By James Nwachukwu There are politicians who are intentional and deliberate about their pursuits and there are those who merely dither. Chima Anyaso belongs to the latter category, a political neophyte whose public conduct oscillates between vacillation and political infantilism. His trajectory in Abia State offers little in the way of ideological constancy. Rather, it reveals a pattern of inconsistency that has now culminated into unmistakable desperation. His lot is stoking discord to cash in on opportunistic fractures in the polity for self aggrandizement. Consider his records. Since the 2019 general election, Anyaso has within a single election cycle after another pitched his tent with three distinct political parties. In 2019, he emerged as the flag bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from the primaries for Bende Federal Constituency. He was later to be defeated roundly in the main election by the incumbent Rt. Hon. Benjamin Okezie Kalu, PhD CFR now the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives of the All Progressives Congress (APC), losing even in his own polling unit and ward. Scarcely had the dust settled when he decamped to the Young Progressives Party (YPP). In 2023, he reappeared as the running mate to Engr. Enyinnaya Nwafor in the Abia governorship contest under the YPP banner. Defeated yet again, Anyaso wasted no time in abandoning both his principal and his party, finding refuge in the Labour Party (LP) on whose platform he now seeks the Bende federal seat for 2027. One would have thought that a man armed with a ticket of the ruling party in the State, at least for another attempt at anything elective, would seize the moment to articulate a vision, to tell Ndi Bende with clarity and conviction what he intends to do if entrusted with their mandate. But he has not. What has been offered instead is a spectacle that approximates content creation rather than a real campaign, a performance bereft of policy depth and unprepared for the rigours of office he seeks. In the absence of ideas, Anyaso has chosen to retail a fiction. He has chosen to regale Ndi Bende with a phantom zoning and rotational arrangement story between the two political blocs of Bende Federal Constituency, Bende South otherwise known as Ikwuishi and Bende North otherwise known as Umunna. According to him, the Deputy Speaker hailing from Bende South (Ikwuishi) entered into a solemn pact with stakeholders in 2019 to serve only two terms of eight years and thereafter cede the seat to Bende North (Umunna). As heavily unfounded as this is, this claim was later subjected to scrutiny in August when Deputy Speaker engaged with the traditional rulers across the divide in Bende. Their verdict was unambiguous. No such meeting was ever convened. No such agreement was ever reached and no such resolution on rotation exists. The rebuttal was emphatic and what followed was a telling silence, a hiatus from the elaborate falsehood that had been deployed to distract the electorate from substantive issues. Incidentally, history is kind to both the Deputy Speaker and his Ikwuishi of Bende South bloc who are yet to come at par with Bende North where Anyaso hails from. A quick prognosis or enquiry into the immediate past will not only frown at Anyaso and his cohorts but also describe them as rabble rousers and agent provocateurs. At the dawn of fourth republic in 1999, Hon. Nnamdi Njoku from Bende South (Ikwuishi) represented the federal constituency for only 4 years. In 2003, Hon. Mba Aja from Bende North (Umunna) also did 4 years. But from 2007 to 2019, Hon Nnenna Ukeje from Bende North spent 12 years, elongating the slot of Umunna to 4 terms of 16 years. Bende South was to pick up again in 2019 when Rt. Hon. Kalu debuted at the thresholds of the National Assembly. He is yet to spend 8 years. An addition of both his term so far and that of Hon.. Njoku will only give you 12 years with a deficit of 4 years to be commensurate with that of Bende North. So, the maths here is that Bende South still has 4 more years to go even before any negotiations about terms and tenures can be made between the two political blocs to know who starts it first. Only last week, the narrative resurfaced albeit in a more brazen form. This time Anyaso produced documents printed on what purports to be the 2019 official campaign letterhead of the Deputy Speaker, alleging a duly signed rotational pact between Umunna and Ikwuishi. The documents on their face betray their own artifice. The two letters bear contradictory dates. The purported proposal letter is dated February 4, 2019 after the parties had supposedly concluded negotiations and executed the agreement on January 10, 2019. In the ordinary course of events, a proposal cannot postdate its own consummation. How come the agreement was signed in January and the proposal seeking the negotiations and support was signed
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