuanyi would bankroll it for him in his sense of clannish infantilism. Edeoga gave the media team two terms of reference: to present him as a saint and to cast slur on any other aspirant for the governorship position. He knew that Peter Mbah was a frontline aspirant and so had devoted much energy to churn out false and damaging claims against the brilliant young transformational leader. Edeoga stopped at nothing in his bid to create wrong impressions about Mbah, using the media team he had hijacked. In spite of all that, Peter took Edeoga to the cleaners and won the gubernatorial election resoundingly. Following the emergence of Peter and other choice candidates of the PDP in the state, some disgruntled politicians of Nsukka extraction who failed at the PDP primaries ganged up against Governor Ugwuanyi and the party. They teamed up with the Nwodos who had yet to divest themselves of their arrogant claims to the leadership of Nsukka cultural zone, even when they have provenance in Ojobogene, Udi North. The Nwodos quick
