Ideato is about to make a choice. Not just a political one. A moral one. The APC will almost certainly zone its House of Representatives ticket to Ideato South. The sitting member, Hon. Ikenga Ugochinyere, comes from Ideato North. Equity demands rotation. But the rotation conversation must not stop at geography. It must go deeper. It must ask a harder question. Have the women of Ideato been fairly served? The answer is no. And that answer should drive everything that happens next.
Look at what Ideato currently has. A lawmaker who screams more than he legislates. A man whose political identity is built on belligerence, threats and manufactured crises. He insults security agencies without provocation. He wages endless wars against perceived enemies. He surrounds himself with a peculiar army: touts from motor parks, young men with criminal records, and women of questionable character who serve as crowd cover. Decent people in Ideato: mothers, wives, grandmothers, and women leaders, quietly look away when his name comes up. Not out of respect. Out of disgust.
The women have suffered most under his style. Seventy percent of voters in Ideato are women. They are within these disgusted categories. He has given them almost nothing. His one gesture to Ideato women was repainting a church hall owned by the Christian women somewhere in Isiokpo. That is it. The rest has been noise; threats against rivals, wild allegations of persecution, and the constant spectacle of a man at war with everyone and everything. Ideato women are not asking for drama. They are asking for compassion, love, care, and humane leadership which will translate to a better life through sound healthcare services. They need someone who actually listens and addresses their worries with humility and meekness. The incumbent has offered none of that. Instead, his foray into leadership has been marked by blood and fire!
A generation ago, the same chaos reigned in Ideato. Politics had become a battlefield. Then a woman walked in. Barr. (Mrs.) Eudora Igwe (Okwesilieze) did not come with thugs or threats. She came with umuada solidarity and quiet determination. She spoke the language of women because she was one of them. She shared them drugs and listened as they testified to being healed. She attended their meetings. She led from within. Okwesili was like an oasis in the desert for the women. And she won the Ideato North LGA chairmanship. She was re-elected. She went to the House of Assembly. She won the APGA Senatorial ticket. Then death took her before she could go further. Ideato never forgot her.
History is repeating itself. The land is restless again. The women are tired again. The principle of antithesis is simple: when a people are pushed hard enough in one direction, they turn sharply in the other. Ideato has endured years of combustible, ego-driven, chest-thumping representation. The correction will be dramatic. Since 1999, only one woman has ever represented Ideato Federal Constituency, Hon. Patricia Udogu from Arondizuogu. And that was over two decades ago. One woman in twenty-seven years! That is not equity. That is neglect.
Give a woman the APC ticket and watch what happens. The women of Ideato will not need to be mobilized. They will mobilize themselves. The conditions today mirror exactly what existed when Okwesilieze rose. The anger is identical. The majority is ready. A female candidate does not just offer an alternative to Ugochinyere. She offers a reckoning. No amount of thuggery, street-level intimidation or incendiary social media noise will stop seventy percent of an electorate that has finally found its candidate. I don’t know how many people that are aspiring on the platform of the APC. But the party leadership should be intentional about getting a female candidate to stand against the combative incumbent and watch Ideato women rise in defense of their own mandate!
(*Abara is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science, Niger Delta University (NDU), Wilberforce Island, Bayelsa State, and he is an indigene of Urualla in Ideato North LGA of Imo State.)
