WHERE ARE ABIA ELDERS?
THE kind of administrative and leadership tragedy that has signposted the governorship framework of Theodore Ahamefula Orji of Abia State since 2007 cannot be possible in my Ondo State because our people are not docile, timid and slavish to money! I trust them, they will revolt. The average Igbo person can do anything for money. In their morbid quest for it, they can commit matricide or patricide if need be! I make these declarations with a sense of responsibility. Nevertheless, I hold the ethnic group in high esteem for their courage, grit and doggedness. Their survivalist template is exemplary.
With the systemic deterioration of Abia State, I am compelled to ask: where are the elders from this state? Is it possible that all of them have been compromised and cannot intervene? Do we also take it that in their own estimation, the governor has done so well that there are no lacunae? Could it be that the killer squad of the government has so intimidated everyone to the extent of speechlessness? Even in states that are getting their act together, well-meaning citizens still find loopholes. Why is Abia different both in the region and in the country? Of course, the independent local media and official megaphones have all abdicated their constitutional responsibilities.
In 2011, an emancipated Gov. Orji gleefully announced to a disinterested world that he had liberated himself from strangulating clutches of his predecessor, who, allegedly, still wanted to be calling the tunes. Ever since then—seven years on—nothing has changed. Rather, the governor dissipates so much energy and huge financial resources in fighting the former governor, Orji Uzor Kalu. If he is not doing this, he is spending fortunes on multi-media propaganda, with a high deployment of new media technologies, particularly 247ereports exclusively sponsored and fully bankrolled by the Abia State Government specifically for figments of imagination, cock-and-bull yarns and fairytales about Kalu
Let us accept it for purposes of this presentation that Kalu's best was not good enough during his own tenure—coming immediately after years of military ruination. Should that now be the preoccupation of his successor? In any case, most other governors of Kalu's era did not perform creditably as well. Therefore, why will the present governor be carrying on as if he is the only governor to have succeeded another governor? Why are his contemporaries not making mountains out of their predecessors' molehills? For me, such obfuscation strategies show weaknesses of the incumbent, who cannot move out of the shadows of his predecessor and create fresh developmental vistas. Why must a state's chief executive cry over spilt milk and most times indulge in wolf-crying? Such theatricals bespeak drunken empty-headedness! These kinds of illusionary and diversionary antics in governance have become obsolete—they were used during military rule.
I hear the governor's son, Chinedu (aka Ikuku), who left school not long ago, is the boy in charge of day-to-day running of the state and nothing gets done without his consent! I also understand that the boyish chap uses a combination of armed-to-the-teeth military and police escorts in a convoy that is usually longer than that of his father! This kind of mediocrity is only possible when the head is shallow and busy in benefactor witch-hunt.
What is this talk about legacy, legacy, legacy, Ochendo global and Ochendo grassroots and perpetual decimation of Kalu's imprints? I was a lecturer in Abia State University during Kalu's regime. At no point were we owed salaries as obtains now. The employees of ABSU and Abia Poly are in salary arrears of between four and nine months. Yet, everyday, my stranded colleagues inform me that their sensibilities are assailed with 'legacy stuff'! What legacy? Of underdevelopment, salary indebtedness collapse of holistic social infrastructure, prostitution, youth unemployment, kidnapping and :: vicious, occasionally lethal, attacks of political opponents or critics. I remember the bestial abduction of an editor in Lagos at the instance of Gov. Orji. I have never heard of such deviancy in a democracy.
Is it that the elders in Abia are unaware of these retrogressive and parlous developments? Or, are they elders of the stomach who are only interested in gastronomical challenges? Poverty is indeed a challenge to humanity and does make a man lose his dignity. When you are axphyiatingly manacled by the basic necessities of life and sustained by governor's periodical handouts/peanuts/pittance, you cannot contemporaneously have the moral fibre to look him in the eyes and critique his backwardness. Are there no comfortable men like Arthur Eze in Abia who will call a spade a spade?
Orji should in his remaining days address issues of governance. Preoccupation with Kalu's ghost has been overstretched so much that it is no longer holds water. It has become inelastic and untenable in comparative circumstances involving other 23-year-old states. I do not want to go into the Hiroshima-like blast by Prince Arthur Eze. That is the incontrovertible summation of the disaster that God's own state has become.
The serial demonization and futile humiliation of Kalu have become childish and wasteful (regular advertorial diatribes with money that should be used to fix roads, especially in Aba and Umuahia) spending confers heroism on the man. No amount of acerbic advertorials can diminish him. Nigerians, particularly Abians, know the truth. Seven years of antagonism by Gov. Orji and bullishness of his vanishing supporters have not benefited the state in any way. Public ridicule arising from governmental clownishness, hooliganism and belligerency has become the only legacy in the incontrovertibly worst state in Nigeria. Good governance is not achieved on the pages of newspapers via pugilistic attacks and duplicitous supplements and electronic media dubiousness of virtual accomplishments!
Having lived in Aba, Umuahia and Uturu for eight years (2001-2009) as a lecturer, I make this proposition: let T. A. Orji and Orji Kalu walk the streets of these towns separately and unaccompanied today and let us see who will be stoned between them. I can bet with my life that Gov. Orji's villainous profile will manifest. For me, this is the simplest way to test both men's acceptability and popularity.
Let us stretch this debate further; if there are no elders, real men, in Abia State, are there no patriots? Are we all saying that the state is an El Dorado? A paradise on earth? Are there no rooms for improvement? Are the craters in Aba hallmarks of modern civilization? Is the absence of vital social infrastructures the dividend of democracy?
In the absence of elders and patriots, what of women? I remember the Aba Women's Riot of 1928. Can't we have such an upheaval in the face of this non-development in Abia State? Where are Abia youth? What of pressure groups? Have all these constituencies been silenced or have they given up in frustration? Have the media and students been cowed to stupor and haplessness? Is the decay in Abia beyond redemption? Do we outsource the remaining days of Orji to one of his colleagues or get President Goodluck Jonathan to appoint an administrator after the declaration of a state of emergency urgently? From where cometh answers to these posers!
Abians arise, stand up for your right, and do not allow your so-called elders to mortgage your life with the connivance of the governor. Your future is in your own hands. Take up the gauntlet. The saddest aspect of it all is that this man wants to retire to the senate at all costs! If, God forbid, he gets to the upper legislative chamber, he will establish his pugilism art this time against whoever he will replace in line with his bad habit!
With the paucity of vocal senior citizens in Abia, the time has come for the intelligentsia in Nigeria, market men and women and unemployed youth to take the bull by the horns and effect a positive change next year. They should not allow Gov. Orji to install a puppet which was the mistake Orji Kalu did against all oppositions and wise counsel. So, Kalu should be held vicariously for the disaster Ochendo and his clan of backers, especially the so-called hunger-ravaged 'elders' represent.
Enough of these propaganda and online figments, cock-and-bull yarns and fairytales about Kalu through Abia State government-owned 247ereports exclusively set up to embarrass Kalu. As I said earlier, Kalu cannot be the problem of Abia. The insurmountable challenge is leadership vacuity.
To be fair to Ochendo, I know of some inherited 'legacy' projects like the repainted old secretariat building, refurbished School Road Model Primary School, rehabilitated Dialysis and Ophthalmology Centre (former Alaoma Hospital), Umuahia, and the General Hospital at Amachara. I commend him for giving these and other uncompleted projects a facelift.
Has it ever occurred to Gov. Orji and Abia wretched elders that if Kalu failed, he, as a powerful and imperial Chief of Staff for eight years, equally shares in the non-performance blame, if not more than Kalu? Just food for thought as we anxiously await his overdue exit. Finally, I ask, for the umpteenth time, where are Abia elders?
Written by Prof. Oladimeji Kehinde