THE defection of former Senate President, Senator Ken Nnamani, from the
People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC)
late last year could not have come as a surprise to many. This is on
account of the widely held belief that his conduct, deportment and
principled disposition are totally at variance with the questionable
image of the PDP. His progressive bent, on the other hand, endeared him
to many leaders of the APC who with eager and cheerful readiness
accepted him into their fold as soon as he made known his intention to
defect.
Many Nigerians live in nostalgia of the
mature manner he handled the bid by desperate moneybags to secure for
the then President Olusegun Obasanjo a preposterous third term. This
they had hoped to achieve by
manipulating the upper chamber to endorse
Obasanjo’s candidacy for another election. Presiding with the calmness
of a dove over the session in which the sensitive and volatile issue was
debated, Nnamani sanctioned live television coverage of the debate as
senators took turns to state their positions on the matter. In the end,
the third term agenda was shot down, ending a development that would
have turned the country into a banana republic. While many expected
Nnamani to make a political capital of his soaring popularity after
frustrating the hugely unpopular third term bid, he took a break from
partisan politics and recoiled into his shell.
He followed that up by severing ties
with the PDP about a year ago, saying, “I am quitting the party because I
do not believe that I should continue to be a member of the PDP as it
is defined today. This is certainly not the party I joined years ago to
help change my country.” While previous occupants of the coveted seat of
the Senate President from Chuba Okadigbo to Evans Enwerem and Adolphus
Wabara were enmeshed in various scandals, Nnamani left the hallowed seat
as clean as a hound’s tooth after occupying it for two years between
2005 and 2007.
Little wonder President Muhammadu Buhari
wasted no time in appointing him the head of the recently constituted
Electoral Reform Committee. The factors that motivated his choice by
Buhari most probably impelled Governor Rochas Okorocha to also pronounce
him the leader of the APC in the South East during a zonal
stakeholders’ meeting of the party at the Imo International Convention
Centre (IICC) in Owerri recently. Addressing the gathering on the
occasion, which included Nnamani and other political heavyweights like
Emeka Offor, Ifeanyi Ararume, Tony Eze, Ebuka Onunkwo, Jombo Offor and
the Deputy Governor of Imo State, Eze Madumere, among others, Governor
Okorocha, who said he had resisted the pressure mounted on him to lead
the party in the zone, said: “Now that Igbo leaders are together in the
APC, Nigerians will hear us. There is a vacuum of leadership in the
South East APC. I am a governor. My brothers, Chris Ngige and Dr.
Ogbonnaya Onu, are ministers.
Hence the importance of Senator Ken
Nnamani coming at this time. I decline the leadership of Ndigbo in APC.”
He added: “With Senator Ken Nnamani now with us in the party, the
question of who is the leader of the APC in the South East has been
answered. Ken Nnamani is the leader of the APC in the South East.
Senator Nnamani should then work with other leaders like Emmanuel
Iwuanyawu, Jim Nwobodo and a host of others to give Ndigbo political
direction.”
Okorocha’s pronouncement was apparently
based on his belief that Nnamani had proven himself as a competent
leader, particularly in the period he held sway as Senate President,
after serving as the Chairman of the Committee on Federal Character and
Governmental Affairs and member of committees on Privatization, Federal
Capital Territory and Appropriation and Finance. Besides, unlike other
South East leaders who are holding ministerial and other cabinet
appointments, he is not saddled with an office that would deprive him
maximum concentration on his job as South East leader of APC.
Surprisingly, Okorocha’s noble pronouncement has sparked outrage in the
circle of aggrieved politicians in the region who saw it as a bid by the
governor to score a cheap political point.
The opposition to Nnamani’s leadership
of the APC in the South East would come as a shock to many who had
watched his near-impeccable conduct as senator and Senate president.
That much was echoed by a chieftain and founding Vice Chairman of the
APC in Enugu State, Chief Anike Nwoga, who in throwing his weight behind
Okorocha’s choice of Nnamani, said Okorocha’s move was perfectly in the
interest of Ndigbo. Said he: “Some people have been saying why Ken
Nnamani? But my response to that is that he is 100 per cent qualified to
be the leader of the APC in the South East. Okorocha saw leadership
qualities in Ken Nnamani, and that is why he conceded the South-East
zonal leadership to him. You should not forget that he was the number
three man in Nigeria, having served as the Senate President.
“Considering that position, there is nobody in the APC today who is more
qualified than Nnamani as the South East leader of the party. Governor
Okorocha is a wise person.
He did the most intelligent thing. He
has done a great thing for the growth of the APC in the South-East
because Nnamani is a great son of Igbo land; a decent man for that
matter. “Let us not also forget that since the news of his defection to
the APC spread in Nigeria, many people have also been joining the party,
not just in the South East but across the country. This is because of
Ken Nnamani’s name.
That is why we see other senators, other
top politicians also trooping into the party.” Okorocha, a statesman
many years ahead his time, believes that a responsibility as huge as the
leadership of the APC in the South East requires a man with remarkable
antecedents like Nnamani’s, particularly in a regime that has made the
anti-corruption war a cardinal mission. But he has to contend with the
grim reality that only the back bench is reserved for such credible
leadership materials in this clime. Elsewhere, his nomination would draw
rapturous applause. It would be seen as a show of appreciation for the
clean and meritorious way he conducted the affairs of the Senate after
the scandals that rocked the tenures of his predecessors. But ours is a
nation that would not acknowledge excellence, much less reward it.
Credit: http://thenationonlineng.net
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