By Odimegwu Onwumere
Those who mean well for Abia State without any form of bias will certainly confirm that Governor Theodore Orji is working hard. He is working hard in his own way and will always be captured in-between deceptions that have surrounded his-led government and governance. He is working hard in making sure that there is no change in all ramifications in sight in the state.
The ‘new dawn’the Orji-led government of Abia State boasts of is make-believe. Our people have told him pointblank that nothing has notably changed and that he is not doing what he is elected for. Orji reportedly, even agreed to this, in a report of June 5, 2012, that he was a failure in the state, perhaps to draw our people’s sympathy. This was when our people cried out loud that they didn’t see any significant dividends of democracy in his first term.
Is he not working hard in Abia State? What are we talking! Yet, Orji-led government has refused to turn a new leaf. There is hardly any state in Nigeria that will win a trophy in infrastructural decay should there be anything like that, except Abia State. The second term is just a storm in a cup of tea. Everything is evaporating without any grip of anything except mis-governance, which our people are enduring with shame, as if they are not the real owners of the state. Why must they be subjected to this type of rudeness and mindless treatment by the Orji-led government?
Is Orji not working hard when criminal elements have overrun the state? The state today is webbed in man-made controversy and crises. But he would tell those who cared to listen that he and the wealth of the state were held in complete bondage as the reason he failed in his first tenure. But this is far from the truth because any greedy person would also be greedy with lies. The truth is that he wanted to govern the state the way people could see today; hence he labeled his estranged political mentor with all forms of unprintable things. Was the state not working before his greed manifested? What are we seeing today? A total collapsed state. Bunkum!
If not greed, how could a sitting governor say that he envisions to laying a new foundation for a new Government House? Is he ruling from his house? This is one of our people’s speculations. Is the envisagement he has been boasting about, which is to lay a new secretariat complex and a conference centre, the immediate need of our people? He forgot that a place like Aba has not been receiving a facelift, but here is the government envisioning frivolities.
Orji collaborated with the Federal Government and moved troops led by Major General Sylvester Audu to kill the ‘kidnappers’ then that heralded the state, but has refused to restore security. They have crumbled the entrepreneurial spirit once known of Aba. Virtually all the wealthy people – our brothers and sisters and visitors residing or doing business – in the state have relocated to other states where there is sanity. Not Abia State! Aba is not secured, as against the swagger by Orji that people have returned to normal business and investment in the area and in the entire Abia State. Orji will not tell Nigerians that the confidence of these people who ran away is still elusive because Orji can’t be trusted. He refused to place ‘his’ troops at Umuahia his home town, but at Ohafia. Hope you know whose town is Ohafia? If you do, you will then know what we are talking about that Orji is sectional.
Every day, we read on the papers that Orji is wooing investors without us seeing any investor. Investors, especially from overseas show interest to come and invest in Abia, but on hearing the true story of the state as where they could be kidnapped and suffer infrastructural decay, they change their contact addresses, so that the state government would not contact them again. Those who have shown interest only centred their focus on oil and gas. And you ask yourself, why not on other sectors. This is the situation in the state today, but Orji would always say the contrary to massage his drowned ego.
It has been hope upon hope, promise upon promise, to boost the hoodwinking politics he is playing in the Abia State without any action in sight. It has become a recurring decimal of Orji to be saying that he has opened cooperation with a South African Brewery to renew the declining Golden Guinea Breweries in Umuahia and an Irish company to invest in the abundant quarry industry in Abia State and that the officials of the company, Quarry, Roads and Mining Unique Services Limited (QRM), have visited the state and held business talks with him. Hooey!
But is this not the same government in August last year that took a decision and sent all non-indigenes (and suspended some senior officers of the Local Government system, mainly the treasurers and in February, sent packing about 8 commissioners, the 17 Local Government Transition Chairmen and some other senior aides in its employment) to their various states that is now saying that it is going to bring in foreigners that would work in the state? Are foreigners not non-indigenes? Is this action well received? Did you say a sinking governor in his-made sinking ship? This was not how it was, it is a fresh foundation laid by Orji.
— Odimegwu Onwumere, Poet/Author, Media/Writing Consultant and Motivator, Founder of PoetAgainst Child Abuse (PACA), Rivers State.
