By Kelechi Abonuyo

It is no longer mere hints that the political atmosphere in Nigeria, for the 2019 contests, has moved to top gears, with many aspirants jostling and building political bridges. It is ‘‘full story’’, especially as many interest groups, like the Imo Network Group for instance, have emerged.

Going by what has happened in Nigeria in the past two years or so, it is time for the people to look inwards and rejuvenate. The introduction into the body polity of 95% and 5%  discrepancy in the allocation of national resources, otherwise known to Nigerians as ‘‘national cake’’ is as well not news anymore.

The entire south-eastern states are still grappling with the wilful neglect of their zone, where infrastructural development (emphasis on road and rail network) and federal government presence are far cries from the rest of the regions – who are blessed with 95%.

Back in the days when People’s Democratic Party (PDP) was looming larger than life, with impunity, and forecasting to rule the largest black country ‘‘for the next sixty uninterrupted years’’, PDP politicians, in their wildest dreams, never knew that the day of reckoning would dawn.

Soon, the All Progressives Congress party (APC) came on board with ‘‘alternative facts’’, which specifically are counter narratives that looked true on the surface, but deeply flawed and misleading in substance. Those facts, like eggs, were laid in the south-west and hatched in the north. The entire North! And after the elections of 2015 were lost and won, we came to the present unfortunate circumstance. The rest is a painful story, and those of us who played a part, in no small measure, sometimes with pseudonyms, had to maintain a dignified silence.

Of all the federating states in Nigeria, Imo state, the Eastern Heartland, is the worst beaten. It is beaten to bits! It is suffocating under APC’s heavy-handedness. The electorate asked for ‘fish’. Instead of fish, they received ‘snake’. For ‘egg’, they got rather ‘scorpion’. Blessed with eminent intellectuals and professionals, Imo State pangs on the seashore of maladministration, cast out of good governance – like a fish out of the river and left to pant slowly to death.

For the past six years, not only that the state has been practically exsanguinated, it has been bitten (like a venomous snake bite), run and administered like a family estate in the Donald Trump style, with so many misappropriations to cover up. There is no problem anyway. The year of reckoning is nigh. The year 2019 is dangerously looming.

In the coming months, we shall begin to tell the story of what happened to Imo State, which is still happening in real-time. Yes! In Imo State you know, where the professional politician, blessed with white teeth, smiles the state into political stupor and scorn, massively short-changes the masses with some bogus claims and still hopes to install his successor from his extended family. The worst act is what happened to retirees recently, when a natural law was reversed, when ‘labourers’ were denied their ‘wages’, a shameful act so repugnant to Ndi-Imo.

While the entire states of the federation were strolling to Abuja on daily basis, cup-in-hand, begging for allocations to meet up with some state obligations, Anambra State – South-eastern best bet to the rest of Nigeria, shamed them all. Anambra State is governed by All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), an eastern-grown political party, which styles its modus operandi on the template of Igboman’s method of self-regeneration. The party is from within. It is rugged and unfailing, where its principles are applied with due diligence. It should have been a national template if we have had sane politicians.

Today, a college of Imo professionals in politics has jettisoned those professional politicians, especially the rogue ones. These professionals have just one aim: To take back their state and future in their hands, for the greater good. They have decided that enough is enough. They have decided to present the ANAMBRA EXAMPLE to Imolites.

A particular Igbo proverb is therefore very interesting here. Regarding politicians and their whims and caprices, their initial coded cunning and final wicked and wonderful manoeuvres, ‘‘All Lizards lie on their belly; we cannot decode the very one with bellyache’’. If you think this proverb is like a psalm, then here is something like the responsorial to it. ‘‘When a cunning man dies’’, Igbo proverb says, ‘‘a cunning man buries him’’. And this is why these professionals have thrown spanner in the works, day and night, in order to emancipate Ndi-Imo.

Of all those presently parading themselves for the top job in Imo State, through a gubernatorial contest in 2019, Hon Ike C Ibe is the best. After a background check on intent, comprising many factors, he is fit for purpose. In the remaining part of the year, till 2019, we shall be discussing with you all the things that stand him out – make him thicker. And this is why we affirm:

*Ike C Ibe the Child of Imolites’ brain. He is a product of our collective endeavour and the materialisation of our inventive genius. He is an ‘‘anti-snake bite vaccine’’. Past political brokers have not succeeded in producing anything so potent in governance like him. But we the professionals from the state produced ‘‘this medicine from the ‘herb’ within’’. We are professionally Engineers, lawyers, Teachers, Business men and women, Technicians, Professors, Bankers, Publishers, Authors and Novelists, Doctors, Clergies, Traders, Scientists, Students, Catalysts, Analysts and Mathematicians, etc. You will find ‘‘this medicine’’ very useful in 2019. He is not only for the contest, but also to win and govern Imo State, to alleviate poverty, improve healthcare, improve power and infrastructure, improve security and democratic dividends, and grow our economy. (*Adapted from Bambulu’s statement in ‘‘This is Our Chance’’ by James Ene Henshaw).

That statement is eternally true and relevant in today’s Imo State.

 You can reach the writer on kabonuyo@yahoo.com