By Martins E. Ogbu
Nothing has ripped open the hypocrisy of the opposition in Enugu State like the 2023 general elections, particularly the governorship election and its outcome. Even since the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Dr. Peter Ndubuisi Mbah as the winner of the March 18 governorship election, the Labour Party (LP) candidate, Chijioke Edeoga; his All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) counterpart, Frank Nweke Jr., their parties and social media warriors have bandied all manners of propaganda all in the bid to discredit and delegitimise the outcome.
Before the election, for instance, Nweke Jr. had called a press conference where he painted phantom plots by the PDP and INEC to rig an election against him; an election he knew in the depths of his heart that of all the candidates, he stood no chances at all. Not surprising, he called another press conference at the weekend to upbraid the INEC and the PDP and give excuses on why he failed – how town criers went around Enugu in the morning of the election to tell people not to vote for him; how a fake story went round claiming he had stepped down for Dr. Mbah of the PDP; how his opponents shared garden egg, ose oji, etc.
Yet, this is a man rejected by his own people. It beats imagination how a man who polled only 1,609 votes in his LGA, Nkanu West, as against 8,382 votes polled by Dr. Peter Mbah of the PDP, and also managed 17,983 state-wide as against Dr. Mbah’s 160,895 votes hoped to win the governorship election in the first place. Suffice it to say that APGA has no ward or local government structures in the state, and it is not as if Nweke is a political juggernaut in the state or one, who has touched lives even in his Ozalla community through jobs and projects while he was Chief of Staff to Governor Chimaroke Nnamani or served in three different federal ministries. It is also not as if he has engaged in philanthropy.
Indeed, the Enugu PDP Campaign Council aptly captured before the election when it stated that Frank Nweke’s value and impact as far as the governorship election would be to congest and make the ballot paper longer than necessary.
Besides, it is only hypocrisy that would push Frank Nweke Jr. to defend the 2007 elections, which is adjudged the worst electoral fraud in Nigeria history, only to deprecate the Enugu governorship election in which technology, including the Biometric Voter Verification Systems (BVAS) was profusely applied. This is the same Frank Nweke who accused former Senate President, Chief Ken Nnamani of planning an Interim National Government with some foreign powers because Nnamani criticised the 2007 elections; the same Nweke that attacked Madeleine Albright who led the U.S election observation mission for thumbing down the 2007 heist; the same person that claimed that branded critics of the 2007 election coup plotters. That same man is running his mouth on an incomparable better election because Nigerians forget so easily.
But by far the worst hypocrite is Edeoga. It was delusional of him to have expected Enugu people to transfer the goodwill and votes enjoyed by Obi in the presidential election to him in the governorship election. That was all he was banking upon to reap from the Obi bandwagon as they (Labour Party) did in the presidential and National Assembly Elections. He forgot that Enugu people supported Obi overwhelmingly because he is competent and has character. But is Edeoga competent and does he have character? Edeoga that failed woefully as commissioner for Local Government Matters and has failed to address the N2 Billion fraud allegation dogging his tenure in that capacity. Edeoga that did not have any manifesto and claimed he had more leadership capacity than Obi because he, in his own words, has been in government continually since 1992.
Enugu people supported Obi also in the name of justice because we believed it was the South
