SUDDENLY, Orji Kalu bashing by a few disgruntled former commissioners in his eight-year governorship of Abia State and those who had served or are serving Gov. Theodore Orji has become a flourishing enterprise. It started with Emeka Obasi, who claimed recently that he ran propaganda and strategy for Kalu during his fleeting commissionership, which was facilitated by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida.  Now, it is the turn of another bloke named Uche Ihediwa, also an ex-commissioner in another dispensation.
I do not blame these Kalu morbid haters because they had no business ab initio being appointed commissioners in a state like Abia with superfluous cerebral minds and people of integrity. The blame squarely rests on the shoulders of Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu who appointed some of them without any credible pedigree as commissioners. He should reap the fallout. I do not believe all these were inadvertent. It was the same irredeemable error he made with the unilateral selection and installation of Gov. Orji against all odds and strong opposition. Many more of such bohemian erstwhile commissioners would soon be unleashed on Kalu. The Emeka Obasi and Uche Ihediwa iterative templates are just precursors.
Writing in The Guardian of Monday, September 29, 2014, on one of its opinion pages, Ihediwa headlined his article “Tale of former and incumbent governor”.
From the headline—even without reading the article—I knew it must be another attack on the Kalu irrepressible dynasty. The subtlety of the presentation was such that you could pass the bile as innocuous without noticing its intemperance and illogicality.
I ask myself anytime I come across the ubiquitous haunting of Kalu by a few of his former assistants, employees, associates, appointees, aides and colleagues this unanswered question: If Kalu was so bad as being presented by his  buddies of yore, why did they not scream to the world and resign as honourable gentlemen as being purported now?
If they had any modicum of character and self-dignity, the wisest thing they should have done was to express their reservations by resigning from his cabinet. Rather, they lapped it all up till when they were ignominiously dropped only to be crying wolf and fouling the ecology with venomous histrionics in anticipatory benefit from Gov. Orji, if there is no “settlement” already!
It is unfortunate that the Igbo love for money can induce volte face in us without our caring a hoot about the inevitable dire consequences.
Almost all the alliterative contributions to the Orji Kalu versus T. A. Orji unfolding debacle will always make assonant remarks on how Kalu uses his newspapers to attack his successor. This is just the pattern of the specious interventions with little or nothing else to add to the debate. None of Gov. Orji’s attack and defence dogs will ever acknowledge the fact that their benefactor is, indeed, the one attacking Kalu, using multiple print and electronic media, including online portals most especially with “247ereports” vituperatively dedicated to Kalu demystification and managed by a certain Ikenna Ezenokwe (the subject of my next contribution)! It is safe and easily believable for them to berate The Sun newspapers and its employees. I wonder if anyone still subscribes to this uncanny persecution of Kalu and his popular tabloid.
It may interest the media apostles of Gov. Orji to know that if not for the restraint by Kalu on journalists working in his establishments (The Sun and New Telegraph) and contributors, the governor could have been run out of the state just as a national newspaper once did to a former governor for obvious reasons pertaining to the proprietor’s political interests before his exit, and the governor’s damnable abortion of the dream of the proprietor’s family .
When some buffoons make references to Kalu’s ownership of The Sun and its marginal deployment against those biting the finger that fed them, I get amused by such level of ignorance even by charge-and-bail lawyers. Do these people understand the history of media globally, their ownership, characterization, vision, mission and proprietors’ overriding (and in some cases overbearing) interests? Do they think the media are charitable outfits or public limited companies for the propagation of stakeholders’ whims and capricious profit for diverse shareholders? This stupefaction arising from blissful ignorance must stop. The Sun cannot be apologetic on the current rape of Abia State or the silencing of all critics or the seduction of some elders whose stomach infrastructure is virtually dead with money that should have been used in developing the state.
Now that Gov. Orji has invested in notorious 247ereports, The Niche on Sunday and other provincial media, we shall see how it goes. All those ignoramuses who dwell on the relationship between The Sun and Kalu should visit 247ereports exclusively owned and funded by Gov. Orji and be ashamed by the blatancy of hourly lies, fabrications, concoctions and yarns that will stalk at you concerning Kalu and his followers. The brazenness, ludicrousness and unprofessionalism of this Umuahia Government House portal euphemistically called 247ereports belong to the gutter! This particular social network reminds me of a defunct print variant reputed for guttersnipes and other salacious gists/photo-shop pictorials!
For those who need civilization on media ownership, proprietors set up media outfits for copious reasons that enjoy inalienable latitude. The legal and media hacks who work for Gov. Orji—including the loquacious lawyer in Umuahia (not Ihediwa) who does all his family’s legal jobs in expectation of being made a judge despite stout serial opposition by his colleagues in Abia State—should have it in their heads that there is what is called proprietorial interest in all media worldwide. So, giving The Sun a bad name to hang it and its owner and workers is tantamount to the hypercritics advertising their suicidal and blissful ignorance on CNN! Objectivity and subjectivity in the media and other existential humanisms are individualistic and not institutional indices.
Between Kalu and Gov. Orji, who is the antagonist? People should not because of the beneficence of being made commissioners based on the interventions of Gen. Babangida and Elder Iheanacho Orji (for Uche Ihediwa as he admitted) publicize their vaunting nepotism and cronyism that displaced authentic prospects who would have grown Abia State by telling us cock-and-bull stories.
In well-ordered societies, public appointments and other opportunities are made on self-recognition and not mentorship, emotional and lobbyist interventions.
If you are eminently qualified and good enough, you do not need externalities to influence your appointment in any sphere of life—not just commissionership! It is clear now that with nepotic commissioners like Obasi and Ihediwa, Abia will continue to worsen. In the circumstance, therefore, I hold the Orjis responsible for the backwardness of God’s Own State.

Uche Ihediwa’s histrionics(1)