THE October 7 edition of Vanguard published an interview it had with former deputy governor in Abia State, Eric Nwakanma. In the interview, he made specious comparison between the former governor Orji Kalu and Gov. Theodore Orji in what he captured as his experience of the two Orjis.
The interview must be contextualized: the former deputy governor wants to be governor next year and the only dreamy way to achieve that is to praise-sing Gov. Orji and pour venom on Orji Kalu! This must be the summit of self-delusion. Of course, Abians already know the serious contenders for the plum office.
Whoever emerges the next governor cannot be a product of heroworshipping or bootlicking. Abia State cannot have another governorship tragedy—the one Orji Kalu foisted on Abians can never happen again. So, Nwakanma should not delude himself by thinking that laudatory statements about Gov. Orji and condemnatory gibberish about Kalu will give him the ticket.
If Nwakanma had come out to pour his invectives and kindergarten analyses of political issues in the state as a member of “Abia Patriots” it would have been quite understandable. Hiding under the cover of electioneering to cast aspersions on his former boss is rude, disrespectful and uncouth. It is no longer news that the present government in Abia since its inception over seven years ago has wasted several billions of naira it could have used in developing the state in bribing the so-called elders and some interest groups to stifle and prevent them from speaking despite the fact that nothing works in the state.
This practice of ‘dashing’ money to the few instead of using it to develop the state for the overall interest of the people went to a ridiculous level ever since the international business mogul, Prince Arthur Eze, came to Umuahia on August 23 and gave the damning verdict that Abia is stinking.
Since then, the Abia State Government has intensified its Father Christmas role, widening the scope of Gov. Orji’s beneficiaries to include lawyers and journalists. After the Arthur Eze scathing remarks, journalists who covered the event were begged not to allow what the oil magnet said see the light of the day. They were promised handsome rewards and N2m paid into each editor’s bank account that Wednesday afternoon shortly after the Eze bombshell.
But for The Sun Newspapers, the report couldn’t have truly seen the light of the day. So for those who ignorantly had been asking why it was only The Sun that carried that report, the answer has been provided.
Less than one week later, the journalists got their “reward” when the state government gave each of them 10 pages of colour advert of spurious achievements. Each of the journalists made an average
of N1.6m as the promised reward from the adverts. This generated bad belly among journalists in Aba, who felt sidelined and threatened to expose the state government by reporting the infrastructural decay of the city and violent crimes, particularly kidnapping which has become a daily occurrence in Aba.
Government went begging again. On Friday, September 19, one of those who manage—or is it mismanage information for the state, was drafted to Aba where he held meetings with journalists there. It was gathered that after begging journalists in the city to stop further exposure of the administration’s shortcomings, he told the journalists that ‘oga’ had requested them to drop their bank account numbers with him.
This was done. Our source in Umuahia revealed that between September 25 and 29, 2014, these accounts were credited with amounts not less than N1m each. In other words, journalists in Aba got N1m each from Abia Government without doing any job for the state. The only exceptions were journalists working with ‘enemy’ newspapers. So if journalists in Aba no longer write objective stories for which some of them were noted or refuse outright to report events that are viewed as anti-government, please know why it is so.
The conscience of journalists in Aba except perhaps those working with ‘enemy’ newspapers have been bought over and firmly pocketed. If journalists who are supposed to be society’s watchdog could so mortgage their conscience with a pot of porridge, it then means there would be no end in sight to the state’s problems under this present administration. I even heard that the government had mapped out several millions of naira for journalists in the state as parting gifts so that they would not be able to publish any untoward thing against officials of the state government after they may have left office on May 29, 2015.
The names of the journalists who received the N1m and their media would be made public at the appropriate time. Before the windfall for journalists working in Aba, some lawyers in the state were said to have had their
turn. There is nothing wrong in appreciating someone or persons, who
had worked meritoriously, but the idea of playing Father Christmas and wasting scarce resources that
could have been deployed to better the lot of the generality of Abians is neither here no there.
How could the state government ‘dash’ out millions of naira to some journalists in Aba to stop them from reporting the way things are in the place when no single road in that city is in good condition? This is sheer madness.
Recently, the Chief of Staff to Gov. Orji, Cosmos Ndukwe, said he was denied a commissionership appointment by the administration of OUK because he refused to go to Okija shrine for oath-taking.
Why should he in the first place as General Manager of ASEPA have gone for the post of a commissioner when, indeed, commissioners wanted his post then because it was more lucrative?
How do we reconcile this? Shortly after his principal, Gov T.A Orji, was declared the winner of the 2007 governorship election in the state, Chief Onyema Ugochukwu who contested that election on the platform of PDP took the former to the Tribunal, stating in one of his grounds in which he wanted TA’s election to be nullified that the then governor-elect was taken to Okija shrine for oath-taking.
In his defence on oath, Gov Orji vehemently denied the allegation, saying at no time was any of them taken to Okija or any other shrine for that matter.
The question remains, if the governor denied this on oath, why on earth should the CoS or any official of the state government tell the public he was taken to Okija? Are they not indicting TA that he lied on oath?
Nwakanma should ponder the foregoing before his beggarly and self-serving loyalty to Gov. Orji.
.Ozumba writes from Ogbor Hill, Aba.

Eric Nwakanma’s self-delusion