The INEC, all along had been pretending in its correspondences not to support Leonard’s illegalities but it has always surreptitiously done everything possible to make Leonard’s illegalities and falsehoods have their ways, just to cripple a party that was feared could spring a surprise and change the narratives.
Surfing the internet for beneficial purposes on the night of the 10th of March 2021, I ran into a newspaper report from a press conference done by Leonard Ezenwa, which read “AAC disowns Sowore as its chair, Accuses him of impersonation”, published in the Vanguard Newspaper. I read through the supposed reportorial which must needs be balanced, but all I could find after the few words by way of introduction, is a published outburst of offensive of Leonard Ezenwa, all through to the end, aimed at Sowore. This mission shrouded in ungodliness triggered this reaction.
According to Leonard’s story as piped and puffed out by the press, Leonard claimed Omoyele Sowore had been suspended since March 2019, though he conceded the suspension was for six months and that while six-month’s suspension lasted, he acting as the Chairman of the party presided over a national convention of the party on the 9th of August 2019 in Owerri, Imo State, where he claimed Sowore was removed as the national chairman of the party and also expelled from the party, following which, like a comedy movie, he was contemporaneously proposed to occupy his erstwhile leader’s seat, as the party chairman and had been in that position since then, where he has now become a good friend of the INEC.
The INEC, all along had been pretending in its correspondences not to support Leonard’s illegalities but it has always surreptitiously done everything possible to make Leonard’s illegalities and falsehoods have their ways, just to cripple a party that was feared could spring a surprise and change the narratives. The INEC via its letter of the 14th of May 2019 attested much to this that there was no validly convened NEC of the Party to their Notice to have carried out the suspension of the National Chairman (Omoyele Sowore) of the Party. In the said letter, signed by Mrs Rose Onaran-Anthony, as Secretary to the Commission, paragraph 2 of the letter reads: “There is no documentary evidence that a meeting of the AAC National Executive Committee (NEC) was convened by the National Chairman as required by Chapter 9 Section 59(a) of the Constitution of AAC” and it went further thus:”There are no minutes or evidence of attendance of the AAC National Executive Committee meeting where the National Chairman and eight (8) others were purportedly suspended”. It concluded tersely: “...the commission shall continue to recognize and relate with Mr. Sowore Omoyele as the substantive National Chairman of the African Action Congress (AAC)”.
Being a desperate missionary on a journey for one mission, to harness, while Omoyele Sowore travelled out of the Country to the United States of America on the 12th of May 2019, LEONARD NZENWA, having run against the wall with the INEC, before they became good friends which Leonard now flaunts around even when he had not been able to successfully present a single winning candidate to his newfound friend, INEC, in any political ward of any Local Government in Nigeria, instituted an action in court on the 14th of May 2019, to oust his leader and the founding national chairman of the party, Omoyele Sowore who by then was already out of the Country and by the judgment of the 12th day of July 2019, in SUIT NO.FHC/ABJ/CS/512/2019, the Court gave its affirmation to the said suspension of the national chairman in his absence, for a period of six months, beginning from the 27th of March 2019, which was the date LEONARD NZENWA alleged the suspension took place.
While it was never at any time conceded that there was a suspension as claimed by LEONARD NZENWA, which made Sowore lodge an appeal against the judgment of the 12th day of July 2019, in SUIT NO.FHC/ABJ/CS/512/2019, if there was any, the SIX MONTHS judicial suspension lapsed in September 27th 2019.
While the alleged suspension was going to expire in September 2019, on the 3rd of August 2019, Sowore’s arrest by the Nigerian State had been arranged and completed and Sowore had been detained for Leonard to finish his hatchet job and before Sowore was finally released on the 24th of December 2019, a Leonard, armed with this judgment which only gave orders that had a specific lifespan of SIX MONTHS, had embarked and disembarked on his voyage of carnival of illegalities and violations of the party’s constitution and rained letters torrentially on whoever cared to create time for reading trifles, that he had been crowned the substantive chairman of the party, while Sowore, the founding national leader and national Chairman of AAC, was in DSS custody, by a convention which never convened either in truth or in fact or on the touchstone of AAC constitution, as all the state chairmen Executive committees who should have sat in a national convention were not in any convention.
In a desperate bid to cover up his many lies, Leonard invented and defended with vigours, the same way and manners he defends his pocket, another lie, that he had removed the states Executive Committees of the party who he knew largely constituted whatever national convention the party would convene and that he had replaced them with elusive others, while gladiators were upping their game for upper hands during the last October 2020 gubernatorial election in Ondo State, to find his way to the negotiation table for gains, Leonard appeared again and wrote to the INEC that he had removed the Ondo State Chairman of the party and replaced him with another, but the INEC, in its characteristic manners of stretching out the hand of Esau and voicing out Jacob’s, came out, by its letter of 10th of June 2020, relying on Chapter 17, Section 85(1) of the Constitution of the AAC, which states that “All National, Zonal, State/FCT Area Council and Ward Officers of the party shall hold office for a term of four years and shall be eligible for re-election at the National Convention or appropriate Congress for a further term of four years and no more”, to disprove Leonard and in paragraph 3 of the letter, INEC submitted thus: “In view of this provision, the replacement of the respective AAC State Chairmen with Acting Chairmen represents a breach of Chapter 17 of the Constitution of the AAC which provides for a tenure of office and periodic election”. Therefore by its letter of 10th of June 2020, the INEC informed LEONARD NZENWA that appointing acting chairman in Ondo State, among others, while there is a congress-elected substantive chairman is a breach of the constitution of the AAC and therefore, the African Action Congress’ State Executive Committee led by its substantive Chairman, ALEX ADENIYI, is the only authentic African Action Congress’ State Executive Committee for official purposes and to further prove the falsity of Leonard’s claims, the candidate of AAC in that election, the Ondo State’s October 2020 gubernatorial election, one Adekunle Adeleye, who emerged from the primary election conducted by ALEX ADENIYI-led Executive committee was the candidate accepted by the INEC.
The politicians’ season of shameless dance for power and pocket is approaching again and fixing eyes on 2023, Leonard would step up his game the way he had always done, in the face of Sowore’s national towering political image among the angry youths and the downtrodden who on a daily basis are finding new tones to their political voice in their clamour for a better country and in such season of anomy, all that is foul is fair by any desperate hireling whose mission in politics is to count not the votes but his account balance. This is what played out in the epistolary offensive of Leonard which he christened press conference, in which Sowore was run down like a war enemy, a writing in which standard, ethics, ethos and cleanliness are sacrificed for political expediency.
It is laughable that Leonard could call pressmen together and said, among other ranting, that he was very much bothered about Sowore’s utterances and actions which he claimed constituted threat to national security and that he felt so troubled about Sowore’s violation of his bail conditions as if he was either the Court who gave Sowore those bail conditions being allegedly violated or the government who is the Complainant against Sowore in some of these merely hurriedly contrived charges wired and wound around Sowore’s neck just to keep him down out of circulation for fears of his mass following amongst the angry youths which, as a fact, is feared could turn the table against the occupiers of our defiled political space, Leoanard’s hatchet job therefore is to give one dog many bad names, just to throw it up for hanging.
From point of facts, Omoyele Sowore, the founding national leader and national chairman of the AAC and LEONARD NZENWA, former National Secretary of the party, were strange accidental bedfellows who found themselves by some mystery in a nest that would not endure for long because both personages carried opposed principles, ideologies, histories, ideas and intentions.
The story of Frankenstein, Shelley’s Gothic story and his created monster, who came back for revenge, is the story of Omoyele Sowore, the founding national leader and chairman of African Action Congress and its pioneer presidential candidate and Leonard Ezenwa, his estranged party pioneer secretary, who now vows that everything Sowore in AAC must die for his mission to live.
So like in Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein’s sapient creature, which he molded from assemblage of body parts of corpses, called 'monster', that was forcefully separated from his creator because of his physical imperfections, which Shelley, in her story described as terribly hideous, but who for being shunned and ostracized, led his way back to seek revenge against Frankenstein, his creator, Leonard Ezenwa, the one who answered secretary to his national leader, Omoyele Sowore, whose revolutionary antecedents and credentials give meaning to anything AAC today and without which anything AAC recedes to its natural space to compete with other parties the media men have described as mushroom parties, is on a mission, the vengeance mission.
Tope Temokun, a lawyer and rights activist, writes from Lagos.