By Ukachi Chidera Agu
After a highly successful governorship primary and the emergence of High Chief Ikechi Emenike as our indisputable flag-bearer, we, the members of our great party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) should be fine-tuning our strategies to end the locust years in Abia. At a time like this, every genuine member of Abia APC is expected to cooperate and lend massive support to our leader and Governorship Candidate to lead the charge and rout the forces of darkness holding our dear God’s Own State down. Sadly, some misguided elements have once again offered themselves as willing tools by desperate politicians and other shameless vested interests to distract our leader in his march to rescue and develop Abia.
I am particularly perturbed after I came across a news report on an online platform with the headline, “Esiaga accuses Gov Uzodinma of interference in Abia APC”. The phantom personality was generously referred to as “a chieftain” of APC and was also addressed in a borrowed title of “Nze”. But the reporter couldn’t even remember to use his first name. He made salacious statements against the Imo State Governor, Senator Hope Uzodinma, and High Chief Emenike, whom he mischievously referred to as “factional leader of a parallel structure”. The phantom Esiaga and the reporter he used don’t know the meaning of faction. To avoid doubt, the UNITED family of Abia APC has no faction. However, we are not disputing the existence of moles and saboteurs within the party.
The APC leadership in Abia is aware that Mr. Uche Ogah, a failed politician, is behind this group of person hell bent on sabotaging the party. No matter how he tried to mask himself, it was so glaring that Ogah was the hand of Esau while the Esiaga phantom was the voice of Jacob. It beats the imagination why Governor Uzodinma should be dragged into the internal affairs of Abia APC. Did he come to vote in Abia during the party primary? No. Did he send emissaries to come to Abia and interfere in the process of electing the party’s governorship candidate? Obviously, NO. So, it’s perplexing that Ogah and his cohorts could extend their antics and distractions to the neighbouring Imo State. Uche is angry that despite repeated attempts, Governor Uzodinma shunned him. The Imo State Governor, who is the leader of APC in the South East, knows that Ogah is a shallow, unreliable trickster.
It was the Governorship Primary Election Committee for Abia that was sent and given guidelines by the National Secretariat of our great party to come to Umuahia and conduct the governorship primary. The Committee headed by Chief Tony Obiefuna did come and conducted a seamless exercise, which Ogah and other aspirants attended. So, how could any person in his right frame of mind accuse Governor Uzodinma of “imposing” Emenike on Abia APC? High Chief Emenike abughi mmanwu ana’kwa aka (not a masquerade that needs pushing before it can perform). He is a solid and well-grounded politician whose structure is rooted in all the polling units of Abia. This is a basic fact that his detractors have been trying so hard to shy away from without success.
I must not fail to point out that Governor Uzodinma, the pillar of APC in the Southeast zone, is not one to instigate a crisis in Abia APC as it would even boomerang against the party’s interest to win more states in the zone in 2023. His predecessor, Senator Rochas Okorocha, against the wise counsel in the Bible (Hosea 8:7) sowed the wind when he imposed Donatus Nwankpa as chairman of Abia APC. He ended up reaping the whirlwind as Abia APC was plunged into a leadership crisis with attendant litigations. Certainly, Uzodinma would not follow Okorocha’s path. That was why Uche Ogah hit the brick wall when he went to solicit Governor Uzodinma’s support to become the governorship candidate of Abia APC in 2023. And he is now expressing his frustration by blackmailing the Imo Governor, accusing him of interfering in the affairs of Abia APC.
Ogah’s ultimate game plan was to scuttle the governorship primary. He had sent proxies to an Abia High Court in Umuahia to obtain an injunction to stop the primary. Unfortunately for him and his cohorts, the horse had galloped out before the feeble attempt to shut the barn door. The governorship primary had already been successfully concluded several hours before Justice A.O Chijioke issued the curious “restraining order”. I need not delve into the purported “suspension” of Chief Emenike, which they used to amuse themselves by getting the restraining order. It’s crystal clear that Ogah and his gang had deceived the judge to hear, and within 12 hours determine a matter that a court of competent and concurrent jurisdiction had already decided.
But if I may ask, has our collective and individual memory become so short not to remember that Uche Ogah in 2019 bought the same Abia governorship ticket of APC from the then inglorious national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, and messed it up? For him, the ticket became a commodity that could be traded off for cash. He found a willing and ready buyer in Governor Okezie Ikpeazu and the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Ogah sold the governorship ticket of APC, and went to sleep, leaving the party to its doomed fate at the polls. He could not even camouflage his treachery as he neither printed campaign posters and billboards nor campaigned in any of the 17 local governments of Abia. Worst, campaign funds were not released.
For Ogah, another season of political business dealings has come with the preparations for the 2023 general election. As usual, he has seen another opportunity to pick a governorship ticket and make “good” money with it. He was at the venue of the party’s governorship primary and observed the smooth proceedings as delegates were casting their ballots with enthusiasm. The tactless politician that he is, Ogah knew he could never match Emenike in popularity, not only in APC, but also in Abia as a whole. He has no grip on the party and could not expect the votes from delegates to go his way.
To save face, Ogah resorted to childish tantrums about direct and indirect primary and after exhausting his breath, retired to his campaign office along Umuwaya Road, Umuahia to hatch out a fraudulent primary poll with his hangers-on. It was not until past midnight that a concocted “result of a direct primary” was announced for him at the rebel enclave on Azikiwe Road, Umuahia, where he was declared “winner” by one of his co-travellers, Perfect Okorie. If one may ask, is direct primary conducted at a campaign office in the state capital? Your guess is as good as mine.
At this juncture, there is the need to dissect the man, Sampson Uche Ogah, for us to understand his motives in his devilish quest to destroy the gains and goodwill that Abia APC has gained. He is a man whose entire body reeks of fraud and stinks of corruption. In well-informed and politically conscious climes, a dubious character like Ogah will NEVER dream of putting himself forward to hold a public office. Now, let us peep into some malfeasances in his pot of fraudulent life. In October 2016, Ogah was implicated in the massive fraud that is now regarded as the Fuel Subsidy Scandal involving the swindling of the Nigerian state of a colossal sum of N382 billion from the 2011 fuel subsidy payments.
The technical committee set up by the Federal Government and headed by Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, which unravelled the humongous fraud, indicted Ogah for using his company, Masters Energy Oil & Gas Ltd. to siphon N5.5 billion. The ill-gotten wealth came to him after he, like other fraudsters in the pack, used a non-existing vessel, MT Zhen Star, to “import” non-existing petroleum products and claimed subsidy payments from the government. When the noose was tightened around his neck in 2018, Ogah coughed out N1.2 billion to the Federal Government through the anti-corruption agency, EFCC. He pledged to pay the balance in installments. The refund has not let him off the hook. Ogah is still being prosecuted by the EFCC and he must answer questions over the rest of his loot.
Before the fuel subsidy scandal broke out, the President of Masters Energy Oil & Gas Ltd had already been in the news for the wrong reasons. In October 2016, Uche Ogah and his company were embroiled in a messy business deal with a pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church, Mrs. Bridget Adeosun. She had accused Ogah of forging her signature and a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between her company, Mut-Hass Petroleum Ltd, and Masters Energy. Armed with the forged papers, Ogah’s Masters Energy was said to have imported 30 containers of rice in March 2017. The imported bags of rice were branded yeast as a disguise to evade paying the proper duties on the said rice. How can a person whose name has become synonymous with fraudulent activities be made a governor and entrusted with public treasury? God forbid! Abia can’t be fleeing from the frying pan to fire.
As he continues to trudge with his huge baggage of fraud, Ogah is desperate to find a shade where he could hide from the scorching heat generated by his fraudulent activities. His target is to see the possibility of being helped to enter the Abia Government House in 2023, where he would be ensconced in the cocoon of immunity. No chance. Abians are wiser now than before. That was why a very disconcerting verdict was delivered to him by the party members at the Governorship Primary. Many Abians may not know that Ogah visits the EFCC every month to assure the agency that he has not taken flight from justice as his case drags on. Is that the person that NdiAbia would want to preside over their affairs? I don’t think so.
Ogah is unstable and has a high turnover of losing his political associates. Check it out: His campaign manager in 2019 and all the henchmen that worked for him have all deserted him after discovering that he traded off the governorship ticket. All the local government coordinators did the same thing. Unlike him, High Chief Ikechi Emenike has an enviable history of transparent politics and carrying people along. He has consistently sustained his political structures over the years and that has endeared him to the grassroots. Ogah has continued to advertise his irresponsibility, lack of conscience, and treachery. He betrayed Senator Orji Uzor Kalu and abandoned him at that poll in 2019, despite everything that the Abia North Senator had done for him. What kind of man would throw a party to celebrate the imprisonment of his benefactor? Ogah, the chameleon, will always change colour to deceive people when it suits him. The leopard will not change its spots, no matter the vagaries of weather. In our next intervention, we shall Xray, with a picture, his perverse preferences in the other room.
I wholly align myself with the statement credited to the Deputy Chief Whip of the House of Representatives, Hon Nkeiruka Onyejeocha when she reacted to the outcome of the 2023 APC governorship primary in Abia. Like all well-meaning Abia APC members, Onyejeocha, who represents Isuikwuato/Umunneochi Federal Constituency, joyfully welcomed the emergence of Emenike as the flag-bearer of the party in 2023, saying that Abia APC has, for the first time, got it right. The well-experienced federal lawmaker emphatically pointed out that, by electing Emenike as its 2023 GOVERNORSHIP CANDIDATE, the Abia APC has for the first time put forward a genuine and loyal party member to lead it in the electoral battle. I invite all authentic and well-meaning members of APC in Abia State to chew and digest this heartfelt statement from Hon. Onyejeocha. 2023 is our chance to save Abia.