[size=15pt]Soludo and Hegel's theory[/size]
By Jonathan Ibeabuchi

AS Eastern Europe marks the 20th anniversary of the Velvet revolution which brought the communism to an end and ushered in democracy, a velvet revolution is coincidentally taking place in Nigeria's Anambra State . The Uba brothers who tried spiritedly to foist political feudalism on the Anambra people, well known for acute republicanism, are all but routed out of the scene. For the first time in recent years the major political parties in the state have chosen candidates in an election who are credible and are no stooges or surrogates of some shadowy characters.

The ruling All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) has selected the sitting governor, Peter Obi, as its flag bearer in the February 6, 2010, gubernatorial election; the Action Congress (AC) has chosen former governor Chris Ngige; the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) adopted Chief Mike Ejezie last August; and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has opted for the immediate past governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Professor Chukwuma Soludo. The implication of all this is that no matter who wins the forthcoming gubernatorial contest, the state's treasury will be in relatively safe hands. Each of these candidates has a well established reputation. Governor Obi is strong willed; Dr Ngige is tested and trusted; Chief Ejezie is a practising economist and accountant with strong views on good governance; and Prof Soludo remains Nigeria's most far-sighted and accomplished CBN Governor with international name recognition. Anambra has not had so good of late.

Interestingly, none of these candidates was chosen via the ballot box as such. Gov Obi, for instance, was long chosen by the Victor Umeh faction of APGA; his lone challenger, Emeka Etiaba who is the first son of Obi's Deputy, was elbowed out of the party for expressing "undue audacity of hope". Dr Ngige was handpicked by the AC leadership, which would not brook any form of dissent. Chief Ejezie was single-handedly chosen by the ANPP National Chairman, Chief Edwin Ume-Ezeoke. Prof Soludo was selected out of 47 aspirants by the PDP national leadership after all the attempts to hold both ward and state congresses ended in a terrible fiasco, as all the efforts were marred by large-scale violence and chaos by desperate aspirants as well as by court actions by aggrieved party members.

For some curious reason, only Soludo's emergence has been the subject of unending public inquiry, with a section of the media wondering how democratic the process is. PDP's constitution, of course, permits the National Working Committee to field a candidate who in its opinion can win an election if the traditional mode of selecting the flag bearer becomes stalemated. Given the Independent National Electoral Commission's deadline for the submission of the name of a candidate, the choice facing the party was clear: either it submitted any suitable name or it was out of the race. The PDP chose the former. It is, admittedly, a conundrum that nothing is being said about the processes which threw up candidates of the other parties; the processes are in some cases far less democratic.

Of all the factors which explain the great excitement the PDP's action has generated in the public domain, the most relevant is that the criticism against it is internally derived. It is a handful of PDP members from Anambra State who direct, simulate and choreograph the ostensible public excoriation. Critics call the party a hodge-podge, but its adherents refer to it as the country's leading mass movement, " Africa 's biggest party". This means it has various factions with their numerous tendencies, including the proclivity toward mutual annihilation and self-destruct.

The forces fighting Soludo's emergence are very determined, they are desperate. They are the very PDP members the great African writer and thinker, Prof Chinua Achebe, described in his famous 2006 letter to ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo as "renegades" hell-bent on "turning my home state of Anambra into a bankrupt fiefdom". They are the very elements who, among other atrocities, kidnapped the governor to force him out of office and engaged in three days of mayhem against the state in which government institutions were burnt-all in a ferocious bid to grab the state's financial resources. As the forthcoming governorship election fast approaches, the renegades have a candidate in the brother in-law of their leader who is the self-styled godfather of Anambra politics, a pipsqueak the Obasanjo regime empowered financially and economically in order to mess up Dr Alex Ekwueme, his rival for office, right on his home turf. The renegades' candidate is an Onitsha-based trader, who they believe would hold the Anambra cow while they milk it dry.

Soludo is considered the direct opposite of their candidate, even more independent-minded than Dr Ngige whom they rigged into Government House in 2003, only to bare his fangs against them no sooner than he assumed office. In a way, their fight against Soludo is natural, perhaps inevitable. Once a new social order is about to be established, profiteers from the status quo will resist it with the last drop of their blood. The resistance can be cataclysmic. The great German philosopher, Hegel, in his interpretation of historical processes and political development spoke of thesis and ant-thesis as well as synthesis. Thesis refers to the prevailing social condition with all the contradictions, which is with time attacked by opposing historical forces he named anti-thesis. The clash of these opposing forces results in synthesis, which is a superior stage in the march of civilisation. This theory influenced Karl Marx, another great German thinker, in his formulation of the theory of scientific socialism. But Marx saw the clashes in terms of class war.

The war in the PDP over Soludo's nomination is, at bottom, a class war. It is a war between forces of the status quo and those of change. In blunt terms, it is a fight between forces of darkness and forces of light. Those opposed to the enthronement of a new order have a tremendous war chest, and no one can realistically expect them to accept the new reality without a fight. They are engaged in a fight for survival, a fight to a finish, their greatest fight ever because if they lose the forthcoming election they will be certainly be retrenched from the political scene for ever. That was why their leader purchased nomination forms for 12 males at the cost of 5.2 million naira each and for four females at N250 000 each. He probably invested more in the disastrous ward congresses of September 28 conducted by the Gabriel Suswam committee. It is difficult for him to stoically watch these huge investments go down the drain.

The good news is that the renegades are fighting a rear-guard battle. No one wins a battle by fighting from the rear. History is by no means on their side. Even their well-advertised claim that as many as 23 out of the 47 aspirants who sought the PDP gubernatorial ticket were against Soludo was punctured a few hours after the claim was published in the newspapers. A number of the erstwhile aspirants addressed a press conference denying the claim, but also asked the police to investigate those who forged their signatures in the so-called communiqu� and prosecute them accordingly.

A revolution is taking place in Anambra State . It may not be the type Karl Marx envisaged, or even the type we have seen since 1986 in Haiti, the Philippines , Poland , East Germany, Albania, Georgia or Ukraine , but it is a revolution all the same. The fact that the renegades of Anambra State, whom Prof Achebe had in 1982 at the inauguration of the Association of Authors called rough beasts of fanaticism, will become history after the next gubernatorial election is revolutionary enough. It is morning yet on creation day. A new dawn in Anambra State , indeed.

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