By John Daniel Obioma
The unfortunate story of Abia State in Nigeria conveys a rather gory picture of a gang of political undertakers working in a theatrical fashion to ensure the state does not survive brutalisation. It’s a sad story that is pitiable to its indigenes and laughable to its detractors.
For 23 years, spanning the tenures of three ‘mercenary’ governors, there is practically nothing to showcase as achievements in Abia – nothing to inherit, nothing to bequeath, except debts, poverty, corruption and spurious litigations. There’s no roadmap of socio-economic development in the state as it’s seen elsewhere. From Aba to Umuahia to Arochukwu, what you see are utterly disappointing: infrastructure decay, unhealthy environmental and economic conditions, frustrated faces reflecting unpaid arrears of salaries/pension, fear of insecurity, and many more.
Abia’s neighbour, Ebonyi State used to be listed among the 10 poorest states in Nigeria. But today, thanks to good governance, the state has been liberated while Abia literally remains on the floor. Why not? The laudable achievements and patriotic commitments of its leaders, especially David Umahi, have made a huge difference.
Regrettably, the so-called leaders in a state that prides itself as ‘God’s own State’ are so terribly ungodly, corrupt and anti-people. They cannot see anything wrong with their warped thinking or the people’s suffering or the fact that the state has become a laughing stock in Nigeria. Instead, they constitute themselves into an infamous cabal, whose stock in trade is to recruit collaborators and cut down any person with the charisma to redeem Abia, through threats, intimidation, spurious litigations and other extra-legal measures.
Also, for crazy narcissistic reasons, the cash-and-carry leaders want to maintain their stranglehold on the state resources interminably, as much as they don’t want any uncompromising leader emerging to probe them. That’s why, every election year, these Abia ‘blood suckers’ do everything they can to anoint a collaborator as successor, while they clamp down on visionary governorship aspirants with trumped up charges and farcical litigations.
Perhaps, more annoying is the culture of silence that has continued to becloud the state, from the dehumanised people and well-meaning opinion leaders in vantage positions to right the wrongs. Sometimes I wonder aloud –where are the Abia leaders of thought, have they also compromised to kill the state? Where are the religious and traditional leaders, don’t they feel the unbearable pains of the people? Where are the teeming youths who have been short-changed and their future mortgaged? Where are the descendants of the historic Aba Women Rioters, who boldly confronted colonial impunity and intimidations?. Why is Abia so unfortunate to be infested with an epidemic of leadership failure, for so long?
While spectators and collaborators may stand aloof, High Chief Ikechi Emenike, a development economist, renowned publisher and World Bank consultant, has again taken the bull by the horn. He has volunteered himself to rescue the state from further despoliation. Last week, he swept the polls in the Abia APC Governorship Primary held in Umuahia and was declared the party’s gubernatorial flag bearer in the state for the 2023 polls. But while the victory song was still in the air, Uche Ogah, who lost woefully to Emenike during the governorship primaries, apparently unable to endure the shame of his woeful performance, used his cohorts to secure a ludicrous court injunction to cancel the results of the guber primary. The kangaroo court injunction purports that Emenike, the winner, was a suspended APC member. This makes mockery of the judicial system. How can a foremost APC card-carrying party chieftain cum leader in Abia State be purported to be suspended?. Yet he was cleared and allowed to contest for Abia APC Governorship Primary by the same party machinery, supervised by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Yet he led APC delegates to its national convention to Abuja, recently. Yet he belongs to many organs and committees of the party both at the national and zonal levels.
How can Ogah and his cohorts who may not know how APC was formed, or its internal dynamics, claim Emenike was suspended? How can an idle Minister of State for Mines and Steel who obviously has never said a word concerning his ministry or contributed ideas to its development, aspire to be a governor?
In any case, political analysts know quite well that Ogah is not alone in this wild goose chase. He represents the club of ‘Abia colonisers’. For now, it is sufficient to say that Emenike’s mission to rescue and develop Abia is irreversibly on course. The gathering of witches and the political marauders cannot stop it because God is in the project.