Weeks before the 17 council areas in Enugu go to the polls, the Aninri chapter of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is experiencing its second but the hardest test. Once the very stronghold of the ‘dead’ People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the area had been anchored on the near-hegemonic leadership of Ekweremadu political family. PDP was the only political party the people knew and loved even though it had impoverished them over the years.
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With the sudden and unfortunate exit of both Ekweremadus, Aninri lost its taste. Then, last year, Governor Peter Mbah defected to APC, taking with him the entire PDP structures across the state – a move that had left the Aninri electorate stranded, vulnerable, and very much alienated.
People never liked APC in southeast. And in Aninri, the resentments are, or were, louder. The party’s first effort in seeking acceptance – the membership e-registration exercise – was a resounding failure across the state.
Now is the time for the second test. The council elections might be the opportunity for the ruling party to see how it’s policies in Enugu State taste in the voters’ mouth. In Aninri the opposition voices are already trying to incite the public against APC, but series of new trends are gradually emerging and making it hard for dissention to take roots.
Prince Ugochukwu Nwanjoku, the chairman of the local government area, has done so much for the people in less than two years in power. He awarded grading of over 157 rural roads, and complete most of them with asphalt. He has radically changed the look of the council’s headquarters with multi-billion naira administrative and staff buildings. His administration has electrified the zone, completely ending decades of zero power supply in Aninri. His administration fenced the headquarters and also fenced the 10 Green Smart Schools in the 10 wards. The litany is just too long. About 300 people are gainfully employed in his payroll, the single largest human capacity building initiative since the inception of the Local Government. And there is the legacy 50-bed hospital in Aninri which is near completion.
The projects are visible and so convincing that the opposition’s arguement could but lack substance. For many years Aninri had lived in the dark and suffered sufficient underdevelopment across all sectors of existence, and Nwanjoku’s performances are proofs that Local Government could have direct, decisive and positive effects on the life of the common man.
It’s not the kind of things anyone could hope to easily campaign against during elections. So this is the dilemma of the Aninri opposition.
Apart from this, Prince Nwanjoku has united the warring factions in Aninri political circles, and has far more expanded the reach of politics than any other chairman in the council’s history. The infamous 2-by-2 cult fights institutionalized by previous administration vanished under him. For the first time, major powerful Aninri business leaders in diaspora are abandoning their traditional apolitical stance to look very positively towards homegrown politics.
As everyone await the polls in September, APC appears very confident of victory in Aninri. In a phone chat with the InfoWars, the party’s chairman in the council Chief Afam Chris insisted there is no opposition in Aninri.
“Most of them (leaders of opposition) have come to us in the ‘night’ and reached a deal. Prince Ugochukwu Nwanjoku is winning. APC is winning their tickets top-to-bottom. I can tell you for free that there’s no opposition in Aninri,” the chairman said.
It’s a common, infamous practice in Aninri for the opposition stakeholders to abandon their candidates in a die-minute betrayal.