The Rome Election

“His first election was won in Rome, among students who owed him nothing.”

Prof. MarkAnthony Nze

In 1980 a twenty-one-year-old from Emekuku won an election in Rome among students from many nations. The constitution will set him the same test in 2027, and so has the governor who promised Owerri the office.

A Vote Among Strangers

Martin Agbaso took his West African School Certificate at Sabastine Academy, Emekuku, in 1976, and then went abroad. In the words of the 2023 profile, he “enrolled at the prestigious Pontifical University in Rome, Italy, and in 1980, earned his Advanced Diploma in Social Sciences” (Chima, 2023). The 2021 Vanguard profile names the institution as “the Pontifical University, St Thomas Aquinas, Rome, Italy” (Nwafor, 2021). [Reported]

Read also: Power Did Not Build Him — The Agbaso Record, Vol. I Overview

In 1980, the year he took the diploma, he was elected secretary general of “the committee of International Students at the Pontifical University of Rome,” the 2023 profile says, “making him the first African, to be so elected” (Chima, 2023). The 2021 profile records the same office, “Secretary General International Students” (Nwafor, 2021). [Reported]

Such a committee is a hard electorate. Its members came from many countries, owed a candidate from Owerri North no loyalty of clan, party or language, and had every reason to prefer one of their own. A twenty-one-year-old who carried that vote carried it on what he could show and say. [Inference]

The Test the Constitution Sets

Where there are two or more candidates, section 179(2) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 deems a governorship candidate elected only if he has the highest number of votes cast and “not less than one-quarter of all the votes cast in each of at least two-thirds of all the local government areas in the State.” [Documented]

Imo has twenty-seven councils, so the threshold is eighteen. The Owerri zone holds nine, and an Owerri candidate must reach a quarter of the vote in at least nine councils of the Okigwe and Orlu zones, among voters who owe him nothing. [Inference]

The Test the Governor Sets

Governor Uzodimma has set the same test in political terms. Owerri’s claim to the office, he said in August 2025, is “not an automatic right because any zone that wants to produce the next governor must work with the other zones” (Business Hallmark, 2025). An Owerri candidate who can win only in Owerri fails both the governor’s condition and the constitution’s. [Reported] [Inference]

Martin Agbaso’s first election was won under exactly those conditions, far from home and among strangers, and the record since has the same shape: in each new place, among people who did not know him, he earned standing and was trusted with a post. [Inference]

Read also: Power Did Not Build Him — The Agbaso Record, Vol. I Part 1

His published dates hold together. Born on April 5, 1959, he was seventeen when he left secondary school in 1976 and twenty-one in 1980, and the same profile has him completing a bachelor of science at Old Westbury in 1983 (Chima, 2023). Rome led straight to New York, with no gap in the record. [Inference]

A registrar’s certificate from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas and the committee’s 1980 record would set the documents beside the account. Part 3 follows him to New York, where the record grows fuller. [Open]

Source note. Chima (2023); Nwafor (2021); Business Hallmark (2025); Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), s 179(2).

Still open. The registrar’s record of the diploma and the committee’s record of the 1980 vote.