It has become necessary to tell this story. It will provide beacon lights to leaders of community-based organisations in the future. Communities reserve rights under the Nigerian constitution to form associations for their continuing growth and preservation of their ideals in whatever paradigm they choose, no matter the interests they want to protect.
Community-based organisations provide unifying and controlling energies to a people who have history of common origins, culture and tradition bonded with common characteristics, in increasingly atomised urban societies and the attendant fear of losing identity and relevance in a larger society which denies uniqueness to communities.
Uniqueness is the spice of plural societies. Each group seeks to perpetuate elements of its uniqueness for overall variety and beauty in creation. When communities are held together by traditional institutions, they are bound to make progress given right leadership with clear vision and mission of providing bases for cohesion and progress.
Mbaise is a mega cluster of five clans in history with remote ancestral relationship with one another. Agbaja, Uvuru, Ahiara, Ekwereazu, Ezinihitte in no particular order. Mbaise eminently qualified for five local governments even at the inception of Local Government Administration of 1976. But there was no institution to rationally present a case for five local governments in Mbaise cluster of clans.
Mbaise Di was created in Lagos by eminent sons of the land who held their own in Lagos in 1994 to commence a process of change in the rather disparate and inharmonious concept of unity of a large section of Imo community. The key objective was to motivate change in drift of a community that once held sway in Igboland and had the history of being an unconquered cluster of clans.
Yours truly was the first president of Mbaise Di. I had the support of the executive council of Mbaise Di and the entire membership that the vision of re-organising our people into a dependable force for all-round change was a duty for our own generation. I received confirmation of my self-chosen mandate to go home and establish a common vehicle for various Mbaise organisations and home to form one umbrella organisation, Mbaise Di, in 1996. In 1997, I hibernated in my Amohuru home and made wide consultations, and having found them congruent with Mbaise Di vision set up a forum for consensus on the path of creating Ezuruezu out of many organisations that protected different interests.
Mbaise Di, Oganihu Mbaise, Mbaise Peoples Congress (MPC), Committee for Unity and Understanding, Umunna Mbaise and other smaller groups with or without registration were invited and they converged at my behest to establish Ezuruezu at the Palace of Eze R.U. Mbalewe of Uvuru Ikedinairi to dust up and update a constitution that had earlier been conceived abortively for uniting Mbaise people. I had to receive the mandate of the new executive council of the new organisation to register it with Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC). I accomplished that task in record time. Certificate of Registration was handed over to Chief I.D. Nwoga whom we believed had the exposure, carriage and visibility to lead the amalgam of organisations to our objective.
It was politicised. Chief Nwoga went into federal government appointment shortly after Ezuruezu Mbaise organised the reception of Miss Chioma Ajunwa after for winning gold at the Olympics in Atlanta, United States pioneered by Mbaise Di and Ahiazu citizens in Lagos under my charge. Sir Bon Nwakamma, was elected to lead Mbaise thereafter. The organisation remained elitist and lacked grassroots relevance, but successfully created a rallying point in Ji Mbaise festival. After his foundational term with reasonable impact in followership that included Ndi Ezeji (kings of yam), who owned Ji Mbaise festival, and Ndi Eze Mbaise (Mbaise kings), who were constitutionally members of governing council under the constitution, power devolved by election on Dr. Okechukwu Aguwa who was a foundation member of Mbaise Di and who knew in detail of the founding principles of Ezuruezu. Its key objective of holding the commanding heights of development reached its peak with the construction of Mbaise Civic Centre.
Political interests had been imported into Ezuruezu. It was bound to flounder when Ezuruezu found one candidate only qualified for her backing without full consent of Mbaise electorate. We lost our mission when caution and prudence was thrown to the wind during Ji Mbaise celebrations when a sitting governor was denied privileges and decency of a visitor in modern and traditional terms. It left a sour taste in the mouth capable of leading to reprisals.
The candidate of Ezuruezu Mbaise failed at the election for want of wide base of support. Despite electoral irregularities that resulted in the victory of Mbaise candidate at the elections, All Progressives Congress APC) was announced as victor in the governorship elections on April 11, 2015.
No wonder we had a sudden interest of the party in power in ensuring that the control levers of Ezuruezu should now shift to faithful of the party for both contending for benefits from government and future election certainties. A governing council meeting convened on July 19, 2015, resulted in a huge mass of people coming from APC to force elections into governing council with shallow knowledge of its structure and functions.
Apparently, they had their way if announcements in the media are reliable. It is the saddest episode in Mbaise history, second to disruption of our flagship festival by distortions created by Ezeship interests, political interests and traditional leadership distortions at the altar of power. I find my 20 years effort wasted by unbridled power craving and undue desire for relevance without corresponding subscription to guiding a people to relevance. It is not difficult to foretell that transient power could be destructive to long term positive objectives of a people. But it must be noted that originators of destructive designs for control of power should be aware that short term interest has no lasting value to a people over whom such designs are foisted.
It is deleterious to the common will of a people anchored in their institutions to be violated on account of transient political gains. It may be difficult for me to turn the hands of the clock back.
As an awardee of Ezuruezu Merit Award 2013, I owe posterity this account of our drop into irrelevance on account of short term interests of elements in the leadership of Ezuruezu and power-seekers in Mbaise cluster of clans. Eternal law does not permit wrong and selfish principles and actions. They cannot lead to peace and progress. It is inconceivable that interlopers to a 20-year organisation would find their way to sustaining values that have been selflessly created over time for the benefit of a people. Let no one trifle with ancestral will. The repercussions of such trifling could spell disaster for its originators, especially under selfish impulsions.