By Basil Okoh
It is a wonder how men and the organizations they represent are prancing around and taking positions on Anioma State creation that are patently antidemocratic and purporting to speak for publics that do not exist. I speak of Izu Anioma, Ukpe Anioma and the local hybrid of no determinate nature, Onu Ika. These groups represent no one and no public in Anioma.
Far ahead in this game of creating a false public is of course the protagonist of the crisis himself, Ned Nwoko. Nwoko is agitating the Anioma people in the face of a waning political relevance, even as sitting senator. He raised a false flag to draw attention to himself and his crumbling senatorial mandate, now he cannot contain or control the avalanche of angry and hateful bees that has been attracted to himself through his own conceit.
Ned Nwoko is an opposition senator. PDP Is a minority party both in the national parliament and the states’ ruling governments. His reach and capacity as a PDP senator to deliver on bills and mobilize the states is limited. But Ned Nwoko would have us believe that he owns the senate, including the buildings and that Senate President Godswill Akpabio is his major domo. He is of course a rookie politician so no one takes him serious on his claims, particularly on important national issues. His notoriety is not in politics but in other areas.
Beyond what Ned Nwoko can imagine or make us believe, State creation is a touchy and trouble rousing issue in Nigeria, affecting the very fundament of national existence. State creation touches the very nerve of national cohesion and regional alignments and no matter how much Nwoko pretends, it is a sure overreach for his political capacity.
He has neither the political sagacity, connections nor the means to face up to the daunting, overwhelming challenges or the convoluted manouvres involved in state creation. And he neither understands nor can he meet the constitutional and political demands of the Anioma dream. So Contrary to whatever claims Ned Nwoko makes now, the Anioma State Creation Movement started decades before his time, perhaps at the time he was finding out what a state means.
His recent awakening to the Anioma state creation cause and his posing to being the lone champion of the Movement, is not without the suspicion that he may be rooted in a connivance that no one can yet understand.
Ned Nwoko’s determination to yoke the Anioma to the Igbo of the South-East is not without an agenda of self interest. There must be something in it that no one else other than Ned Nwoko can yet see.
Nwoko keeps doubling down on his determination to hook Anioma to the Southeast. Neither the Southeast nor the Anioma people want to be engaged in Nwoko’s forbidden romance. So he must be invited to tell us the gains from the Southeast that cannot be found from affiliation with our brethren in the South-South or the Midwest.
Anioma people do not want a state that will atone for Igbo or Southeastern political grievance. Anioma cannot be a gift to propitiate the sense of deprivation of the Southeast. Anioma cannot be a gift offering to the Igbo.
But not minding our feelings on the matter, Nwoko is doubling down and dragging us into a second class status in Igboland that our people do not want. He will find out soon enough that more worthy Anioma people have been in the political game long before he was gifted the senate seat.
