My final word on T. A. Orji (2)

LAST     week, we recollected the systemic rot in God’s Own State from May 29, 2007 to May 29, 2015. As I continue the series ending in a fortnight hopefully (not today anymore), I will chronicle the sadistic events that underscored the vaulting power inebriacy of the immediate-past governor of Abia State, Theodore Ahamefule Orji. We shall spice the unmitigated disaster with multifarious extracts from a few of my damning essays and critical externals with pertinence.
In the heyday of the vanishing Peoples (sic) Democratic Party (PDP), some anarchical members of the party in Abia State carried on as if there would be no life after Ochendoism! Alas, as some of us crystally predicted, the music has stopped abruptly and the loquacious dancers have all vanished into eternal obscurity and inerasable odium while the drummer is holing out in Abuja in pretentious senatorial self-deception.  They nomenclatured themselves “Abia PDP stalwarts” while the drunken revelry lasted under the audacious captainship of Ochendo global. On February 6, 2014, I wrote a full-page article entitled “Abia PDP stalwarts’ latest infantilism” and one of the paragraphs went thus: “T. A. Orji has spent seven uneventful years fighting his former eight-year boss and predecessor, Kalu, who, single-handed, enthroned him! If traitorous T. A. Orji is not busy abusing Kalu, he is clownishly clamouring for non-formalization of Kalu’s strategic comeback to the PDP out of sheer trepidation…T. A. Orji has so trivialized governance that you would wonder whether politics is a charade. For him, any slight opportunity nurtures his proclivity for Kalu’s demonisation!”
On February 14, 2014, I wrote an opinion entitled “Go to Akwa Ibom, weep for Abia State!” From it comes this declarative statement: “When you are busy affecting the lives of people positively, there would be no time for witch-hunt, inanities and character assassination, among other depravities as are blueprints for governance in Abia State!” Indeed, there is no basis for comparison between Akwa Ibom and Abia states under the two immediate-past governors in terms of social infrastructural transformation. Visit just Uyo and Umuahia and be scandalized by the disparity in uncommon development.
For the third and last time, I must apologize to the former editor of ThisDay, Mr. Simon Kolawole, a friend of mine until I did an unfriendly rejoinder on March 19, 2014, to his gross misrepresentation of T. A. Orji as a performing governor and crafty denigration of Dr. Kalu over disparaging matters that he (SK, as fondly addressed) did not comprehend. My critical intervention has led to our estrangement despite my olive wand. I still stand on the issues I raised in the feedback. My only regret is my choice of words, which necessitated my botched reconciliatory moves. The reaction was so inflammable that one of our colleagues, Mr. Martins Uba-Nwamadi, called me and sought to know if SK snatched my wife! With the passage of time, SK will forgive me—just as I am struggling to forgive T. A (may God help us all).
Again, I must thank the Board of Editors of ThisDay for being the only newspaper that considered it worthwhile to do an editorial following my kidnap mentioned last week. “The seizure of Ebere Wabara, a journalist, is barbaric. We call on the Inspector-General of Police to call the authorities at the Abia State Police Command to order.” (Vide ThisDay, Thursday, April 17, 2014, Page 15). This and other related solidarities form a section of my four-part book, undergoing reprint due to misprint. This strong advocacy is confirmatory of the market leadership and respect ThisDay inimitably commands among the economic and political elite here and abroad. Once more, I take off my hat to you all in the summit echelon of ThisDay pen fraternity for being your brother’s keeper—especially when all other publications and most journalists behaved as if Wabara was a log!
For ordering my immediate release on Saturday night, the second day of my incarceration, from one of the numerous cells I was taken to in Umuahia by the Abia State police leadership and agents of T. A. Orji, the former IGP, Alhaji Mohammed Dikko Abubakar, deserves a garland. How can I forget the immediate-past governor of Delta State, Dr. Emmanuel Eweta Uduaghan, and the CEO/MD of Airtel, Mr. Segun Ogunsanya and his “boy” Emeka Oparah for their immeasurable respective roles during and after my T. A.-masterminded illegal, gruesome, cruel and near-fatalistic abduction! If not for God’s mercy, the story would have been different. May the days of these four men be long on earth. Amen.
It is difficult to talk about politics and the question of leadership in Abia State without the profuse mention of Dr. Kalu. No matter the usually jaundiced disposition of his hypercritics, he remains the crux of issues in the state. If he did not adamantly and unilaterally foist his successor on us (Abians)—a treacherous ingrate who erased his predecessor’s modest achievements with uncanny scurrility and unprecedented viciousness—our state would have been comparable to Jigawa and Katsina model states, under the best governance of Dr. Sule Lamido and adonis Dr. (Barrister) Ibrahim Shehu Shema, respectively.
The last reference in this edition is my article of September 24, 2014, entitled “Kalu: Crux of issues in Abia”: “I will end this explication with a recent quote by Dr. Kalu: “I am ready to pay the bills for a financial audit of my administration so that the public will understand what the issues are in Abia State and be able to evaluate both administrations properly.” Who will take up the gauntlet?
God willing, before the year runs out (specifically on December 21, ceteris paribus), I will respond to some of the constructive rejoinders to this serial subject and other allied issues.

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