OVERSTRETCHING A PEOPLE'S PATIENCE FOR NO JUST CAUSE:
By Sir Don Ubani; KSC, JP
Okwubunka of Asa
29th January, 2017

Ambition is a common character-istic associated with man. It is man's nature to aspire to higher and better standards of life. He pursues his ambition through many fields of endeavour, including education, commerce, science, technology, law, medicine, agriculture and politics .

Successful legitimate pursuit of ambition, backed by God's grace, brings about social mobility. The son of a poor peasant farmer could, by dent of hard work, become a teacher, doctor or attain any height in the society .

It is not an offence for one to nurse an ambition. One must however, draw a demarcation between normal ambition and inordinate ambition.

Students of Shakespearean history would seamlessly recall that it was inordinate ambition that made some Romans, including Cassius and Brutus, conspire against their great General, Julius Caesar and unjustifiably stabbed him to death.

Governorship election took place in Abia State in April 2015. Governor Okezie Victor Ikpeazu of the Peoples' Democratic Party, having clearly won the election, was sworn in as Governor of Abia State on 29th May, 2015.

Litigations arising from the said election quickly reared up their heads. Dr Alexander Otti, a native of Arochukwu who had contested on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance and lost, took his protest to the Election Petition Tribunal but lost at the court of first instance.

Feeling brutalized and badly wounded, he approached the Appeal Court that sat at Owerri and obtained a favourable judgment on the 31st December, 2015.

As would be expected, Governor Ikpeazu, Ph.D , took his case to the Supreme Court. On the 3rd of February, 2016 a seven-Man Panel of the Court, including the Chief Justice of Nigeria; Mohammed Mahmoud, in a lead judgment read by erudite Justice Suleiman Galadima, upheld the election of Dr Ikpeazu as the duly elected Governor of Abia State.

It is an expression of inordinate ambition that after having lost his aspiration both through the ballot box and at the Supreme Court, Otti still went to the Supreme Court asking to be joined in Uche Ogah's case against Governor Ikpeazu, in which Ogah is relying only on a non-constitutional tax information to become governor of Abia State, even when he knows that he never participated in the April 2015 guber election.

Granted, the Supreme Court has given impetus to his application to be joined in the Ogah versus Governor Ikpeazu suit, the truth remains that vaulting ambition beclouds good judgment.

Again, lack of patriotism has led Otti to unbearably overstretch the peaceful and patient disposition of Abia people.

Sir Don Ubani; KSC, JP
Okwubunka of Asa
State Publicity Secretary
PDP, Abia State