Six days from today, the good people of Anambra State in the embattled South East geopolitical zone will be expected to cast their votes pursuant to electing a successor to the incumbent governor Willie Obiano, whose tenure expires in March 2022. Ordinarily, several factors make the coming polls exercise out of the ordinary, when viewed from various angles. From the build up to the polls, the parade of candidates, and the anticipated ambience of the polls proper, there are enough reasons for Nigerians to expect significant twists as well as turns with implications for the country’s political terrain, and for a long time to come. In any case, major political developments in that state have in most instances never taken the course of regular business, with each manifesting outcomes that teach the country, one lesson or the other.
Among the expectations and fears associated with the forthcoming Anambra polls, no one comes close to that of the feared impasse that may be witnessed during the polls, courtesy of the IPOB which has issued a seven-day sit-at-home order from November 5th to 11th 2021, throughout the five states of the South East geopolitical zone. This period spans the election day of Saturday November 6 2021, while the order is being widely interpreted as a tacit campaign by the IPOB for a boycott of the polls. In response to this strand of public opinion, the separatist body has argued that its sit-at-home order is not a call for boycott of the polls, but remains within the context of its demand for the unconditional release of its leader Nnamdi Kanu, by the Federal government. Admissibly, the sit-at-home order has been in place long before the polls, and had been for mobilising home support for the release of Kanu.
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However, the twist this time is that the polls exercise is coming in the face of the recent resumption of Kanu’s trial for treason, following his controversial abduction in Kenya and forcible return to Nigeria. That matter itself has remained a subject of significant diplomatic concern between the three countries of Nigeria his country of birth, the UK whose citizen he is and Kenya the base of his illegal interdiction and abduction. Meanwhile, much as the IPOB may strive to convince the electorate in Anambra State that it has not called for a boycott of the polls, it has nevertheless visited on the state the fear of hurt on any who dared to defy its order, including just going from home to any area of electoral activity. And if the lessons of IPOB sit-at-home order are anything to go by – especially with respect to the recent state visit to Imo State by President Muhamadu Buhari, this forthcoming sit-at-home order, may spawn attendant partial boycott of the polls in varying degrees, depending on circumstances. That is except for a major turn of events leading to a de-escalation of the IPOB resolve, either by it or facilitation of same by the Federal government.
The situation translates into a classic case of masterful power play by IPOB, as while they lack the statutory capacity to call for a boycott of the polls, they simply cashed in on what they have in abundance, the ‘vote and die’ threat impact on the ordinary folk, as the fear of IPOB sit-at-home orders, is the beginning of wisdom in the entire South East geopolitical zone. However from all indications, it would seem that the IPOB may also need to consider a more discretional posture with respect to this new sit-at-home order during the run of the Anambra polls. This is just as the body may also needsto adopt it as an opportunity to contrive a turning point in its campaign for the actualisation of the Biafra agenda.
Incidentally, since the sit-at-home order has apparently come to serve as the primary tool for driving the sensitization towards Biafra separatism throughout the South East zone, it has not been the fool-proof dispensation for its sponsors. In fact, if anything it has been greeted widely in the South East zone with mixed responses comprising open defiance as well as reluctant acquiescence; the latter driven largely by the vicious enforcement measures by the IPOB enforcers and which has led to deaths of victims in several instances. This factor alone raises grave questions over the merit or otherwise of the modalities of the sit-at-home order as administered by the IPOB. In the raging debates over the merit or otherwise of the dispensation in the South East references have been made to the origin of a voluntary sit-at-home order in modern times to Mahatma Ghandi the Indian leader who promoted it as under the strategy of Civil Disobedience to cripple the injustices of the British colonialists, and thereby facilitated the independence of his country in 1947. At that time, the Indian politics and economy were dominated by the British colonialists, while the indigenes were mere low level workers with little or no leverage in the public affairs of that county. Hence a sit-at-home dispensation by the indigenes effectively hurt the colonial masters.
In the case of the IPOB sit-at-home order, the objectives and impact are clearly different from the Indian situation. Here the victims of the exercise are the very indigenes whom the body proffers to be working for. Its enterprise therefore suffers from a contradiction akin to eating its own baby. They cannot expect to be killing their kith and kin with reckless abandon for any reason, and not expect a backlash somehow someday. And the forthcoming Anambra polls may just be the trigger for a twist in that direction.
Put succinctly, as the Anambra polls loom with all the interests at stake, any dispensation that will rock the boat and scuttle the exercise, may attract repercussions and reverberations which even the IPOB may not recover from easily. In the first place the Federal government has resolved to prevent such a doomsday scenario and has mobilized a humongous military/security wherewithal for the exercise, with the IPOB/ESN factor squarely in its sight. Secondly the Ohaneze as the umbrella socio-political organization of Ndigbo, has in seeming appreciation of the importance of the Anambra polls, appealed to IPOB to back pedal on any initiative that has the potential to scuttle or diminish the polls exercise. Given the strategic interest of Ndigbo in Nigeria’s political terrain, the Ohaneze position cannot be faulted and needs the IPOB to consider.
If the joint thrust of the federal government’s disposition and the appeal by Ohaneze are taken into consideration, it should be clear to IPOB that it is no more business as usual. IPOB should therefore allow the Anambra polls to fly, and avoid shooting Ndi’Igbo in the foot.
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