Udom’s Maintain Peace Movement and 2023 Challenges—by Ufok Ibekwe
The next General Election in the country is scheduled to commence on 18th February 2023 according INEC timetable released sometime in April this year. That is barely 18 months from now. Before then, there will be other pre-election buildup activities, such as holding of congresses and election of delegates leading to the party primaries to produce the flag bearers of the party for various positions. Governor Udom Emmauel being conscious of this has now switched his attention to the 2023 big game. He has started assembling his team and oiling his arsenals in readiness for the battle ahead. The recent formation of a political group in the State known as Maintain Peace Movement (MPM), is part of such preparation.
The group which has commenced the inauguration of its chapters across all the 31 local government Areas in the State is designed to drive the grassroots mobilization of voters for the 2023 elections. The group slogan is “that same God”. The slogan appears to have been derived from “ONLY GOD” mantra used by Divine Mandate group during Udom’s second term campaign in 2019.
It was obviously through the intense mobilization effort of the Divine Mandate campaign group that enabled PDP to give APC a sucker punch in the 2019 general elections in Akwa Ibom. Perhaps with Maintain Peace Movement, Udom is aiming at a kidney punch on any PDP challenger come 2023 given the swarm invasion strategy the group has adopted. They want to knock on every door and appeal to every neighbor to support PDP.
Many people have honestly inquired to know what the group really represents in terms of core values and guiding philosophy that can sit permanently in the collective psyche of the people beyond 2023. Beside the façade of peace maintenance message MPM drives, the underpinning motive of the group is clearly to hunt for votes in the elections. Beyond this, what else can the group offer to Akwa Ibom People?
MPM which is studded with so many high profile politicians has the PDP national legal Adviser Bar Eno Idem as the General coordinator and Prince Enobong Uwah as the secretary. The two top commanders of the group are men of average stature, but athletically built with military carriage. They are quick and nimble on their feet, like men who could do sparring in the middle weight category in the pugilistic or any combat sport. Both men are smart and skillful politicians too.
In politics, we all know that the ability to knock the ball around well and scores goals is not a function of heavy body mass. The body size of the dog in the political fight sometimes does not even matter, rather, it is the size the fight in the dog that is important. Like dynamite often come in small packages, I can say from the very poetry of my inner soul that Eno Idem and Enobong Uwah are like artillery war heads that are small but lethal enough to torpedo a superstructure.
With the formation of MPM, governor Udom’s eyes are obviously glued now on two future targets. He is looking at accomplishing his Completion agenda and also to produce his successor in 2023. Both targets are important and subsumed in each other as one cannot be pursued at the expense of the other, because the two hold the key to his enduring legacy as governor.
Governor Udom presently, to me does no longer look like a loner, or cut the image a political neophyte pinned on him during the pre-2015 era. Despite Udom’s usual gentle mien like a catholic bishop presiding over a tea party, the young seem to have really grown. He has the grasp and grip of Akwa Ibom politics now and the mental grit needed to follow through any battle. As a governor, he knows the importance of having a well-oiled political machine and the honour of being the commandant general of a strong political movement. He tested a bit of it in 2019 with the Divine Mandate structure and enjoyed a huge groundswell which saw him back to the government House. He was running then for his second term as an incumbent and many people gave him support because he was the store keeper and sharer of the common wealth.
In 2023, the governorship election will be transitional with a fresh face aiming to take over from him. They will be new dynamics on ground requiring modified approaches and reinvention of tactics. But Udom still holds a higher advantage to produce his successor being a sitting governor. He is the leader and owner of the party structure in the state. Setting up MPM to drive the grassroots mobilization in the state to complement the efforts of the party is like the smart strategy of an experienced archer who increases the arrows in his quiver before setting out for war.
Udom seems to have learnt from the demeaning experience he had in 2015 when Akpabio drafted him to be his successor. He was seen as an outsider in the scene and a completely unknown political quantity by Akpabio’s henchmen. Even after winning the election and becoming governor, people kept taunting him for being a leader without followers. Some even branded him as a sheep that will be lost in the political wilderness without Akpabio as his guide.
Governor Udom embarked on his 2019 re-election bid as a very vulnerable candidate. Perhaps this was what informed the christening of his campaign train as Divine Mandate, with ONLY GOD as the slogan. Before then, he was simply seen as a governor walking and dancing under the lengthen shadow of Akpabio his mentor ,who was the minority leader of the Nigerian Senate then. When rumours began to trickle in that Akpabio was planning to defect from PDP to APC, Udom had good reasons to quake in his shoes. Akpabio was seen as the octopus head of PDP in Nigeria then, while Akwa Ibom was viewed as his fiefdom. Strangely though, when Akpabio so called Mother of All Defections from PDP to APC took place on August 2018 at Ikot Ekpene stadium, the event turned out to be a hollow ritual. All the hypes amounted to empty vapour as the so called Akpabio boys refused to follow their benefactor to his new abode. The APC national top brass at the event were hugely disappointed because Akpabio danced down to the podium alone with only few limping men carrying brooms to join the new party with him.
Akpabio APC exploit began somehow on an infamous note. When in his usual demagogic oratory promised to finished the 2019 elections in three hours, importing words with ignoble ancestry like “Warsaw saw war” which conjured the image of violence, people were deeply miffed. Consequently, when he eventually lost the senate election to Dr Christopher Ekpenyong, there was deafening noise, as his adversaries perceived some elements of poetic justice in his defeat. But the severe whacking of Akpabio and the APC in Akwa Ibom in 2019 did not just happen by chance. It came through a strategic and well-coordinated mobilization operation by the Divine Mandate group.
As 2023 draws closer, and MPM goes to work to produce Udom successor, the group must begin by making itself attractive to the public.. It can do this by defining the core values of the movement beyond the mere ideology of non-violence. In every progressive society, Justice and equity are always the key elements that drive sustainable peace. This should be adopted to form the crux of PMP’s ideological framework.
The group should understand that Peacebuilding and maintenance in every society require all citizens to be aware of their individual and collectives’ responsibilities in creating the desirable nonviolent atmosphere for the needed socioeconomic growth of such society. This may require focus on peace education and mental rebirth which involves the reconfiguration of the minds of the people to embrace new and result oriented ways of life. This is the proven template that often provoke development, growth and prosperity in any civilized society which MPM should imbibe.
As Maintain Peace Movement continues the inauguration of local government chapters and building momentum around the State, it has one big task to tackle. It must look first beyond the political interest of active members of the Movement that wish to become one thing or the other in 2023 and search for a man who can carry the group ideals into the future as governor. They should build a strong consensus around such personality who must be a governorship aspirant whose ideals fit into their peace ideology, anti-cultism posture and governor Udom’s industrialization agenda.
Maintain Peace Movement to me is a great initiative with sound ideological message. Many peace loving and development driven people will definitely love to embrace and identify with it. But this can only happen if the governorship aspirant the group will finally present in 2023 will truly personify the ideals it preach. Finding an embodiment of the ideals of the Movement in flesh and blood will cause many people to commit themselves to it’s cause. This is where the big task is. The group must work selflessly and tirelessly to produce a governorship candidate at the final gubernatorial primary who is a repository of peace and prosperity. It must be a man with a consistent past, coherent present and clear vision for the future.Such person should be genuinely unselfish, compassionate and action-oriented individual with the capacity to give Akwa Ibom a sense of destiny through conversion of thin ideas on paper into thick actions on ground.
With this approach, MPM will become a monster sucess
