The Ikwo Development Union in Lagos State, an association of the low, average, and mighty people of the great Ikwo LGA has evaluated, analyzed, and critiqued the various governorship candidates of the various political parties contesting in the March 2023 governorship election in Ebonyi State and arrived at a rational conclusion that the various candidates are good in their self-presentations, and are qualified by age and learning to govern the young state, and it’s their inalienable right to vie to govern the state at any material point in time.
We, therefore, congratulate and wish them well as they paddle through the shores of the rigorous campaign stages and votes canvassing, urging them to remember to play the game by its rules, not forgetting that this is not going to be the first nor the last governorship election that’ll be conducted in Ebonyi State as the lives of our people, and the collective image of our dear state are more important over any other personal pursuit that is but seasonal.
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As a people – Ikwo people, we have our own right to support or not to support any of the candidates based on our observations and critical evaluation of such a candidate as it regards antecedents and history of personal and public carriage. We’ll not, in the course of this demonize any of the candidates by way of conjuring what’s not factual of him in order to run him down – no, this is because, we are well-doing, meticulous, and educated people.
So, having gone through the records of the candidates, we have come to the conclusion that “we” aren’t going to through our support behind the candidate of the APC – Hon. Francis Nwifuru. Our not supporting him is not based on the party on whose platform he is running as we aren’t partisan. Our subtle, but total rejection of him is coming on the heels of the various issues that have involved him against the people of Ikwo, his in-law.
A lot has been linked to him and these are sordid incidents of which he’s yet to prove himself innocent. Time and space may not permit us to enumerate and highlight them one by one, but we’ll point out a few. Lest we forget, our decision here is informed by the collective and individual judgment on this very candidate by our people both at home and in the diaspora. We’re merely trying to convey this to the larger audience and to the very person it affects. So, this should be seen as the nonpartisan Ikwo people speaking through us in total agreement…
Hon. Francis Nwifuru has done us things that are reprehensible, not minding that he’s marrying our daughter as his only wife and mother of his fine children. He has been caught in the open trying to denigrate, and finally doing that by inciting his people -Izzi people against the people of Ikwo over a land border disagreement that involved a village in Ikwo and another in Abakaliki LGA – also an Izzi community. That ugly incident got escalated to the state capital – Abakaliki wherein the entire people of Ikwo were declared persona non grata in a city they are part of and contributed to developing.
That fetid incident was proven to have been sponsored by this very candidate who is now seeking the votes of the same people he influenced their forceful exeunt from the state capital, destruction of their houses and businesses, and infliction of fatal wounds. In so far as a panacea to further escalation was provided at the time, the truth remains that our people are of the firm belief that if the man who engineered this fatality when not a governor could do the worse to our people should he become Governor.
We are apprehensive and believe that our total rejection of his ill-fated mandate will go a long way to frustrate the journey, and it’s within our rights not to support him. We are bothered about what becomes the fate of the Ikwo people and residents of Abakaliki should this element become Governor.
We’re drawing an additional breath from the fact that even his own brothers and sisters are not in support of his aspiration as they themselves have at one time or another fallen victim to his characteristic villainy and warped political persona. This stems from the various lethal crises he’s fingered sponsoring just to achieve his personal political agenda.
We can recall his fatal records on his community in 2015 and 2019 respectively when he was struggling to get back to the Ebonyi State House of Assembly and subsequently become Speaker of the House. The memory of the dastardly ordeals is still fresh in the minds of Ebonyi people who were greeted with the news and graphics emanating therefrom. Some of the victims of the political carnage at those times are still in the mortuary and treatment beds abandoned. If he could do this to his own people, then we wonder what becomes of us the outsiders whom he has always marked for destruction.
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The memory of how our young people attending matriculation in Abakaliki from Ikwo were burnt in their vehicle on their way to Abakaliki by the Izzi war mercenaries is still fresh in the minds of our people. These were teens and adults in their numbers who weren’t even from the affected location.
This man is yet to show remorse or prove that he doesn’t know anything about it as many accuse he does know, not through words of the tongue nor body expression. No, we can’t support this kind of person exterminating our people with a clean sweep. Our ancestors will punish us if we do.
It’s because of these and more that we’ve come to an agreement that we aren’t going to throw our support behind him for the sake of posterity and the safety of our people – home and in the diaspora. We are not stopping him from campaigning in Ikwo, but we want to assure him that he’ll not harvest our votes to his benefit.
In our subsequent publications, we shall highlight the other reasons we’re rejecting him as whatever he is coming with. We are not foreclosing the possibility of having his own party members supporting him, but it should be known to him that those will not give him up to 10% of the total votes to be cast as we all know that Ikwo is the largest LGA in Ebonyi State with over 20 wards. It doesn’t end at that, our people are politically savvy, as such, registered and picked their voter cards in great numbers. We’ll make use of it judiciously so that we elect a better person who’ll not place clan politics with their lives and collective destiny