By Chinedu Alisi
Last Friday, August 14,2026, a group under the aegis of Owerri Zone United chose to throw caution to the wind by embarking on a voyage riddled with insults, indignity and embarrassment. The group, which is canvassing for a governorship of Owerri zone extraction, interrupted the meeting of Okigwe zone elders at Chief Tony Chukwu’s country home at Ehime Mbano Local Government Area.
To the best of my knowledge, the so-called Owerri Zone United is a marriage of strange bed fellows in Owerri zone. At best, it is like a social club.
Their agenda : quest for 2027 Owerri governorship can,nevertheless, be said to be out of place because there is nothing wrong with jaw-jaw as Governor Hope Uzodimma had suggested. Rather,what baffled many present and even many more others who heard of the said visit later was the modus operandi they adopted in trying to cajole Okigwe people into foolery.
How on earth does a reasonable person fathom what led the members of Owerri Zone United to believe that they can manipulate Okigwe zone’s sensibilities? How did they think that they could brain wash Okigwe zone with unrealistic sweet talks? Who told them that they can lead Okigwe zone by the nose?
According to Chinua Achebe, when a mischievous child wants to abuse his disciplinarian father, he will tell him, “Papa i wu agu,” meaning “father, you are a tiger.” Agu (tiger) is a wild animal. The boy dare not open his mouth to call his father “a wild animal” because there will be very serious consequences,but he has, nonetheless, abused him. That was what Owerri Zone United did last Friday.
Their visit and the ridiculous items they came with were “a calculated veiled insult on Okigwe zone people and their leaders.” Imagine coming on such an important visit to solicit a people’s cooperation with N5 million, six cows and other insulting items! Was that a Press Briefing?
Are Okigwe zone people and their leaders hungry? Even if they are,should they go for crumbs?
We blame some fifth columnists in the midst of Okigwe zone leaders who subterraneanly facilitated such an ungodly visit. Of course, amongst twelve, there must always be a Judas Iscariot.
However, let it be known that the people of Okigwe zone can not be hoodwinked by anybody’s armtwisting tactics anymore. “What is good for the goose is also good for the gander.”
It is on good authority that some Owerri zone leaders, due to unnecessary and conscienceless desperation, connived with some anti-democracy forces,including the military hierarchy, then, to truncate Okigwe zone’s continued turn in 2011. It is everywhere – in personal memoirs, newspapers, and most libraries. That singular act truncated the seamless flow of the original people-oriented Imo Charter of Equity, which began in 1999.
We are all students of history. And history and records do not lie.
Again, nobody eats his cake and gets it back on a platter. The evil of 2011 injustice to Okigwe zone is still haunting all those who directly or tacitly partook in that democratic heist on Imo State. The haunting will probably continue for a long time until that injustice is genuinely addressed. It is,therefore, an aberration for Owerri zone leaders to believe that they can rob Peter to pay Paul.
That visit of Friday, August 14,2026,by Owerri Zone United stands rejected and condemned. It was an insult taken too far.
I must personally commend the former President General of Ohaneze Ndigbo, Nze Fidelis Ozichukwu,and other Okigwe zone leaders for telling their desperate visitors the home truth : that Okigwe zone is not for sale; that Okigwe zone is not naive and that Okigwe zone is far above the pedestrian and insulting items they came to buy their conscience with.
If Owerri zone leaders, who came on that ignoble visit are rational thinkers, they should have by now realized that Okigwe zone people are not fools. Of all the three geopolitical zones in Imo State, Okigwe is the least developed in all ramifications. It is even more excerberating that some prominent Owerri zone leaders orchestrated the truncation of Okigwe’s tenure in 2011,yet they had the impudence to visit Okigwe zone with their sodomic message.
For Okigwe zone leaders who are clandestinely hobnobbing with anti-Okigwe zone prosperity forces – woe betide them. They should be reminded that “it is only a foolish child who points at his father’s house with the left hand.” We are taking records and posterity will judge them harshly.
For any genuine equity premised on fairness, justice and good conscience to thrive in Imo State, Okigwe zone should be encouraged to take a shot at the 2027 Imo governorship seat by other zones. Anything short of that, tantamount to mischievousness.
