Even in all his government’s high-handedness, Enugu State Governor, Peter Mbah is not known to have ever issued either veiled or open threat to his people of Nkanu. His government might be quite unpopular at home, but I could guess the governor is not such a naïve person as to mistake the vile words of the Chairman of Nsuka Local Government Area (LGA), Jude Chinedu Asogwa on his people for love or support.
Mbah must see through the sanctimonious façade of Asogwa’s humiliating words on his own people, words that even the Hitlers and Mussolinis of the world would have been ashamed to use so freely and so casually.
To prove that it was not an accidental slip of the tongue, he intentionally chose such a gathering as would trigger independent recording and broadcast of what he intended to say. Asogwa’s voice never sounded so belligerently loud. He must have reasoned that such bellicosity would make sweet music to the governor’s ears.
… it is easier to do good and be remembered and rewarded for it than to manage a people badly and blackmail them into surrendering their legitimacy.
The state government has accumulated the bad reputation for squashing freedom and taking liberties with the people’s liberty. Chijinkem Ugwuanyi was released just recently for merely rebroadcasting a video featuring the Secretary to the State Government. I was hunted in August 2025 probably for a similar or worse fate. There are many similar and related cases. So, Asogwa must have reasoned he was operating within the government-approved playbook of emasculation.
Those who might not have followed this development might need to be fed the sordid background. At what looked like a small political gathering, Asogwa reportedly took to the stage to warn every shop owner in Nsukka to factor Mbah in his business going forward and threatened that those who fail to comply would be dealt with.
‘You have to be prepared to deliver severe beatings on the Ibaji man before he uses the good measure to sell fish to you’, he squealed in a local idiom.
Those gathered, standing below him like political prisoners that they were, chorused their acquiescence when he rhetorically asked whether they understood the commission he was imposing.
Now, how could any normal human being say that sort of thing? Worse, who, in their right minds, speaks that way to their people?
His predecessor, Walter Ozioko, at a forum during his heydays, spoke dictatorially and undemocratically about how to curtail the free democratic choices of the people. Those who were present also clapped for him, but the people proved him wrong during the last general elections.
Asogwa’s behaviour reminds one of the man who never dreamt of affording the Ozo title and chose to wear the bracelets on his head. His conduct and the way he had been treating every other person made one conclude he was not mentally prepared for the office of local council Chairman when it happened upon him. This was in spite of the years he had spent in political tutelage.
I got close to Asogwa during the time Ike Ekweremadu was making his bid for the state governorship. Asogwa was the figurehead spoiler who utilised the Oganiru Enugu platform to make the raves that rattled the then Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi administration.
When Mbah emerged as governor, Ekweremadu recommended Asogwa to be made local council Chairman and that was how he rose from obscurity to the position upon which he is standing and talking down on Nsukka people. When his nomination by the Peoples Democratic Party was confirmed, I called Asogwa to congratulate and admonish him on how to not beat the path to the wrong side of history.
We did not see again except by accident the day he came to Chief Peter Odo’s house, and that was when I began to suspect that something might go wrong, if it hadn’t at the time. There were elders, including Odo around, but Asogwa was unrestrained in his language, browbeating everybody to join Mbah or be forced to face political obscurity.
To me, his supposed friend, he told to pocket everything I was writing, because they don’t matter.
‘You have been writing these things all your life. It did not stop Mbah from being declared the winner. We will move like this and still win another one, and you will start writing again’, he said, and picked two copies of my book, The Power of Nothing, for which he arrogantly did not pay to date.
I was, on this day, bothered about what smelt like an anti-intellectual strain in his DNA. No properly educated person dismisses any intellectual work with such a casual wave of the hand. I moved on and followed most of his activities on social media, where his latest performance has severally assaulted me.
Asogwa was a scion of the Ekweremadu school of politics and rose to the position that he is currently occupying on that score. But did Ekweremadu speak to his people with such disrespect? He rose from local council Chairman until he became Deputy Senate President, and not for one day did his agenda include subjugation of his own people. Ekweremadu lived, worked, walked, and breathed freedom and improved the livelihoods of his people.
Even as he’s been facing challenges over the past few years, hints of his closeness to his people still sneak into the media.
Asogwa actually unravelled quite early. His tyrannical tendencies manifested quite in his administration as local council Chairman when he suspended some councillors of the Nsukka LGA and kept them out by fiat for close to, if not more than one year.
His dalliance with the infamous Opi cross-border kidnapper is also another pointer to his tendencies. Emmanuel Nwangwu was already notorious beyond the shores of Nsukka long before Asogwa became council Chairman, but he found him worthy and actually made him one of the pillars of his security in his administration.
Although he inherited it from his predecessor, Nwangwu’s reputation was already so ugly that the most suitable place for him was a prison, and not the right hand of a local council Chairman. He continued getting the Chairman’s protection until he was alleged to have killed his 11-year-old cousin, for attempting to flee from his sexual predatory captivity.
Asogwa has become the modern-day Rehoboam. He has ignored the counsel of all the political elders of Nsukka. Yes, we have many political elders who are not worth their ages, but as a people whose culture prescribes respect for elders, one can accord this respect without getting enchanted by mischief.
Asogwa is not known to harbour any respect for these elders and leaders. You cannot get positive words from any of them about the current local Emperor.
We live in an environment in which political power is easily acquired without the mandate of the people, but it is a known fact that you need their goodwill to continue to remain relevant in the future. You might acquire all the lucre in the world, but even that has its limits in terms of the extent of joy and fulfilment it can bring.
Power is transient. If this is hard for you to understand, take a look at the picture of your predecessor on the wall in your office: he could still have been in office, sitting on that same chair you are sitting on, if I was wrong. You will leave that place one day, and the multitude of praise singers milling around you for the crumbs you drop for them would have gravitated to beat the drums for the person who would have taken your place. The people you determinedly crushed their will and stole their freedom would still be there, patiently waiting for the day of freedom, the day when a good man would emerge and begin to treat them with love, decency and respect.
You delivered your message to Nsukka people with a closing proverb. Perhaps, it wouldn’t be bad to close this message with another Nsukka proverb.
The grasscutter told her children to close their eyes intermittently as they move around because blindness comes by surprise. That is the proverb of our people, wisemen, who lived good and bequeathed wisdom for us to inherit – that is, those who are willing to follow this well-paved path.
It is also important to note that legitimacy can never be acquired by force or coercion. The poor, struggling people who depend on those shops to eke out their living will never concede their legitimacy to you simply because you are privileged to be LG Chairman.
The ones whose shops were demolished have not all died. Those who died died for a cause, and that cause birthed a throbbing curse the sensible want to avoid. Blackmailing the poor with their means of livelihood is the cheapest recourse of any pocket tyrant. A candid advice is that it is easier to do good and be remembered and rewarded for it than to manage a people badly and blackmail them into surrendering their legitimacy.
Enough said.
Okuhu is a journalist, a Public Relations professional, brand strategist and teacher
