2023: We never endorsed Umahi for Presidency — Ebonyi Founding Fathers

Chief Felix Mgbada, an elder statesman and one of those who fought for the creation of Ebonyi State, has refuted media reports that elders of the state have presented Governor Dave Umahi for the Presidency of Nigeria, come 2023.

Mgbada, during a recent chat, said that if any group ever masquerades as Elders of Ebonyi State, such group was never far from the factional group of All Progressives Congress (APC) under the control of Governor Umahi.

He said that such groups were mere political associates of the Governor, not the real Elders of Ebonyi State.

According to him, “The real elders of the state are the founding fathers of the state of which I’m one of them and at no time did the elders of the state made such declaration.”

“Should anyone else call himself an elder in Ebonyi to the exclusion of the founding fathers of the state,” Mgbada maintained, “such a person is a fake elder.”

However, Mgbada insisted that the only son of Ebonyi State who the elders have known, recognised and pray that he wins the Presidency of Nigeria is Senator Anyim Pius Anyim.

Mgbada described Anyim as one man who enjoys not only the support and respect of Ebonyi Elders but majority of Ebonyi people, saying, he was 100 per cent convinced that greater percentage of Ebonyi people were fully behind him.

Dr. Barr. Benjamin Igwenyi, a former Attorney-General in the state during ex-Governor Martin Elechi’s regime who is also among the founding fathers of the state, echoed Mgbada’s views.

In a telephone chat, Igwenyi said: “Ben Oka, who issued the declaration, endorsing Governor David Umahi for Presidency by Ebonyi Elders, is far my junior in age.”

He asked: “If he, Oka, is now an Elder of the state, what then are we, the “boys?”

Igwenyi who reiterated the fact that the so-called Ebonyi Elders Council are a mere contraption which the Governor created to whittle down the influence and powers of the real Elders of the State, maintained that “the real elders of the state always tell the Governor the truth, which, of course, he would never like to hear nor listen to,” he said.

But this Ben Oka group which he now assembled, Igwenyi explained, are the types who will tell him what he wants to hear all the time.

Igwenyi declared that he would not be surprised if the Governor had jettisoned the real Elders of the state for his own political allies, saying that the last time the Governor called the real Elders of the state for a meeting, the Elders told him nothing but the truth.

According to him, “himself and Elechi, the immediate past Governor of the state, told him plainly that the PDP Secretariat which he now wants to convert to APC secretariat does not belong to him as a personal property; that there’s no way he could convert the PDP Secretariat built by PDP in the state to APC secretariat simply because he was once a Governor under PDP but now switched to APC and he wants to now carry the property of another party to the other.

“That the secretariat in question was built by PDP, not even under his regime and there’s no way he could convert the belongings of another person and gave it to another person just because he once occupied such house.”

Igwenyi explained that the real elders of the state advised him that no court would grant him such requests. Such genuine and truthful advice may not have gone down well with him, hence his latest move to abandon the real elders of the state to create a pseudo group and call them elders.

Igwenyi however lamented that despite such elderly advice by Elechi, who is even a member of his party, he still locks the PDP Secretariat in the state up till date, using court injunction.

He said that he was not surprised that the Governor was using the likes of Ben Oka who will never tell him the truth for such nefarious roles, because they are what he described as the “hangers on” at the corridors of Government House.

“Of course there is no way they will have the courage to speak the truth to the governor because they are under the influence of table-manner political syndrome, to speak less while the food is still in your mouth,” Igwenyi concluded.