Mr. Jamie Goodwin Njoku, the 31-year-old son of the National Chairman of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), Chief Edozie Njoku, has been nominated as the Director of Strategy by the British Prime Minister for the country’s Conservative Party.
When Rishi Sunak, the current British Prime Minister assumed office in October 2022 (as the leader of the Conservative Party), little did anyone imagine that he would pick a young man with Nigerian roots, Jamie Njoku, as the Chief Strategist for the Conservative Party in the coming election between the Conservative Party and the Labour Party.
Born in 1980, Sunak’s family are migrants. His grandparents emigrated from Punjab, in Northwestern India, to East Africa, where his mother and father were born in Tanzania and Kenya, respectively. They met and married after their families migrated in the 1960s to Southampton in Southern England.
Just as Sunak, Jamie has a Nigerian father in the person of Chief Njoku, the APGA National Chairman, who hails from Oborji Ibeku in Aboh Mbaise, Imo State.
Njoku’s tenacity and passion to mainstream ideas in Nigeria’s politics saw him pursue his emergence as the National Chairman of APGA at the Party’s National Convention at Owerri on May 31, 2019 to the Supreme Court on March 24, 2023, just to prove a point.
Impressively, reading about Jamie’s appointment from the UK Music website, the organization where he had spent three years at its helms, the caption reads: ‘UK Music Chief Executive Jamie Njoku-Goodwin Departs After Three Years At Helm To Join Prime Minister Rishi Sunak As Director of Strategy’.
Brilliantly, young Jamie ‘joined the UK Music – the collective voice of the UK music industry – in September 2020 as Chief Executive and helped steer the sector through the Covid-19 pandemic.’
Reading the commentaries from the various heads of the various components/units that make up the UK Music Industry, one could decipher why the Prime Minister and the Conservative Party settled for the young man.
However, that the Prime Minister and the entire Conservative Party of the United Kingdom reposes such confidence and responsibility on a young man of 31 years old man is awesome.
Pathetically, the question we all should be asking ourselves is, if Jamie were to be in Nigeria, given his age and intellectual disposition, what position would have naturally come to him?
Simply put, he would have been struggling to find a space in the endless queue of the army of potential thugs undergoing training under one politician. That is the way our politics is structured.
Jamie’s appointment reveals how the UK society and politics functions as against ours’. On the contrary, Jamie’s father, Chief Edozie Njoku is yet to be recognized by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the National Chairman of APGA, after a four (4) years battle that saw the Supreme Court on March 24, 2023 declare him the rightful and authentic National Chairman of APGA.
Apparently, it is this preference for doing things wrongly and our dedication to promote impunity that is responsible for Nigeria’s dysfunctionality.
As Jamie prepares to lead the strategic team of his party in the Kings country, having washed his hands clean, we pray fervently to the Triune God to be with him so that in no distant time, he would join the likes of;
Jakov Milatovic who at 36 is the President of Montenegro.
Gabriel Boric who at 37 is the President of Chile.
Dritan Abazovic who at 37 is the Prime Minister of Montenegro.
Mohammed Bin Salman who at 37 is the Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia.
Alessandro Scarano who at 39 is the Regent of San Marino.
Irakli Garibashvili who at 41 is the Prime Minister of Georgia.
By Okoro Chinedum Benedict
