Because of his desire and that of an inglorious cabal to handpick, impose and install a successor on the Udu people, High Chief Godwin Jefia Notoma the outgone President-General of the UUC ended up organising the worst ever Congress in the history of the Udu people.
Chief Notoma, an otherwise honourable man, was literally booed out of office at the Congress held on Saturday 3rd June, 2023 to elect a net set of Executives for the Union of Udu Communities, UUC. Chief Notoma was so much in a hurry to leave office having failed to stand up to an infamous cabal currently operating with the kingdom to cause disunity amongst in Udu, that he failed to listen to the voice of the people.
Indications that the 2023 Congress will fail, emerged days before, when rumours started making the rounds that this infamous cabal close to some influences in the palace, has, against even the advice of the Ovie’s Cabinet, the Ovie-in-Council, impressed it on the highly respected Mornach, HRM Ohworhu 1 the Ovie of Udu Kingdom, to impose a less popular candidate as the UUC President-General to take over from Chief Notoma.
These subterranean moves prompted, 21 out of the 32 communities in Udu, across the 7 Ruling Houses of the kingdom to write to the King to allow elections to hold for the Udu people to select their leader. In their appeal to the King via the letter dated 29th May, 2023, the Presidents of the 21 Communities threatened to reject imposition of a President-General for the UUC.
The 2023 UUC Presidential race was a two-horse race between Chief Moses Uparan an honourable man who scored 60% and Mr Austin Emaduku a highly cerebral grassroot administrator and organiser who scored 80% from the result of the screening committee set up to screen candidates for the elections. The screening committee had recommended that both candidates be made to go through elections, but it was the attempt to impose the candidate who scored less from the screening that set the stage for the failure of Chief Notoma’s organised Congress.
Congress day was a disaster. Having gotten wind of the move to turn the elective Congress into an inauguration Ceremony, almost everyone in the advertised invitation for the congress boycotted the event.
For the first time in the history of Udu, the Ovie and members of his cabinet including the Otota of Udu were absent in an Udu Congress. The advertised chairman of the Congress Engr. Mike Orugbo was absent. So was the local government chairman and other political and opinion leaders. No progress of event was distributed to attendees. Even the hurriedly picked Chairman to preside over the failed Congress, a former Attorney-General of the state, Chief Andrew Orugbo, on sighting a copy of the program given to him, publicly declined to preside over a sham Congress and left the arena in anger.
When the delegates at the Congress realised that the reason for non distribution of a program of events for the congress was to impose a preferred candidate, they rose up in unison and chase Chief Notoma and his cohorts out of the arena and 21 Presidents, including the Asaba Diaspora branch conducted an election and returned Mr. Austin Emaduku as President-General of the UUC and duly inaugurated him right there at the palace grounds at Otor-Udu the ancestral home, of the Udu people.
Just as his accession to office was controversial and against the will of the majority of the people, Chief Notoma’s only known legacy is that he left Udu more disunited than he met it. What a legacy?