New Ebonyi politics: Deliver votes or be sacked

Let’s call it what it is.

“Let the front page of a newspaper show it tomorrow: we will remove a council chairman who did not win in his local government. We will use your councillors and remove you.”

That was Governor Francis Nwifuru, speaking to 13 newly sworn-in local government chairmen in Abakaliki this month. Not a warning about poor service delivery. Not a charge to fix roads or clinics. A warning about votes.

In one sentence, the governor turned an elected office into a party assignment. The job is no longer to govern for the people of your council. The job is to “deliver” your council to the APC in 2027. Fail, and you are gone.

This is how democracy dies in installments. Not with a coup, but with threats made at inaugurations. Not by banning opposition, but by making survival in office dependent on how many votes you can hand over.

The question is no longer whether Ebonyi will vote APC. The question is: who gave politicians ownership of our votes?

This did not start in September.

Since May 2023, the language from Ebonyi Government House has been about what the state will “deliver”, not what it will receive. In December 2024, Nwifuru told Ebonyians to back President Bola Tinubu’s infrastructure agenda because the Federal Government had taken over the Ndibe Bridge project. By September 2024, he was defending the President’s policies publicly and asking Nigerians to keep faith.

Then came August 2025. At a town hall in Abakaliki, the governor said Ebonyians were “proud to identify with” Tinubu and called his leadership “spiritually ordained.” Then he said the quiet part out loud: the best way to reciprocate the President was to show he had the “strength and capacity to deliver him.” And when the time came, “we would face those making noise and show them our stuff.”

“Deliver.” Not persuade. Not campaign. Deliver. As if votes were bags of rice to be handed over.

That word matters because there is a difference between mobilizing voters and claiming them. One is politics. The other is ownership.

Nwifuru did not invent this playbook. He inherited it.

He was a PDP House of Assembly member before jumping to APC in 2020. He became Speaker, then got his predecessor David Umahi’s endorsement and rode that structure to the governorship in 2023.

Umahi’s own path tells the story. Deputy governor under PDP’s Martin Elechi, governor under PDP in 2015 and 2019, then a defector to APC in November 2020. Today he is Minister of Works.

And since January 2023, even while still governor, Umahi was already speaking for the party, not the people. “No other political party should be able to win anything, not even councilorship,” he said. “I have put a structure in place.”

But structures crack. In 2023, voters reminded everyone. Peter Obi won Ebonyi with 259,738 votes. Tinubu got 42,402. The people voted. The structure did not deliver.

So the structure tightened. In December 2025, Minister Umahi said the South-east would not “repeat the mistake of 2023.” By May 2026, he and Nwifuru were promising to “deliver 95%” of Ebonyi’s votes to Tinubu.

Then came 22 August 2026. The local government election. APC won all 13 chairmanship seats and all 171 councillorship seats. Why? Because other parties withdrew. The PDP alleged the exercise was designed to favour the APC and boycotted.

When one party takes everything, power is concentrated. When that same party then threatens the winners with removal if they don’t produce more wins later, power becomes possession.

The signal was immediate. Days after Nwifuru’s warning, Ohaukwu chairman Paul Ituma reportedly said anyone opposed to the governor or APC had become his enemy.

Think about that. A chairman’s job is to govern a council. Collect waste. Fix primary health centres. Grade rural roads. But his tenure now depends on the presidential candidate his residents choose.

That is not federalism. That is feudalism.

That is not representation. That is recruitment.

And it raises a second, uglier question: if chairmen are campaign managers, who is governing? If councillors are enforcers, who is legislating?

No one is asking what should be done for the people. Everyone is asking what the people should deliver.

And why all the praise?

Is President Tinubu governing Nigeria with personal money? Is Ebonyi receiving charity outside his constitutional duty? Infrastructure is not a favour. It is the job.

Which is why it is fair to ask: how many times has Nwifuru announced a project with the same energy he uses to promote Tinubu’s campaign? How many times has he told us about outcomes in health and education with the same certainty he uses to promise votes?

Nwifuru was elected in 2023 to administer Ebonyi, not to acquire it. His People’s Charter of Needs promised open governance, citizen input, and a government focused on “outcomes and outputs.” It promised better education, health, agriculture, roads, jobs, and commerce.

More than three years later, the test is not what was announced. It is what changed.

BudgIT’s State of States 2025, using 2024 data, shows Ebonyi’s capital expenditure jumped from N73.23bn in 2023 to N160.83bn in 2024. That is a 119.62 per cent increase.

But look closer. Health budget performance collapsed from 84.59% in 2023 to 25.9 per cent in 2024. Education did better at 73.21 per cent, but the gap between allocation and actual spending in people-facing sectors is glaring.

The state’s own Auditor-General flagged another red light. In 2024, IGR was N15.23 billion against a N37.20bn target. Revenue is weak. Dependence is high.

This is not to say that nothing has been built. It is to say that big spending is not proof of good governance. A road you cannot maintain is not development. A hospital without drugs is not healthcare.

And what of the people?

The latest National Bureau of Statistics Multidimensional Poverty Index puts Ebonyi’s unemployment at 40.2 percent and underemployment at 22 percent. That survey predates Nwifuru, so it is not his fault. But it is his baseline. He was in government before. He is governor now.

Citizens do not live in budget lines. They live in the economy. Three years is long enough to move from announcements to outcomes. And the numbers do not match the political certainty with which this administration speaks.

If N160.83 billion can be spent as capital expenditure while only 25.9% of health funds are utilized, the question is not whether Ebonyi has projects.

The question is whether government is matching expenditure with the needs of its people.

Governor Nwifuru has every right to campaign for his party. He has no right to claim the votes of Ebonyians.

You do not earn a vote by threatening a chairman. You earn it by fixing the clinic, paying teachers, creating jobs, and making life easier than it was yesterday.

Records of performance, not fear, should make people vote APC in 2027. Records, not removal letters: results, not ratios.

Because once politicians start believing they own the ballot, democracy stops being government of the people.

It becomes government of the party.

And when that happens, the people have only one choice left: to take their votes back.

They are not yours to give, governor.

They are ours to cast.

Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info).