Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State has stridently refuted that he ever opposed restructuring. I hope it is safe to believe him. However, I wish to point out that at the 2014 National Confab at which the three Southern zones (SE, SS and SW) were pushing for restructuring as their unified cardinal position, delegates from Enugu and Ebonyi States refused to back the rest of us.
The stand of Ebonyians, led by Dr Sam Egwu was that Ebonyi people were opposed to an arrangement that would take them back to the Eastern regional structure in which they were looked down upon and denied adequate development. Enugu State delegation put forward a similar argument.
To them, the 36 state structure was like an emancipation, sort of. Hence supporting to be restructured into a regional arrangement was like opting to "go back to Egypt".
It was hard to fault that logic even though I was part of the South East Peoples Assembly (SEPA) and of Southern Nigeria Peoples Assembly that sat at several
meetings and drew up and aggregate the positions of the three Southern zones to the confab.
The state governments were carried along too. So, when I read that Engr. Umahi was opposing restructuring, my mind went back to our several meetings of SEPA at which no Ebonyian had spoken against the collective positions arrived at after very intellectually vibrant sessions. Notably when the confab started, Ebonyi government at which Umahi was the deputy governor pushed Ebonyi delegates to make a somersault.
When I read that Umahi had denied ever having opposed restructuring, having descended heavily on the social media for "misquoting" him, I started wondering if Dr. Sam Egwu and his Ebonyi team at the confab, had not also been misquoted when they played the black leg on the restructuring option.
By Uche Ezechukwu
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