OHAKIM: Travails Of A Political Hawker

YOU cannot mistake his love for good taste. He is a restless character that loves to impact his environment and hug the klieg lights.

Chief Ikedi Ohakim has enormous capacity to charm whoever comes around him, both in words and dress sense. He cuts out the image of traveling medicine hawkers of yesteryears. But he is a politician.

And unlike most of his peers from the Igbo heartland, Imo, Ohakim graduated from the University of Lagos, where he studied Business Management.

But for his training in management, Ikedi would also have made a good gambler: He rambles and dazzles with words! In 2007, when he moved away from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to join the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA), Ohakim manifested the gambling spirit. Intimidated by the quantum of cash deployed and number of moneyed-men in the race for the governorship ticket of Imo PDP in 2007, Ohakim, walked away. He grumbled that the system had been commercialized.

Having tasted the sweet savour of political power when he served Governor Evan(s) Enwerem as the commissioner for Commerce, Industry and Tourism, before their eventual ouster, Ikedi Ohakim, retained the appetite to circulate in the corridors of power or at best, be governor. But moving from highly rated PDP to inchoate PPA, not many people including his relations and friends, gave him any chance. In fact, many of his friends moved words around that Ikedi was merely posturing with the PPA governorship ticket as a bargaining instrument to raise some easy income from his friends in Europe and South Africa!

But empowered with the PPA governorship flag, Ohakim started preaching of new ideas in Imo politics. And knowing that apart from its entrenched structure, the PDP paraded a lot of heavyweights that were engaged in endless intrigues, the governorship candidate told voters that it was only letters of the alphabet that differentiates PDP from PPA. He sustained the claim that the DNA and ideological orientations of both were the same.

Then came the Election Day, April 14, 2007; it was the apogee of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s garrison command politics. One thing led to another. PDP disagreed within itself on who was its authentic candidate. Those who were mischievously supplanted went to court. After a repeat congress, the un-fancied candidate won and PDP said it was no longer interested in running; that it has no candidate. In Abuja, some government ‘magic’ was taking place. It was only when violence broke out that fateful April 14, 2007 that it dawned on many people that the political abracadabra was but a way for PDP to work towards an answer. The election was consequently cancelled by the Maurice Iwu-led Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Till this day, the behind the scene conversations that led to Prof. Iwu’s brother, Cosmas’ presence in Ohakim’s camp, have not as yet been fully explained. But on the day of the rescheduled election, April 28, 2007, Ohakim was announced winner. Just like that!

In the 70s when medicine hawkers displayed their wares and marketing tricks dancing to rhythmic music of East Africa, most of the onlookers who gather to enjoy the theatrics leave with tears in their eyes after being dispossessed by pickpockets. The All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) candidate in that 2007 election, Martins Agbaso, still remembers that election with pain on how a mere boy of yesterday from a little known platform, could snatch victory away from him. After the election was won and lost, Ohakim continued to gamble and plan for the future.

As Governor of Imo State, he touched a lot of lives and cut down a lot of trees. In Owerri, the young governor from Okohia, Isiala-Mbano caused much disturbance and grief. With his legendary Imo Clean and Green catch phrase, he entertained himself with the idea of carving out a New Face of Imo and brought a lot of tears to the eyes of many residents.

It was obvious that Ohakim wanted to emulate Malam Nasir el Rufai, who, as FCT minister demolished a lot of buildings constructed in contravention of the Abuja Master Plan. But Ohakim, in his desperation to make Owerri a modern capital city and tourist destination, destroyed even ancestral homes and religious monuments. Women cried, cursed and condemned the rush by the government to beautify Owerri without providing jobs for mass of unemployed young people.

At the height of the entire hullabaloo over environmental and urban renewal, Ohakim banned the use of motorcycles for commercial transport in the metropolis. His popularity rating plummeted. The young man started touring the country and dreaming that one day he could become the President or Vice President.

In the midst of all the good and bad, noble and ignoble things his administration did in Imo State, one thing stands out. And it was for the reason of that one thing that most people still wonder, whether Ohakim could have been a conman: He dragged the ailing President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua to Owerri in the name of coming to flag off the dredging of Nworie River! Not many people would like to remember the construction of Heartland Radio. He collected tokens from unemployed youth in a bid to provide 10, 000 jobs.

But for the Dredging of Nworie River that never took off, Imo people shouted, away with this man! At markets, village squares and churches, the common refrain was that Ohakim must go. Unfazed by the chant of rejection, Ikedi addressed a rally at Grasshoppers Stadium, Owerri.

There he told the people to call him Ikiri, (Gila monster), explaining that with the governorship in his palms no one could force his hands open to retrieve same. Not long after that boast, precisely on July 25, 2009, Ohakim traveled back to the PDP. An elaborate ceremony was organised by the party to welcome the traveling salesman back to PDP.

Those in attendance included former President Yar’Adua and his Vice, Dr. Goolduck Jonathan. On that occasion, former President Obasanjo hinted at the deal PDP entered into with Ohakim, saying that the governor assured him that he would return.

Based on his quick about turn to rejoin PDP, Ohakim fell out with his former buddy, Chief Orji Uzor Kalu. At the height of that misunderstanding, Kalu was invited by the Imo State House of Assembly to answer to certain accusations. When the former Abia State Governor and then Presidential candidate of PPA failed to honour the invitation, a warrant of arrest was issued by the Assembly, allegedly, on the instigation of the Governor. Ikedi knows how to ruffle feathers.

It was that reputation that made the allegation of his having boxed the ears of a Catholic Reverend Father, to travel with the speed of light. And having taken his vivacious impudence to the extent of causing a Catholic priest pain, Imo people united in one voice to declare that the days of ‘Ikiri’ in Douglas House was numbered. The tales of how the governor was ferrying Imo people’s money to the north to pacify Emirs, his excesses and acts of obdurate disregard for the masses, including his fight with Senator Chris Anyanwu are permanently etched in the minds of the people.

Two years later, try as much as he could to seek forgiveness from the masses with unfeigned contrition, the spirit of Imo rose against Ohakim. And despite his boast that no man born of woman or Jupiter could retrieve power from his hands, Ikiri lost the governorship in similar circumstances that he came. For the greater part of four years, Ikedi remained absent from open society, grieving quietly over his incredible fall from grace. Suddenly, he started showing up at the Aso Villa religious programmes and other social activities around the seat of power.

Often restless and bulging with self-adulating designs and fancies, Ohakim started nursing a fresh ambition to regain the Government House. And inspired by the historic return of Governor Peter Ayodele Fayose as Governor, nearly eight years after he was removed in dubious circumstances, Ohakim got his marketing tools together.

Having emulated President Barack Obama, by authoring two books, one of which was titled, Courage to Challenge; Ohakim went further to copy former President Bill Clinton through public speaking. He romanced the idea of founding an alternative platform from Ohanaeze Nd’Igbo to advance the cause of political progress and interests of Igbo. While he engaged in these marketing schemes, his country home was bombed.

Like a good showman, or in a bid to reap political capital from that tragedy, Ikedi started announcing that he has become a vagabond and homeless former Governor, explaining that his only building has been exterminated by those who are afraid of his popularity. There was no doubt that the former flamboyant governor of Imo State was frightened.

As the 2015 election drew nearer, he saw that the old demons he fled from in 2007 were still active in PDP. He had no chance against the possessors of new money or entrenched chieftains in PDP to make a serious contest for the governorship ticket. Again, he sulked and turned against the Jonathan he was dotting a few months back. It was not easy to reckon the number of those Ohakim offended. They are many. Some he offended by word of mouth, some he injured by snobbery and others he left with wounds from sundry deals.

It was in such a cloudy atmosphere that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) decided to reexamine his case files. But wondering why he should be targeted in a fresh offensive of anti-graft interrogation, Ikedi ignored the Red Owls. But if he thought that the EFCC was still languid and bereft of fresh ideas, he needed another think: They came for him. The allegation of misappropriation leveled against the governor for which Kalu was issued a warrant of arrest and issues about the N18.5 Billion seven-year fixed rate bond he obtained from the capital market remain unexplained. This might have prompted slothful EFCC to get cracking.

But when they carried him away, it took the loud sighs of surprised citizens for Ohakim to spend few hours at the EFCC headquarters before regaining his freedom. Yet, as if his troubles are in season, the man again hugged headlines with the alarm that some people are after his life. Now, whether the alarm is part of Ohakim’s marketing strategies or born of real threat to his life, Ikiri should reflect on the lyrics of the song by the reggae artist, Peter Tosh: “If you live in a glass house, don’t throw stones…”