As biologists would put it, there is no living thing that has no characteristic feature. This, therefore, implies that a well composed and stable character can always easily be known by his gait, composure, gesticulation, ideas and utterances. On the other hand, a man that is at war with himself and the society he finds himself in is easily identified by his instability of character, negativity in comprehension and other attitudinal tendencies that summarily portray him as a maniac-depressive.
One major havoc the Generals Babangida and Sani Abacha’s military administrations’ insincerity in their very tortuous, long and deceitful transition programmes that was unfortunately evident in the outcome of the 1999 general elections was the emergence of persons who, known by their antecedents, should have had no business directing the affairs of any given polity. Due to the loss of confidence in Babangida and Abacha’s transition programmes, many responsible Nigerians were forced to detach themselves from their transition programmes as it had become obvious the two maximum rulers only wanted to succeed themselves. Hence their so called transition programme was rightly adjudged a hoax.
Abia State was not an exception. Hence the emergence of Orji Uzor Kaiu; a charlatan who had never been associated with anything positive in life, as governor in 1999. Nigerians may not have forgotten, in a jiffy, the young man who, in the late eighties, claimed to have donated one million naira to Borno State Education Endowment Fund, only for the authorities of the State to discover, to their utmost chagrin, that the carton containing his so-called one million naira merely contained pieces of paper. That man was Orji Uzo Kalu who would later become a governor in God’s own State. It may not be out of place to recollect here that Orji Uzor Kalu was the same man whom the Vice-Chancellor of University of Maiduguri; Prof Jubril
Aminu, had no option other than to expel from the University just to save
The corporate image of the University. Ironically and derisively, Orji Uzor
Kalu, after many years of rustication and intellectual disconnect,
Bamboozled himself, of course as the Executive Governor of Abia State,
into Abia State University and today he brandishes a degree certificate, a
certificate everybody knows he cannot defend.
Since Abia State government and her people were doggedly liberated from the excruciating and inhumanly exploitative grip of Orji Uzor Kalu his mother and siblings by Governor T.A. Orji in 2010, there has been no manner of irresponsibility, desperation and psychological dilapidation that Orji Uzor Kalu has not displayed.
His target of attack has been one person; Governor T.A. Orji, Ochendo. He has devoted his paper; The Sun as his platform for attack against the people’s Governor. Yet he pretends to have forgotten that the people of Abia State know that the source of the establishment of the sun newspaper was entirely theirs.
In his determination to fight the Governor; a fight that is laced with crudeness and lack of intelligence Kalu ends up attacking highly placed Nigerian leaders. Take for instance; on page 7 of The Sun of January 21, 2013 .he unguardedly said he had to return to People’s Democratic Party because the leadership of the party is currently in the hands of animals’.
What a very raw style of insulting President Goodluck Jonathan. By saying that the leadership of our great Party is in the hands of ‘animals7, Ka1u only exhibited his hatred and disrespect for the President and P.D.P Governors.
On pages 56/ 57 and 58 of Sunday Guardian of January 3/2013/ Ka1u, who called on President Jonathan to send the State Security Service after corrupt Governors, was just in his usual world of ignorance and inconsistence. Orji Kalu the pathological liar gave two different accounts of how he first met Governor T.A. Orji. Just within a range of seventy-four words, Ka1u had given two contradictory versions of his first contact with the Governor; (1) ‘There is a man called Mba Abali, from Ohafia; he was the one who introduced him to me”, (2) I met this man (Orji) in former Abia Head of Service, Mark Agu Ogo’s house…. This narrative is a characteristic feature of Orji Ka1u. He will tell you everything but the truth. One can see the absence of reasonableness in Kalu’s claim that the first day he met Governor T.A. Orji was the same day he promised he would appoint him his Chief of Staff and that after that first encounter he never saw him again until after the Governorship election of 1998. In as much as Ka1u has refused to grow in terms of intelligence, it is an unacceptable insult to the Nigeria intelligentsia to want them to believe that someone he met only once before his election and the man did not, in any way/ contribute to the success of his election was the man he ended up having as his Chief of Staff. Since Ka1u has not grown uptill now, no miracle would make him grow again.
For the avoidance of doubt, let me remind the reading public that Governor T.A. Orji, as at 1996 when Ka1u claimed he met him, was the Administrative Secretary of National Electoral Commission in charge of Abia State. The Mba Abali whom Ka1u simply described as coming from Ohafia and whom he rightly acknowledged as the bridge between Governor T.A. Orji and him, was an Electoral Officer in the Electoral Commission in Abia State and was, therefore a subordinate of Chief T.A. Orji. It is now left for Nigerians to know between Chief T.A. Orji who was very strategically positioned in National Electoral Commission and Kalu who was desperate to become a governor, with an avalanche of petitions against him, to make up their minds on who was actually in need of the other. Before I round off this paragraph, Kalu should tell the public whom his mother, Eunice, asked me to accompany her in January 1997 to meet in a small Quest House in Umuahia called Midland Hotel. As someone who was very deeply involved in Kalu’s quest for governorship from 1996 to 1998 when the election took place, Kalu would be adding to his lies if he says that I do not know many of those that played very strategic roles for him to become a governor.
The porosity of Kalu was severally manifested in the Guardian interview. One is at pains to imagme the foolishness of Kalu who thought he had the audacity of telling a sitting Governor who had courteously come to visit him in Abuja that he should Took for somebody of his choice to replace him for the remaining term, was Kalu not arrogating of himself the constitutional function of the Abia electorate to determine who governs them? If Kalu had an intelligence quotient that was, even, up to twenty-five percent, he would have been ashamed to vomit this magnitude of stupidity before the public.
I may sympathize with Kalu who is, obviously, suffering from selective amnesia. He claimed that ‘their problem is that if I go for a popularity contest with them, I’ll dwarf them because I am with the people’. Kalu’s grouse, which is a result of inferiority complex, is with Governor T.A. Orji. So, who are the ‘them’ he talked of? Not wanting to waste time on the rantings and pantings of a totally confused, discredited and rejected former governor, it may be pertinent to remind Kalu that in a democracy, the easiest and best way to assess a man’s popularity is through election. I hope Orji Uzor Kalu is currently in the Senate of the Nigerian Federation! I think he is because he contested election into the Nigerian Senate in 2011. This is how to measure popularity and, thereby, ‘dwarf them’. If, however, I am wrong in my thinking that Kalu is a sitting Senator, it then means that Kalu should tell us where he has lost his popularity.
I worked closely with Orji Kalu and his mother; Eunice, in defunct United Nigeria Congress Party; U.N.C.P, Reality Organization, Still-born New Era, People’s Democratic Party; P.D.P., as a Commissioner in Abia State Local Government Service Commission, and a two-time Special Adviser on Grass-roots’ Mobilization. I know him as a man who is always economical with the truth. He may even claim not to know me before giving me appointments. After all, he has claimed that he only ran into Chief T.A. Orji. To prove my assertion that Kalu is an unrepentant liar, in the Guardian interview he said former President Olusegun Obasanjo called his mother to ‘change his (Orji’s governorship) candidacy to one of my brothers’. The question one may need to ask is; could Chief Obasanjo have called, Eunice to change the candidacy of Chief T.A Orji on the platform of People’s Progressive Alliance when Baba was very busy with his P.D.P? Does Kalu want to accuse Baba of anti-Party activities or, as usual, he just wants to insult him?
Kalu claimed he is not corrupt and that he is known the world over. I am not an anti-graft agent so I will not say much on that except to remind him that he is currently being prosecuted on charges of corruption and since the matter is in the court of competent jurisdiction and, therefore, subjudice, he should be disciplined enough to allow the court run its course and, thereafter, Nigerians will know whether he is corrupt or otherwise. Declaring himself as not being corrupt before the court passes its verdict amounts, in my opinion as a lay man, to contempt of the judicial process.
Kalu claimed he has a house in London, which he bought in February 1992 and one in Victoria Island, Lagos, which he bought 1986. These are false claims by Kalu. He never owned any property in either Lagos or London before he became a governor. If he is not telling lies, let us go to Lagos and London and verify his claims. Kalu was not a man of substantial wealth before becoming a governor. The only thing he does very well is to lay claims to what he does not have. Kalu has also been telling people who do not know him well that he built his camp Nenya country-home in Igbere before’ becoming a governor. This is naked lie. He started the project only in 2000, some months after his election.
Kalu’s insinuation that he ‘needed our governor to give qualitative leadership” is the imagination of a man that is both mentally and spiritually demented. There is no basis for comparison between Chief T.A. Orji and Orji Kalu. The governor is known to have been born and bred in a family that was not only associated with wealth, as his father; late Chief Tom Ikoro Orji, was a very influential colonial warrant chief who built the first storey building in Umuahia as early as the 1930s but was highly acclaimed for her insistence on discipline. The marital relationship that existed between the late father of the governor and his late mother was the envy of their neighborhood. Can Kalu tell us whom his father was and the relationship that existed between his father and mother? Chief T.A. Orji went through the rungs of fine academic upbringing; the primary school, the secondary school, Higher School Certificate; H.S.C and the University of Ibadan. After his National Youth Service, he sought for and obtained a gainful employment, where he distinguished himself as a career civil servant and got to the climax of his career and retired as a Permanent Secretary. Who is Orji Kalu, who has no pedigree, to say that Governor T.A. Orji ‘was nothing and he made him Chief of Staff?’ Kalu is just suffering from mental dilapidation.
The Minister of Information; Mr. Labaran Maku, who was on a tour of good governance to Abia State went round the state and saw, not heard, what Ochendo has prudently done with the very meagre resources of the State. We all know Maku as one Nigerian who does not hide his feelings. In the case of Abia State, the Minister, during a Town-Hall meeting with Abians at Michael Okpara Auditorium, Umuahia expressed satisfaction with the numerous achievements of Governor T.A. Orji. The National President of Nigerian Union of Journalists; Mallam Mohammed Garba, openly confessed that Abia State, under Governor T.A. Orji, had been grossly under reported. So, what nonsense is Kalu talking about qualitative leadership? Can be spell qualitative?
Kalu also said he is putting together an organization known as ‘Njiko Igbo’. According to him, he wants to use the forum to advance the interest of Ndi Igbo. My reaction to this is that the worst insult that can be metted to the Igbo nation in this nuclear age is for anybody to think that they could listen to a man whose stock-in-trade is only deceit and opportunism. Orji Kalu has nothing to offer the modern man. Has he been able to put his family, in order? For the eight years he supposedly governed Abia State, did anybody see his wife Ifeoma? His mother, who introduced ‘mamacracy’ in the state, which we have successfully killed, shamelessly acted as his “first lady’.
Kalu’s purported re-entry into P.D.P is to forment trouble against President Jonathan who has one hundred percent support of Governor T.A. Orji and Abia P.D.P. This is why he is attacking the Nigerian army so that they could-be withdrawn from the streets of Abia so that he could re-introduce kidnapping which Governor T.A. Orji has successfully stopped. He should, however, realize that as long as P.D.P in Abia State is concerned, he will remain a leprous vagabond.
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Chief (Sir) Don Ubani; KSC, JP, Don Ubani is a Principal Stakeholder in Abia Politics.
