Ihedioha distances self from trending article, “The Tragedy Called Imo State,” says authors are ‘loathsome mischief makers.’
By Emma Ogbuehi
Former governor of Imo State, Chief Emeka Ihedioha, has distanced himself from an article trending in the social media.
The article titled, “The Tragedy Called Imo State,” was said to have been authored by him in reaction to the November 11, governorship election which was won by the incumbent governor, Senator Hope Uzodimma.
Ihedioha, whose tenure was cut short in a controversial Supreme Court ruling on January 14, 2020, after only seven months in office, was not a candidate in the November 11 election.
Since his unjustified sack almost four years ago, he has refrained from talking about his ordeal in the media.
In a rebuttal on Friday titled, “Mischief makers at work” by his media office, Ihedioha said opinions and sentiments expressed in the article were “the products of the putrid imagination of its purveyors.”
The former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives said as a Nigerian citizen who has had the privilege of holding leadership positions in the political space, he can never descend into guttersnipes.
He, therefore called on all well-meaning Nigerians and people of good conscience to ignore the article.
The statement which was signed by Chibuike Onyeukwu, his Chief Press Secretary, reads:
“The attention of the Media Office of His Excellency, Rt. Hon. Emeka Ihedioha CON, has been drawn to a mischievous story trending in the social media wherein an article entitled “The Tragedy Called Imo State” is being attributed to him. The piece of balderdash sent out in his name purports that he is angry with what the authors of the article called “Northern Islamic Oligarchy” for removing him as the governor of Imo State. The forgers of the piece of cant also claim that he is angry with the Imo political elite and the generality of the people of Imo State for their docile response to the Supreme Court judgment of January 14, 2020, among other infantile attributions.
“We state here, for the avoidance of doubt, and for the records, that the article in question was not written by His Excellency, Rt. Hon. Emeka Ihedioha.
“The opinions and sentiments expressed therein are not his. Instead, they are the products of the putrid imagination of its purveyors. Associating him with the poisonous views expressed in that fairy tale is not only cheap and disingenuous, it is mischief writ large.
“As a Nigerian citizen who has had the privilege of holding leadership positions in the political space, His Excellency Rt. Hon. Emeka Ihedioha has not and can never descend into guttersnipes. He understands the meaning and value of good breeding. He is therefore not one to shoot irresponsibly into the public space.
“It is evident from the timing of this blackmail that the mischief-makers set out to exploit and cash in on the outcome of the just concluded governorship election in Imo State. The figment of their imagination must have led them astray, making them to believe, as they do, that Rt. Hon. Ihedioha has an axe to grind with the election and its outcome. This poor reasoning can only emanate from tainted minds scavenging desperately for mischief. But they got it all wrong.
“It is on record that His Excellency Rt. Hon. Emeka Ihedioha has never made any inflammatory or incendiary remark since he was removed as the governor of Imo State. His dignified silence is for a reason. He is a firm believer in constitutionality and the rule of law. He detests self-help. That was why he never went outside the purview of the law in his quest for justice and people-centered democratic order.
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“It should be pointed out as well that the attempt to portray him as someone who harbours anti-northern and anti-Islamic sentiments is an act of bad faith. It is intended to put him on collision course with the northern political and religious establishment. But the mischief has failed disastrously.
“In his political journey over the years, Rt. Hon. Ihedioha has had a healthy association with Nigerians of various religious and political shades. At no time has he been associated with bigotry of any sort. Seeking to impose one on him smacks of bad blood on the part of its promoters. Nigerians who have associated with him both at national and sub national levels can attest to his centripetal disposition to national issues.
“We therefore call on well-meaning Nigerians as well as men and women of goodwill the world over to disregard the piece of blackmail being woven around him. Rt. Hon. Ihedioha never authored or authorized to be authored any article in the mound of that being imposed on him by agents of mischief. The purveyors of the blackmail should be seen for who they are – mischief makers.”
Even before Ihedioha’s rebuttal, many people who read the article said it couldn’t have come from him.
When TheNiche sought clarification from him as to the authorship of the trending article, he responded, “Fake.”
- Below is the mischievous article which though has no byline but is being circulated in the social media with Emeka Ihedioha’s photograph
THE TRAGEDY CALLED IMO STATE
I have restrained myself from writing about Imo State, the Eastern Heartland, and my beloved fatherland because of a vicious anger that refused to go away. Each time I remembered my ancestral home in the last four years, the same volume of anger flooded my spirit. My soul refused to be healed.
I restrained myself from writing because of the golden law of communication – do not speak when angry.
I was angry for two reasons. First I was angry with the Northern Islamic Oligarchy and her Feudal Lords who exploited the weakness of the Nigerian State and the gullibility of her institutions to manipulate and manufacture the tragedy that is Imo today, just to fulfill the feudal dreams of the Grand Madhi.
The last Northern Madhi, Muhamadu Buhari was determined to fulfill the territorial dream of the Grand Madhi, Sultan Usman Dan Fodio, to overrun Nigeria with militant lslam and deep the Quran in the sea, a dream the British interrupted with their emergence on the Nigerian scene and their conquest of the Sokoto Caliphate in 1903.
That dream remained the driving force of the Northern political establishment and was resumed by all means after the British left.
That dream consumes popular leaders among the kafirs and throws up unpopular compromised compliant leaders among them who will be ready to take dictations from the new Madhi.
That dream consumed Awolowo and sent him to Calabar prison, imposed unpopular leaders on the then Western Region and triggered off “Operation Wetie,” the singular evil that led to January 15 coup by Chukwuma Nzeogwu, the July 29 retaliatory coup by Muritala Mohammed, the Igbo pogroms and to Biafra.
On January 14, 2020, a day prior to the celebrated January 15 coup, Muhammadu Buhari unleashed his own brand of judicial coup in Imo State. With only three years to go, Madhi Buhari turned his dreamy eyes to the Eastern Heartland. On that fateful January 14, employing an already weakened Supreme Court, with a younger Madhi in the stable, Buhari turned justice on its head, discarded the sovereign will of Imo people and imposed a compromised compliant leader on the State.
The dream paid off in full – in four years of the impostor’s government, thousands of Imo youths have been ‘converted’ to Islam through government patronage and were sponsored to pilgrimage to Mecca with government funds.
We are likely going to have more Alhajis in Imo State alone than in all the Northern states put together. This is at the expense of peace, and with a high cost in blood and terror.
Unabated evil has ravaged the state and walked naked on her streets as a result of that abrasive injustice occasioned by Buhari’s judicial coup.
The anger of a state sponsored terror in my homeland has refused to go away. It is an ongoing bloody coup, more bloody than any coup that ever happened in Nigeria.
The second reason for my unabated anger was on the treacherous sellout and greedy nuances of the Imo political elite as well as the docility of the Imo populace. Less than one month after Buhari’s coup in lmo, the whole political class began a gullible dance of solidarity for the impostors. There was no single resistance.
In the twinkling of an eye all the PDP law makers who were in the majority, including the Speaker became politically compliant, joined the conqueror’s party without qualms and ditched the man elected together with them by the people.
The people were no different. A collective amnesia descended on the land. A people must get the leaders they deserve, leaders must become the government of the people. In the final analysis, Imo people simply got the government they deserved.
In 1965 the Yoruba nation, who the Igbo often derogate as cowards rose in solidarity with their true leaders and resisted the imposition of leaders by the Northern oligarchy. Nigeria changed the next year.
In 1983, the people of Ondo State rose in solidarity with their chosen leaders and resisted the imposition of an Omoboriowo on them by the same Northern establishment. Three months later, Nigeria changed again. A people must indeed get the leadership they deserve.
The Imo tragedy further revealed to me a recurring trajectory of my people, something l have discovered from experience – “You don’t fight an Igbo war, you fight your war.”
Igbo war ended with Biafra. From then till now, it is your war and your war alone. It has become ‘every Igbo for himself and God for us all. Anyone going into any battle who is counting on Igbo collective resistance is wasting his time. Such discovery has made me angry, very angry.
In 1999 we found ourselves embroiled in a war of survival as Igbo speaking Anglican worshippers in Lagos Diocese. The diocese had come up with an obnoxious law, abrogating the use of Igbo language in all Igbo speaking congregations in Lagos.
Being in the vanguard of Igbo evangelism in Lagos, and having single handedly established six thriving Igbo speaking congregations within a space of two years, I became the main target of that war.
The “Igbo Anglicans in Lagos” formed in the exigency of the existential trauma of the moment became the vanguard of that war.
At the inception of the religious war, the then Primate of the Church of Nigeria and Bishop of Lagos, His Grace, the Most Rev’d J.A. Adetiloye described it as “nothing but a storm in a tea cup.” He understood the psychology of the Igbo very well.
It was exactly as he predicted. The Igbo resistance was without depth and without content. The storm faded as soon as it started with many Igbo casualties littering the religious space in Lagos.
Today, as Imo people go to the polls, I refuse to have any expectations and so refuse to be disappointed. I am still angry. I have no faith in the Imo government, I have no faith in the electoral umpire, I have no faith in the judicial system, l have no faith in Imo political elite, and above all I have no faith in the Imo people. I expect nothing, and so save myself the agony of any disappointment
If at all there is anything to expect, it is the certainty that the next electoral robbery will be swallowed by all, hook, line and sinker. And the tragedy goes on!
