Bianca Ojukwu, Nigeria’s former
ambassador to Spain and widow of Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu, has accused Willie
Obiano, governor of Anambra state, of abandoning her husband.
The late Ojukwu, a war hero, was
one of the founders of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), under which
Obiano has been elected twice.
In an interview with Sun,
Ojukwu’s widow said after using her husband’s images to campaign, the governor
now feels he is no longer relevant to the party.
She accused Obiano of not revering Ojukwu the way he ought to, saying although the governor was successful as a banker, he knows little about politics.
Before joining politics, Obiano
was a top director at Fidelity Bank.
“Well, it’s essentially a problem
of leadership. The leader of any political party needs to understand the ethos
and the bedrock on which the ideology of the party he seeks to lead is built.
Governor Willie Obiano who assumed the position of APGA party national leader,
and who ought to have championed this initiative to host a remembrance ceremony
for Ojukwu, the pioneer national leader of APGA, and to all intents and
purposes, the icon of the party, has deemed it not worthwhile to do so,” she
said.
“The last remembrance event that
was conducted in Anambra State to commemorate the anniversary of the death of
Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu by APGA-led government was in March 2013 under
Governor Peter Obi and Chief Victor Umeh as party chairman, but it still
doesn’t stop this Anambra State government from rolling out his pictures for
campaign purposes whenever the elections come up.”
Asked what she feels could be
responsible for the “nonchalant attitude” of Obiano towards Ojukwu, she said:
“Well, our people have this saying that a person who was not present when a
corpse was buried starts to exhume the corpse from the wrong end. The fact, if
one has to be candid, is that Governor Obiano was a stranger to our political
party who knew next to nothing about APGA’s founding principles, ideology and
history.
“The iconic status of Ojukwu as
party symbol also happens to be one such casualty and I will use a simple
example with regards to party branding which exposes the mindset of this
current APGA governor to buttress this point. Obiano declared that he had his
own ideas regarding re-inventing APGA as a major political force, but I
expressed grave reservations concerning his approach and strategy.
“For starters, there is hardly
anybody in Anambra State and beyond, who doesn’t know that APGA, as a political
party, is inextricably intertwined with the personality of Ojukwu as its brand.
It is a party for which he laboured right to his twilight hours, hence he is
generally referred to as APGA’s eternal leader. You can then imagine how
dumbfounded I was, when, a short while after he won re-election for a second
term as governor, having campaigned with Ojukwu’s pictures blazing through
every billboard in the state, as well as on APGA campaign buses, party uniforms
and other paraphernalia, Obiano casually informed me that he would be phasing
out all APGA party uniforms that displayed Ojukwu’s image as had been the
normal tradition with APGA apparel and would be replacing them with party
uniforms that would be branded solely with his own image or with a cockerel as
symbol, since according to him, Ojukwu was no longer relevant to the party and
(I quote him), that he could no longer continue to tie the fate and fortunes of
APGA to the memory of a dead man.
“Well, whatever he meant by it, I
considered the remark to be rather unfortunate and to say the least,
laughable… thought his reasoning was
acutely flawed and I considered his contemptuous reference to Ojukwu, before
me, merely as a ‘dead man’ who was no longer relevant to APGA deeply offensive
and disrespectful. It became obvious to me that Obiano (a relatively unknown
banker living out his retirement in America) had forgotten so soon how he went
about from community to community, pleading with the people of Anambra state
who have great sentimental attachment to the Igbo hero, to vote for him in
deference to Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. This raises several questions.
Was he now saying that he was not aware of the fact that Ojukwu was deceased
when he was using the man’s image to canvass for votes? Even more, did he not
visit the same Ojukwu’s grave to pour libations and pray for a favourable
outcome for his elections? Are the pictures of that visit not there for all to
see?”
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