This aircraft won’t pull Kalu down

Most times, what many people do remember is when a person have become rich and not when the person was not rich. They always count the number of cars and houses on the person's flotilla of achievements, not the tears he or she drank for tea and the ashes the person ate for bread, when things were very boring and life was tedious.

But the rich would always remember how he or she started and where he or she would be navigating to as life permits. The first paragraph exactly shows the mindset of some people who want to pull Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu down by all means they knew that are unnecessary. They have been doing this against the persona, but for the fact that Kalu is an enigma, they have not succeeded and will never succeed.

They have sharpened their dangerious knife of criticism against Kalu as he unveils his new aircraft, which the world was informed costs a fortune. Since the announcement was made, his political opponents, especially those from his home state of Abia, have taken criticism against the man to the height of pointlessness and where they are wooed as haters of progress.

The progress that they are obviously wishing for Kalu is for him to fall like a pack of cards, but his God has been faithful to him not to fall, no matter all the wishes of the miniature part of humanity in Abia that is just biting its flesh with the view that they hate Kalu. It is something to pause over: If some footballers who started just yesterday could be buying choice cars and property worth billions of dollars, then perceived political enemies of Kalu see N12B as being too much money for Kalu to have expended in purchasing his new aircraft, which reports account is one of the fastest private aircraft in the world.

They are now saying that people are suffering in Nigeria and Kalu is buying such aircraft. Then the answer is that as all fingers are not equal, so all the people would not be rich or poor at the same time. Besises, Kalu is doing his private business and is not holding any political appointment almost eight years ago he left office as governor of Abia State. Had even started his private business before he became governor.

Yes, Kalu is a politician, but no one has ever given him any contract in the country since almost eight he left office as governor. It is sheer hatred for anyone to be bickering over why Kalu should buy the aircraft. They write on social networks and on some blogs as if Kalu had been idle and does not worth the aircraft. But this is a man who was a millionaire at 19 and have maintained that status and today he is a billionaire. And maybe, his traducers would jump inside the ocean should the world announce that he has become a trillionaire. What a world is this!

It is sad when most Nigerians sight any politician that is doing well and say or write that he or she is prospering with his or her constituent's funds. Anyway, such people should look elsewhere, because Kalu have been singing it like a song or playing it like a Nollywood films series that anyone with evidents that he stole from the Abia State coffers when he was governor should come forward with such proof. And uptil now, no one has ever come up with any tangible proof, except the gossip that they continue to circulate against the innocent Kalu just because he is one of the rare populations of the world born into Igbo nation that make things to happen.

Kalu is never a 'political crook' and will never be. He is bigger than using teeth to share rat-meet for children, when he does not eat rat. Some Nigerians like Prince Arthur Eze perhaps know at least one politician who is a crook and he did not waste time to tell that politician that “Aba Stinks”. Conversely, whether people are suffering in Nigeria, how does this concern Kalu to solve, that will not enable him to purchase the aircraft of his choice?

Besides, he is not the president of Nigeria and not holding any political appointment. But come to think about it, Kalu is one Nigerian that has provided one of the private job opportunities to the youth and adults in Nigeria and across the world. People know his businesses and he is not into any shoddy kind of business. So, why disturb the world with the news that Kalu purchased an aircraft?

One thing remains sacrosanct: Kalu is rich and no one, except his God, can pull him down. What is N12B when foundations abroad are donating more than that sum in dollars to help institutions across the globe? If there are politicians who are criminals, then Kalu is not one of them. It is annoying that hardly did anyone shout when in 1998 the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was in the making and he gave the party N500M. No one shouted that he was spending much. This is even as he was not governor. Now that he has bought an aircraft, if some persons would want to die because of this, so be it.

Rubby Obinna writes from Ohaji, Imo State.