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Below is a citizen report submitted from Umuahia, Abia State.
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Social media sites were agog with a special report on Aba and in the SUN newspapers estimation, a city under neglect. Let me state here that Aba, like many other megacities is confronted by myriad of challenges. Let me also state here that the pictures being bandied in the SUN NEWSPAPERS represent height of first class deceit.
No thanks to the internet that leaves us with little or no opportunity of verifying the veracity of claims we are inundated with. At the risk of repeating myself, Aba is experiencing challenges but by no means what idlers, loafers and custodians of jaundiced journalism are making out of it. OUK is already maintaining a permanent place in the dustbin of history or if you like; gallery of antiquities. OUK killed Abia when he resolved to be richer than the State. OUK is recognized in history as the only Governor that has no single capital project to his credit after eight years. OUK has tried unsuccessfully to get the attention of TAO.
As expected TAO rebuffed all his emissaries because OUK connotes evil, wickedness and fetishness. No sane person would want OUK anywhere around him. It is therefore understandable if he resorts to blackmail.
For the avoidance of doubt, Emelogu Street (which SUN wickedly published) was recently refurbished and one of the best access roads in Ngwa Road Area of Aba at the moment. Need I say more, what they still have as the picture of Ukwu Mango was what they recorded before 2007. Ukwu Mango has been reconstructed after over thirty years of neglect by successive administrations. I am not surprised because SUN Newspapers has the personality of the owner: deceit, falsehood, wickedness and trading in half truths.
Let us note that:
1. SUN NEWSPAPERS for those who do not know, is owned by former Governor Orji Uzor Kalu. That establishment is one out of the very many avenues through which OUK laundered billions of tax payers’ money while he was Governor. It is therefore understandable when this medium presents itself as a willing tool to distort and peddle false information.
2. It is a ‘weekend’ newspaper that unfortunately runs daily. Weekend newspapers in the history of journalism are soft sell papers, whose primary function is to entertain. They use screaming headlines and trade in jaundiced journalism. People who are seeking for the truth and core facts, obviously do not refer to SUN NEWSAPAPERS. They are largely patronized by readers who are not seeking the truth but desire to be entertained.
3. SUN NEWSAPAPERS was borne out of greed, selfishness and wicked antecedents of OUK. OUK as Governor appropriated large sums of money to revitalize the state –owned AMBASSADOR NEWSPAPERS. It is heartrending to know that instead of investing in the state, he diverted the funds to establish hi – tech SUN, by implication killed AMBASSADOR. If OUK was honest, if he had the interest of Abians at heart, why did he ensure that AMBASSADOR was moribund until he left the Government House? What was it OUK had that Abia State could not afford, so much that he destroyed the state to build his empire?
4. It is a known fact that the gory pictures posted in the SUN were scenes recorded in Aba while OUK was ‘Action’ Governor. OUK it was who was hounded out of Aba stadium (play the clip of Enyimba and Iwuanyanwu Nationale at Aba 2006 season) in protest of the poor network of roads and degraded environment. What rented the air was, “Orji, Gaa kpoo dirty! O gi bu Mugu” (Orji go and clean Aba, you are the mugu not Aba people).
5. Aba is being gradually recovered from abashed neglect and criminal conspiracy supervised by OUK. For the eight years he was in government, he could not assess New market Road where his ‘father’ lived. SUN did not post images while this reign of terror lasted. They also failed to tell us by way of special report the real relationship between OUK and his ‘father’.
6. SUN has refused to tell us how Millions of Abia Tax payers’ money was allocated to them to travel to Igbere during Eunice Uzor Kalu’s Igbotomma in 2007. If they are honest, they should tell us with what funds they chartered an aircraft from Lagos and consequently spend nights at Damgrete during the time. Were those Editors and Top management blind at the time?
7. Let us say they were blind. Have they equally lost sense of history so much that they could not trace how Aba came to their perceived sorry state. Where were they when a group of media experts did a tour of States in Nigeria while OUK was Governor? Wouldn’t they have given us a special report on the reasons for the non – performance of their launderer publisher?
8. Did SUN not read in CAFONLINE that while OUK managed Enyimba, that cheques in favour of the Club were issued in the name of SLOK GROUP?
9. Is it not possible for SUN to do a special report on servicing of debts incurred by OUK while he was Governor? Is it difficult for them to tell us the last minute effort at milking the State dry by OUK and the subsequent collateral damages that have caused the State?
10. Did SUN know that where Nnanna Kalu, OUK’s former sleeping member of the House of Representatives, cornered as site for his industry was originally proposed by government as a refuse dump site? That singular act had grave implications and deserves a special report. We are waiting for SUN to do a special report on that.
11. Wouldn’t they have done a report on HOW OUK RIPPED ENYIMBA OFF? In case they did not know, for the eight years Enyimba reigned, they did not have anything to show for it because OUK ran the Club like his personal estate. Is it not newsworthy that a Club who were African Champions for two years under OUK neither had neither a corporate account nor a functional operational office? How come HENRY UMAHI did not periscope that, to add voice to the blueprint on how to manage our Sports?
12. Who sold Golden Guinea Breweries for a penny? Is SUN not aware that OUK mortgaged the collective future of Abia Youths by his gangster style of leadership? Does that not qualify for a Special Report?
13. OUK and his Odiuko supervised the mad erection of shops in Ariaria and promoted the slogan of ‘share and sell’. If SUN is honest, they should do a comparative analysis of what obtained in Aba while OUK was Governor and now.
14. SUN should apply their investigative Journalism sense and report back to us why Osusu, Omuma and the famous Orji Uzor (Cemetery) Roads collapsed after three months. A newspaper is supposed to stand in the gap and advocate for toothless masses. Why is SUN not telling us why for the eight years OUK ruled, he could not give Abians a single capital project.
15. If they are not out to deceive unsuspecting members of the public, why did they fail to disclose information on how they were established? I had thought that the least a Newspaper could do is to gift their readers with privileged information.
16. The money used in establishing SUN NEWSPAPERS would have been enough to build 70% of the roads in Aba. Where is the newspaper’s sense of vigilance if they could sit by and benefit from money laundering?
17. OUK could pass for the most slippery human being I have encountered in my whole life. He has applied every means from the mundane to the sublime to attract the attention of TAO. He has sent thousands of emissaries to negotiate for peace with the TAO led administration. The latest being the Alhaji from the north who is negotiating for OUK to return to PDP and pleads that TAO accepts OUK.
18. OUK has written hundreds of letters begging the State Government to pay SUN N27M, election debts he could not pay himself but has criminally said it is advert fees due to his brainchild SUN NEWSPAPERS. OUK established SUN with Abia money and still wants the government to provide funds for their recurrent expenses. How absurd!
19. If OUK has genuinely repented and in the mood for peace (I wonder), why did he not cause SUN to publish the billions of Abia money he wasted in the establishment of his very many personal businesses.
20. I blame TAO for indulging a man who struggled so hard to under develop the state entrusted in his care. I blame him for delaying in telling the world how deceitful and wicked OUK is, given that OUK generously impoverished Abia and laid the foundation for degraded environment.
21. OUK should know that power is not acquired by blackmail.
22. I challenge anybody who thinks those pictures are Aba as at now to give us a picture of Fauklks Road end of Free Zone up to A line. That is the lead picture they published. That image was recorded before 2007. Anybody who is taking the challenge should swear by his entire family.
23. OUK is working hard to dispel visitors from Aba. He is working so hard to tell a lie repeatedly to make it look like the truth.
24. Leaders have memoirs. I challenge OUK to publish his for the eight years he supervised criminality in Abia State. It would make the Guinness Book of Records because that would be the most laughable chronicle to ever appear on the shelves.
25. TAO should expedite actions in telling Abians why it would take a little longer to reposition a State mortgaged by its past leader OUK.
26. I urge TAO to either bring OUK to justice to take justice to him. OUK has insulted the intelligence of Abians enough sand deserves to be condemned to the dustbin of history.
27. I urge TAO to change SUN to AMBASSADOR just as he did to State office in Abuja that OUk criminally named after himself
