Because I’m Involved: Untold Story of 2020 LG Council Elections in Oduma II

Even as I’m still not dead, Comr Udengene, the present President General of Amagu autonomous community, is telling his own side of the story and equally telling mine concerning the events in Oduma Ward II during the Enugu State council elections in 2020.

For over four years I’ve, intentionally, kept quite, not necessarily because I’m a peacemaker, but because I know a day like this would come for me to tell the true story. And I never wanted only Amagu, my own fatherland, to hear this; I wanted bigger audience such as Aninri, Enugu and perhaps, the world to hear and judge Udengene and me. And contrary to what his allies are most likely to imagine, my reason for writing has nothing to do with his political ambition although I’m not ignorant that our dear larger constituent may be interested in this.

During the 2020 Local Government elections, Prince Okugo Nwanjoku, son of late iconic king, Igwe Onyioha Nwanjoku, took me to Barr. Ben Nwoye, who was the State Chairman of All Progressives Congress.

I presume that Prince Nwanjoku had told Barr. Nwoye about me and immediately I stepped in at his office the radical lawyer said to Okugo “I believe you prince, make sure he get ticket to represent us at his ward.” I got form for councilorship and, eventually emerged winner after many illustrious Oduma natives, Hon. Amobi Agbara, Ike Chukwu (Accurate from Amagu), Dennis Ogbonna, ‘Bome, (then ward II chairman of APC) etc, called the shot and removed the rising opposition against my candidacy.

As usual the PDP councilorship candidates in Enugu were counting on the Governor to declare them winners on election day so they didn’t campaign. In Oduma Ward II Hon. Marbel Onwukwe, who was seeking for reelection, also had a lacklustre campaign.

My team, which comprised not just the APC stakeholders, but also diverse groups and individuals, including top PDP power brokers, saw opportunity in the PDP weak campaign. Amagu as a community agreed to vote for me and so did Amokwe and some part of Ameke and part of Obeagu. Hon. Onwukwe was from Obeagu.

Towards the end of campaigns, there were frantic flurry of activities from PDP when it was speculated that Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi said that to make PDP stronger in the grassroots PDP candidates must fight to win their elections themselves.

How Orie Oduma became deciding issue in 2020 LG elections

Then, another major event that was to significantly influence outcomes of the elections occurred on January 27, 2020 – Amagu and Ameke clashed in a fatal communal brawl and Orie Oduma went up in flames. Nearly all the villages in Oduma, especially Amokwe and Obeagu equally suffered casualties because shops and wares of their sons and daughters were both stolen and destroyed by fire. Army occupied the contested ground, putting panic in the entire land.

With this, coupled with the speculation that each PDP candidate had to win by him or herself, Udengene openly stepped into the picture.

All of a sudden it became news that I was the leader of Amagu youths who led the stolen and destruction of wares at the Amokwe and Obeagu sections of the market. As of 2020, most people in Amagu, my own village, didn’t know me because I ultimately left the village at the age of 12. Also, I never held any position in Amagu, and I returned from Lagos where I was based barely few weeks to the elections.

How could I possibly be leading the youths in the conflict? But most revealingly, the propaganda was focused not at Ameke but instead at Amokwe and Obeagu, my strongholds in the elections.

I first reported to APC Aninri, led then by Mr. Emeka Eze; I called the attention of APC critical stakeholders at the state and national level through the help of Prince Okugo Nwanjoku; then I told, most importantly one Mr Stephen Ekpete from Ohofia Oduma who was also Udengene’s friend.

That tactics, I told Ekpete, wasn’t just effectively destructive, but it might also mark me for death even years after the campaigns were over. Obviously the young man and many others tried to talk Udengene but failed and, expectedly, my campaign continued to slack in tempo.

Frustrated, I sat down and drafted that widely publicized petition against Udengene and Hon. Abel Chukwu, who I heard say he would never be alive while I win councilorship; I included in the petition others who were Udengene’s tools in the local communities.

But I kept the papers in safe hands, to be submitted in case I was killed before the elections. Then the number of death threats I received were many and I was attacked three times at Obeagu and Amokwe. Two weeks before the elections, one Abu from Amamkpume village, a popular Okada rider in Oduma brought a man to my home. The man didn’t meet me but met my mother. What he came to deliver was the message that plans had been concluded that I be assassinated so that Ameke would be fingered due to the ongoing crisis between them and Amagu. Abu might still recall this and might know that man. And Abu is alive today – we can verify.

While I submitted petition against Udengene and Hon. Chukwu after election day

On the election, February 25, 2020, we didn’t see sign of ENSIEC officials in Oduma ward II because Udengene masterminded taking the material to the compound of Senator Ike Ekweremadu at Mpu. I had calculated that he might do something like that but I also knew there must be another loopholes, and I was watching keenly.

Around 12 noon I got call to come to Nenwe Police Station. Our team had arrested natives while they were rigging the elections at the compound of a prominent man in Oduma III, and the die was cast!

PDP might have succeeded in other council areas but here they were failing in Aninri. Hon. Abel Chukwu and Hon. Chinedu Okwu (Otaka), the then member representing Aninri at State Assembly, alongside others were present. And it was obvious they couldn’t do anything so they started begging for us all to arrive at consensus.

I had refused until Abel Chukwu called me out and talked to me as elder and as blood cousin. It was only his reason that “we’re brothers” that made me concede and sign the papers at the police station.

On 26th when I called Abel Chukwu to tell him that PDP flatly refused to fulfill its part in the deal we signed, my brother called me a fool and said he didn’t contest elections with him.

I submitted the petition without delay.

And all hell broke lose! Like I already said, I petitioned only four political adversaries who, incidentally, were my brothers from Amagu.

While he may always want to deny in public how powerfully able my pen was in 2020, Udengene recognized that I could write all the same. That’s why in 2021 he influenced my elder brother, Mr. Dennis Ogbonna, to persuade me to come up to Enugu city for “political coaching.” He promised my brother that he would get me job after three months under his “mentorship.”

But from August 2021 to January 2022, he provided none of such job. Recall, this was time when Udengene held four different positions that were the slots of Oduma II.

He kept me away from political activities and, instead, dumped me to oversee his brother Nike’s construction site at Ugwuogo Nike. There, my pay was only “money for afternoon food” and I suffered considerable hunger.

Apart from overseeing the site, the other job he gave me was to present all manner of incriminating and dangerous contents in various Aninri and Enugu platforms. In the post, the sponsors would pay between N50,000 and N200,000. Again my pay was that I got tag for being “notorious and wicked” across Aninri, and Udengene would “dash”, not PAY, me meager N2,000 or N3,000 for my pains each time.

After January 2022, when I once again confirmed his selfishness I left him.

But he had never stopped trying to use me, even up to late last year when I saved him possible prison sentence. He knows what I’m talking about. Should he continues to pressure me unnecessarily with his powers as PG I’ll certainly release many details and Amagu might likely watch their President General go to jail. And I mean every word I say.