How Obidient 'Tsunami' is testing the senatorial ambition of Southeast governors

The recent kidnapping of Hon. Linus Abaa Okorie, Labor Party (LP) senatorial candidate for the Ebonyi South senatorial district, reinforced the latent challenges facing the ambition of the incumbent South East governors to step down in the Red House of Assembly national in 2023.

In Abia State, Governor Okezie Victor Ikpeazu is set to face popular Senator Enyinnaya Harcourt Abaribe. For South East Governors Forum Chairman King David Umahi, Labor Party Linus Okorie and People's Democratic Party (PDP) Senator Michael Nnachi are determined to question his popularity in the Ebonyi South Senate District. Coming to Enugu State, where incumbent Governor Ifeanyi Lawrence Ugwuanyi picked the PDP senatorial ticket for the Northern District of Enugu, a former serial gubernatorial aspirant on the All Progressives Congress platform ( APC), who is now in LP, Chief Okey Ezea (Ideke) is proving a huge tear in the incumbent governor's electoral flesh. If the three incumbent governors were successful in their quest to graduate from the National Assembly, they would have replicated a similar rise of Senators Chimaroke Nnamani, Sam Ominyi Egwu, Theodore Orji, Orji Uzor Kalu and Owelle Rochas Okorocha. Apart from Nnamani, Orji and Okorocha, other former governors like Kalu and Egwu were unable to secure immediate advancement in the Senate after their tenure due to political demands that cut short their ambitions. For example, in 2007, when he finished his term, Kalu's aspiration for the presidency prevented him from running for the Senate, just as in 2011, the strong political influence of the late Senate Uche Chukwumerije did not could not secure him another term.

Enugu State Governor, Ugwuanyi

Like Kalu, the former governor of Ebonyi State, Egwu, tried to become president and national chairman of the PDP at the end of his eight-year term in 2007. His attempt to recover the PDP from its former commissioner in finance, Senator Tony Agbo, has come to an end. to no avail as Agbo insisted he was too big a politician to serve as a placeholder, particularly after serving as Speaker of the former Enugu State House of Assembly long before Egwu does not join politics. It was a similar political incongruity and miscalculation that denied the former Governor of Imo State in the same class of Governors of 1999, Chief Achike Udenwa, the opportunity to travel to Abuja as as a senator to represent the senatorial district of Imo West. Udenwa's decision to plant Osita Izunaso as a placeholder, and the late Senator Arthur Nzeribe's plot to return to the Red Chamber, have both suffered setbacks. Maverick Nzeribe blocked Udenwa's efforts to take Izunaso's place by insisting that in the event of the senatorial candidate's voluntary withdrawal, he (Nzeribe) was the legitimate replacement having been voted first runner-up in the senatorial primary. Of the five states in the South East, only Anambra State does not have the penchant for governors rushing to represent their areas in the Senate after their term, possibly due to the convoluted politics of the State. Governor Chinwoke Mbadinuju suffered the political malice of being denied an automatic second-term ticket in 2003, unlike his other PDP colleagues. Angered by this mistreatment, Mbadinuju veered into the Alliance for Democracy (AD), where his aspiration for a second term could not bear a positive result. But, Dr Chris Ngige, who was rigged as shadow governor in place of Mbadinuju, could not sustain the election heist that propelled him to power for four years. In 2006, Peter Obi, the standard bearer for the governorship of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in the 2003 ballot, regained his mandate as a validly elected candidate. In 2011, Ngige arrived in the Senate, which was his initial ambition before the p...