Imo Governorship Aspirants 2019: Owerri Zone and the Unfinished Ohakim Business

If the 2019 Imo State governorship must go to Okigwe Zone, let it go to former Governor Ikedi Ohakim. There's no difference between Ohakim and any of the others in the race for Douglas House.  Indeed, some of them are nothing but guber-candidates-for-life.  

Imo Governorship Aspirants 2019

Anyone desperate enough to run for the same office so many times is not to be trusted unless he possesses demonstrated intellectual capacity, which would suggest a purpose in running for elective office beyond the garden-variety Nigerian greed, which propels most of the aspirants.  If it must be Okigwe and it goes to Ohakim, Owerri Zone will, in spite of itself, have the best chance of capturing Douglas House in 2023. It will virtually be an all-Owerri ticket and, therefore, the well-known inability to settle on one candidate to represent the zone will be moot.  The political sin that Nde Owere committed in trading Ohakim for Okorocha in 2011 is, at least, as egregious as Nigeria's sin in trading Goodluck Jonathan for Muhammadu Buhari in 2015.

Before anyone starts citing Abe Lincoln at me as an example of one that contested multiple times before finally becoming US President, s/he should review Lincoln's speeches that he wrote or edited himself as well as his performance in the epic  Lincoln-Douglas debates. It's a shame that the only thing Nigerian politicians attribute to Abraham Lincoln is the concocted 419 rule, which states that in politics, there are only 3 rules, "the 1st rule is money, the 2nd rule is money, and the 3rd rule is money." 

Poor Abraham Lincoln!! It has to be a peculiarly Nigerian thing that no mention is made of Abe Lincoln in reference to the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, or the famed Lincoln-Douglas Debates. It is only in the perversion of the so-called 3-Rules of Politics that Nigerian politicians know Abraham Lincoln.

When you are an aspirant or candidate for office, even the lowly wretch who is begging you for money to buy breakfast for his family recites that silly rule to you.  That nonsense is as much the reason that Nigerian politicians are corrupt, as it is why grandparents queue up at the polling stations to sell their PVCs and their children's and grandchildren's future for 500 Naira. OK! 1,000 Naira.