Perhaps the most clownish state wing of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is the provincial one in Abia located at 45, St. Finbarrs Road, Umuahia. On Saturday, January 3, 2015, it took a full-page advertorial swipe in THE GUARDIAN entitled “No Controversy over Abia PDP Governorship Candidate”. This commercial spin was signed by one Uzodinma Ugele, Administrative Secretary, Abia PDP. The cardinal issue is not the person of this candidate, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu, but his candidacy and the warped processes that led to his controversial emergence and, of course, the dire consequences if, God forbid, he emerges the governor of this raped state. This is the kernel of the matter—nobody should muddle up personage with representational capacity and competency. Questionable appointive pedigree is another subject entirely. Integrity is the substance and hallmark of leadership.
An extract from the deceptive advertorial: “While in ASEPA (Abia State Environmental Protection Agency), Dr. ikpeazu, a thorough bred (sic) scientist, worked round the clock to keep the commercial city of Abia and its environs clean. It was a herculean task but he applied himself to it and achieved very great results so much so that he received accolades from Aba residents, traditional rulers and corporate organizations in the organized private sector. The PDP governorship candidate left a very clean record in ASEPA…Yes, Ikpeazu ended his assignment at ASEPA with a loud ovation.”
If Ikpeazu “worked round the clock” and Aba is the way it is today—unarguably the dirtiest city in Nigeria—then Ikpeazu’s tenure belies the preceding specious fabrication. Organisations and individuals should tell the public intelligent lies! How can anyone go to Aba today and justify the existence of ASEPA or have anything testamentary to the blighted tenure of Ikpeazu? If Ikpeazu “applied himself” to cleaning up and maintaining environmental sanity in the South Eastern commercial hub that the Igbo used to be proud of and Aba is supersonically deteriorating, it speaks volumes of Ikpeazu’s antecedents in the agency as the Deputy General Manager in charge of Aba and its satellite communities.
The puerile advertorial shamelessly declared that Aba residents gave Ikpeazu accolades. I ask, have words lost their meanings? These same Aba residents throw innumerable sachets of water and other objects on Governor T. A. Orji anytime he is compelled to visit the ravaged city! Recently, Ikpeazu, in one of his misadventures, went to Aba to campaign. It took the intervention of platoons of soldiers to rescue him from the ferocity of stone-hurling and packaged water-throwing Aba residents! So, which “Aba residents” are these rapists from Umuahia talking about? As it stands today, Gov. Orji cannot step into Aba without multitudinous military formations for obvious reasons—except he is on a suicidal mission!
As for traditional rulers allegedly recognizing the non-performer at abysmal ASEPA called Ikpeazu, let me make haste to affirm that anyone and any government in power at all levels, play along with the desecrated traditional institution which is concerned lately mostly with survivalist challenges as to have time for decorum, responsibility and respectability. With reference to institutional applause for Ikpeazu, read on. The deterioration in the ecology of Abia State is so fast-paced that the government seems to be hapless. Recently, the Managing Director of the Nigerian Railway Corporation, Engr. Seyi Sijuwade, expressed his disgust with the bushy and filthy rail lines in the state: “The mountain of refuse in Aba, which is about five metres high had buried some sections of the railway track which eventually led to the collapse of the No.15 bridge of the railway track, preventing the smooth running of the locomotives n the region”. Do we need more references? When will this delusionary falsehood by Abia PDP come to an end? May 29, 2015, unfailingly, by God’s grace. Our future in this phantom legacy is manifestly bleak.
No amount of advertorial swindle can change the incontrovertible fact that the end of the PDP has come in Abia State with the shadowy decision to make Ikpeazu its standard bearer in next month’s governorship election. The electorate in the state are just fed up with the kwashiorkor governance here and cannot wait for May 29 when a redeemer will take charge. The costliest mistake Abians will ever make in the annals of existential humanism is to allow Gov. Orji’s man to perpetuate his misrule and most likely perpetrate another round of maladministration nurtured and sustained by epochal and unprecedented surrogacy.
As I had pointed out on so many occasions and on multifarious platforms, there cannot be any other militarization of polls in Abia State as happened in 2011 re-run sham. That era is gone. This time round, every vote will count and if anyone or party agent, in self-delusion, is banking on assistance from any service chief to commit another electoral fraud next month, my advisement is that there will be conflagration of unimaginable dimensions and proportions. This is no threat! Things have gone so bad in the state that most people are ready and willing to lay their lives to ensure that there is a positive overhaul, a turn-around, a clinical departure from eight years of ruination, retrogression and combative propaganda between 2007 and 2015.
I do not have any personal grouse about Ikpeazu, but the point that he is coming from a diseased tree and contaminated leadership makes him a product of rejection. Most other Abians have the same disposition as mine. If the country’s electoral provisions allowed independent candidacy, I would have advised Ikpeazu to give it a shot even as he performed dismally at ASEPA! But, in this political contemporaneousness, Ikpeazu, as it stands in Abia State where our God never sleeps, I strongly reaffirm that Ikpeazu will come last in the race to Government House no matter incumbency abracadabra and one-chance witch-hunt of Dr. Alex Otti, the people’s candidate. .
Nothing will stop the forthcoming governorship election in Abia State from being free and fair and credible. There must be a positive and transformative re-engineering. Any establishment manipulation will invoke Armageddon. Abians are just tired and fed up of Ochendo, let alone his present and clear stooge of calamitous prospects and worse anticipations! Abia will return to greatness after the retrogressive, horrendous and despicable interlude of Ochendoism, shortly!
By EBERE WABAR A ewabara@yahoo.com 08055001948
