A Lagos-based medical practitioner, Dr Charles Offor, has advised the controversial Enugu State governor-elect, Peter Mbah, to always have a cardiologist around him in view of the fortune he has spent on politics and the severe setbacks he has been facing.
Things have been going topsy-turvy for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate in the March 18 gubernatorial election of late, the latest being the declaration by the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Director General, Brigadier Yushua’u Ahmed, on Arise Television last Friday morning that Mbah’s NYSC Discharge Certificate A808297 is forged.
Dr Offor, the chief medical director of St Martins Specialist Hospital, Lekki in Lagos State and an indigene of Enugu State, told select journalists today in his hospital that Mbah is estimated to have spent at least 10 billion naira since he began to contest to be the Enugu State governor last year, and the prospect of this tremendous amount of money going up in smoke when the Election Petitions Tribunal delivers its judgment on the Enugu gubernatorial poll is enough to induce a cardiac arrest or a stroke arising from high blood pressure.
“He should not just be visiting his cardiologist regularly but stay with him always for any eventuality”, he advised.
“Mr Mbah, a former Commissioner for Finance in Enugu State and now chairman of Pinnacle Oil and Gas Company Ltd, can afford the services of a full-time cardiologist for the next three months”.
The PDP candidate is still spending plenty of money daily, according to Offor, an expert in internal medicine, “because he has procured the services of the most expensive Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) from the East, the North and the West of Nigeria, including Chief Wole Olanipekun, a former Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) president, who interestingly is leading Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s case at the Presidential Election Petitions Court in Abuja against the LP and Mbah’s PDP.
“Mbah is not relying on the votes of Enugu people to become their governor, but on a large battery of SANs who he hopes will end up intimidating the judges at both the Election Petitions Court and the Court of Appeal”.
Mbah’s huge war chest enabled him to clinch the gubernatorial ticket of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at Nnamdi Azikiwe Stadium in Enugu last May, Dr Offor said.
Most Enugu people believe he far outspent all the other candidates combined during the electioneering campaign.
According to the doctor, the PDP candidate obviously didn’t anticipate the Peter Obi hurricane popularly known as the Obidient Movement driven by the youth who wanted a change in Nigerian politics and governance, and so mobilised humunguous support for the Labour Party.
The Labour Party won seven out of the eight House of Representatives seats, two of the three Senate seats, 14 of the 24 House of Assembly seats and 88.7% of the votes cast in the presidential election.
“The only reason why the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced PDP’s Mbah the winner of the governorship election in strong defiance of public expectations is that some of its officials saw the amount of money they never imagined”, argued Dr Offor who stated that Mbah “committed a mortal error by relying heavily on two prominent individuals in the state to deliver him without knowing that these two individuals have become awful electoral liabilities”.
He identified the individuals as outgoing Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi and former Governor Nnamani.
Gov Ugwuanyi was well beaten by little known Okey Ezeah of the Labour Party in not just the Enugu North senatorial election but even in his own polling both and polling unit, as well as in his hometown and local government area.
Dr Nnamani, a former senator and two-term governor, was also well beaten by little known Sir Kelvin Chukwu of the Labour Party in the Enugu East senatorial election held on March 18 because of the assassination on February 22 the of the LP candidate in the Enugu East senatorial zone, Chief Oyibo Chukwu, Sir Kelvin’s elder brother.
Dr Offor, who holds a postgraduate degree from an American business school, concluded: “Mr Mbah should cut his costs, and regard the huge money already spent as sunk cost as accountants and other finance people call it because further expenditures will leave him in a worse state.
“The prognosis isn’t bright for him, and so he needs to watch his health closely”.
