Some two days back, or so, I came across a distasteful but apparently sponsored online piece titled: “APGA members lament INEC’s refusal to recognize Njoku’s faction despite S’court ruling”.
In the said piece, vigorous attempts were made to cast INEC in bad light; to the extent that queer opinions not likely to have emanated from the electoral body, even under conditions of anonymity, were contrived and attributed to ‘sources at INEC’. Apparently as a strategy – a very poor one though, to pressure the electoral umpire into recanting her informed and noble position on the contrived crises through which the sponsors of the piece had severally but futilely attempted to annex, by hook or crook, the national leadership of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).
For discerning minds, it didn’t require rocket science to decode who the sponsors were; as the kernel of the grossly misleading publication was a calculated attempt to blackmail or cajole the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) into erroneously recognizing a usurper, one Edozie Njoku who was, on October 14, 2021, confirmed an ‘impostor’ or ‘meddlesome interloper’ by the Supreme Court via a considered ruling that affirmed Ozonkpu, Dr. Victor Ike Oye as the authentic National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).
That pronouncement by the Apex Court permanently nailed Edozie Njoku and his co-conspirators dubious and prolonged quest to hijack the leadership of the party through the back door.
Sadly, rather than accept their fate and move on, APGA faithful across Nigeria were taken aback when the same Edozie Njoku recently surfaced with yet another contrivance alleging that the Supreme Court had, perhaps, to his exclusive knowledge, reviewed the ruling that hitherto nailed his fate in his favour. He disingenuously claimed that the ‘secret’ review followed a letter he allegedly wrote to the Apex Court calling for same.
According to Njoku, (in what appeared like ‘tales by moonlight) the Supreme Court had in its October 14, 2021 ruling on the APGA leadership tussle, ‘misplaced’ his name with that of Victor Oye. And that following the letter he addressed to Justice Mary Odilli, JSC, the said ‘mistake’ was corrected, thus making him the APGA national chairman.
Interestingly, while Nigerians got to know of Edozie Njoku’s ‘tales by moonlight’ via cheap online platforms, not a single credible media carried the news until the contrivers managed to curry the attention of the regular media by engaging their services to broadcast their press conferences. Ever since, Njoku and his co-travelers have been running rings, employing one prank or the other in their attempts to make INEC buckle, after his camp had, without success, severally written the electoral body to recognize them.
Those who have followed Edozie Njoku’s political trajectory see him as a transactional and unserious politician who utilizers election windows to attempt to shortchange desperate ticket seekers. They are of the very strong opinion that time is ripe to decisively but legally clip the wings of Edozie Njoku and others like him in Nigeria’s political polity.
Such observers believe that one of the many reasons why impunity has continued to thrive in Nigeria’s democratic evolution is because culprits are seldom punished when the bubble finally blows in their faces.
Accordingly, the electoral body, as well as the judiciary should frown strongly at the antics and pranks of Edozie Njoku, especially since preliminary checks by APGA at the Supreme Court did not suggest that any amendment was effected by the Apex Court on its October 14, 2021 judgment that nailed his fate.