Ohanaeze: Why National Body Ignored Chief Solomon Aguene’s Election In Lagos Chapter – Chief Ozonweke 

My name is Chief Everest Ozonweke. I  was the former General Secretary of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Lagos State and now the National coordinator of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Southwest.

Well, in all sense of honesty, let me go down memory lane a bit, so that you can understand the system very, very well. Okay. You can remember that the President General, Senator John Mbata and members of his team of NEC visited Lagos sometime last year to mediate over the crisis in Ohanaeze leadership, Lagos State.

Yes. And during that meeting, the summary of the meeting goes thus.  Chief Sunday Ossai and his executive presented documents showing that they were seriously contesting Chief Solomon Aguene’s consent judgement in the court.

The PG told them that for him, he wants to dissolve both houses so that they can have an election. They said no, that they haven come this far in the court that they want to pursue the matter to its conclusive end.

Then when we called both groups to come together, Solomon’s group and Ossai’s group, the PG made it clear to everybody that Ohanaeze is a law-abiding organisation, especially when it has to do with court. Solomon Aguene doesn’t have the moral right to do what he did by upturning the leadership cycle of Ohanaeze by going for the consent judgement.

But for the fact that there is a document before all of us, gotten from the Court of Competent Jurisdiction, pronouncing consenting to that agreement, that he will not throw it to the waste bin. Right? He asked Solomon, when is your consent judgement expiring? He said by April 23. Then he said, Ossai, I’m giving you benefit of doubt, pursue your case between now and 22nd of April, 2026, if you are able to set aside this consent judgement, by June, 2026, we will conduct an election. If you are not able to set aside this consent judgement, upon it expiring by 22nd of April, then election will be conducted using Solomon’s platform.

Now, as God may have it, that same matter in court, Ossai’s group was able to get court enrolment order. Hence the matter is before the court of law. Any action taken against that matter is subjudice. For the fact that the matter is before the law court, the next thing to do is to hold on, let them trash it out.

But the court went ahead again to issue that enrolment order. Solomon’s lawyer was at the court. At the last court session, he promised the court that he’s going to advise his clients that there will be nothing like election.

Then, I later heard the rumour that Solomon’s consent judgement was expiring by 8th of April and before that 8th of April, of course, the court enrolment order has already come. And this enrolment order supersedes the issue of consent judgement.

Now, that is given aside. To the NEC, there was nothing like election in Lagos, because the process of election is an open page to everybody.

When NEC wants to conduct election, for instance, in 2009 to 2013, the National Executive Council of Ohanaeze sent in the late Achuzie. He was the one that came from Enugu to supervise the election that brought Oliver Akubueze to office, 2009 to 2013. Now, in 2013 to 2017, NEC again sent Dr. John Morgan to come and observe the election that brought in Chief Fabian Onwuhalu to office.

In 2018 to 2022, based on the crisis in Lagos, NEC came to Lagos to conduct the election that brought in Solomon Aguene to office. So, you can see the sequence of NEC’s involvement in these elections. So now, where is the NEC involvement in the so-called election  conducted by Aguene? NEC was not part of the election.

You cannot conduct an election in isolation of INEC in our general Nigerian election and then you claim that the election was credible. There is no way the NEC will pronounce any election they did not observe as being a credible election. Observing election is far from sitting down on the chair and looking at the process.

They will go through the zoning formula, they study the zoning system, at least two or three tenures that brought us to where we are. Who were the people at the helm of affairs? What is the mode of the election? Option A4 or open ballot. Those observers have to understand the system of the elections to adjudge it credibly.

Ohanaeze Ndigbo Lagos election has due process. First place is local government elections. When you conduct local government election, you elect new executives at the local government level.

The so elected new executives will be coming to the centre with their delegates to elect new state executives. Those state executives become the second phase of the election. In this case, my brother, there was no local government election.

We saw some group of persons by social media reports that they said they did the election. The question is, the local government election that was conducted in 2022, do they still have their tenure in office? Their tenure in office has not expired.There has not been lifting of ban on politicking by NEC or LOC. The next we heard was election.

Now, these same people that elected the so-called winners, were the same delegates that elected the executives of 2022, Should they be the same delegates that are coming to elect the executives for 2026? It is totally abnormal. Completely abnormal.

Now, the National Executive Committee of Ohanaeze, NEC, was not involved in the election. So, there is no way they will cancel what they were not informed about and were not involved in.

So, as far as the NEC is concerned, there has never been any election in Lagos State. That was why the motion on directive for a new election was moved at the General Assembly meeting, which is the highest organ of Ohanaeze Ndigbo worldwide. (To be continued).