Scuttled ambition: Why Umahi’s ordeal is his cross to bear

Umahi toppled by court over illegal defection

As the troubled Governor David Umahi battles for his seat at the Ebonyi State Government House, after an Abuja High Court ousted him last Tuesday for illegally defecting to the APC, one would have expected that Ebonyi people would rise in protest and fight for their own. After all, he had done a fantastic job delivering the democratic dividends over the past 7 years.

But alas! That was not to be. Beyond a picture of a few market women at Abakaliki township stadium, last Wednesday who could not even afford placards, no reasonable show of support has come from the people.

So, even though Umahi allegedly placed Ebonyi on the map by cleaning the capital and decorating it with streetlights and water fountains, the people would not fight for him in this difficult time. Instead, one sees ridicule and outright jubilation over his travails.

So, what exactly went wrong for the peoples’ “emperor”, beyond defecting to another political party?

I will tell you a short story.

On the night of February 15, 2019, a marauding crowd of irate youth, suspected to be members and supporters of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP went on a rampage across several communities in Ebonyi. Wielding machetes and other dangerous weapons, they attacked the homes of some local leaders of the All Progressives Congress, APC. They torched houses, vehicles, yam barns, and any valuable items they could lay hands on. People scampered to safety and hid in the bush for the entire night.

No arrests were ever made for that heinous crime. Neither was compensation offered to any of the victims. The victims of these dastardly acts continued to nurse their wounds until today.

Such politically motivated attacks under Governor David Umahi were not isolated. Members of the opposition, APC were continuously harassed and attacked by a team of dedicated goons who were alleged to be on the payroll of the state government.

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Journalists who could not sing his praises were hounded by some scoundrels hired as social media aides and in some cases, abducted and beaten or barred from covering his activities in the government house.

So, when he defected to the APC with a handful of loyalists, these angry APC members whom his government had met with so much violence became his new family. However, even though their party was now in charge of the government, the APC members still felt isolated and estranged from Umahi because there was never a genuine attempt at reconciliation.

Again, Umahi had wrongly assumed that there would be mass exodus with him to the APC, but he was wrong. That did not happen, so the PDP retained its overwhelming majority in the state. Those PDP members believe themselves to be having the last laugh as his travails unravel.

Poverty worsened under Umahi

Ebonyi is unlike other cities in Nigeria, which could be a combination of glittering wealth and revolting poverty. Poverty worsened under Umahi’s government. When the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS released the National Poverty Index, ranking Ebonyi the fourth poorest state in Nigeria and first in Southeast, Umahi called a press conference to discredit the report and attack the NBS.

However, there is no concrete programme by his government dedicated to addressing the harrowing poverty in the state. Despite his defensive outbursts, young Ebonyi men continued to litter the streets of Nigerian cities as hawkers and the rate of unemployment in the state continued to soar.  The state has indeed become a combination of gruelling poverty and crippling ignorance and Umahi exploited it fully to his advantage because it meant no one really could challenge him.

Umahi Over-taxed the people

The high poverty level in the state could not stop Umahi’s government from taxing the people to raise money for his fancy projects. The lecturers at the state university were forced to take a pay cut, at the time that the state authorities raised the school fees, making it difficult for many civil servants, who were also forced to take a pay cut, to keep their wards in the State University.

However, Umahi’s fancy bridges, water fountains and cement roads masked all these authoritarian tendencies. The people were willing to look the other way and wait out his tenure as a price for his infrastructure projects until he decided to jump ship to the APC so he could become President.

When Umahi announced his defection to the APC, many Ebonyians were confused and wondered if he could face the same people in the APC whom he had met with so much violence as members of the same party. But that was the Nigerian brand of politics, where politicians have no care for principles or political ideology.

Unfortunately, for the governor, for many Ebonyians who had been PDP loyalists for the past 24 years, and had suffered crushing poverty under his government over the past seven years, the consequences of his betrayal and hypocrisy are entirely his cross to bear.  They could not care a hoot if he swam or sank in his current predicament.