My dear friend, brother and Oga,
I am compelled by the demagoguery of your volcanic allegations which thrives on the gullibility and sentiments of the downtown arena to join issues with you. Ordinarily, my love for your person, respect for the mutuality of our affection, admiration for your intellectual fecundity and above all, my time-tested policy of loyalty to friendship would have constrained me to engage you privately but considering that a seven month pregnancy cannot be hidden again, I doubt if you will fault my choice of this platform.
Having said this, be assured that as I engage you here and subsequently on this subject, my language will remain polite and polished. I am going to disagree with you without being disagreeable.
You assured me in one of your responses to one of my posts that you do not have anything personal against the persons of our mutual friend, Rt. Hon. Chinedum Orji and our leader, Gov. Okezie Ikpeazu both whom God, in his unquestionable wisdom, have elevated to the high offices of the Speaker of the State House of Assembly and Governor respectfully. Likewise, my personal choice of attempting to strengthen the many moral rough edges of your presentations is not borne out of any personal issue with you as we remain friends and compatriots in the Abia project.
Now to the crux of this discourse – Sir, I agree with you that Abia is still much far from that socio-economic Eldorado and earthly Jerusalem that we all want her to be. I also agree that much needs to be done, and urgently too, for our dear state to catch up with and even surpass other states on the highway of development in all spheres of life. I am equally in tandem with you in your insistence for probity and accountability as cardinal ingredients of public stewardship but every enquiry and agitation for such must be borne out altruism and patriotism. This is the much I agree with you in the present unfolding drama of absurdities as initiated by you.
Iyirioba, if Abia, our dear State, has been afflicted with the malady of maladministration since the last twenty years, your children and indeed posterity should hold you equally as liable and responsible as those whose names you are having lampooned and pilloried in the marketplace of the social media at the moment. It is not the thrust of this discourse to indict or exculpate any of those you are climbing on their shoulders to attain social relevance and saintliness but I make bold to ask if you, in all fairness and truth, can exonerate yourself from whatever misgovernance that you are now crying foul of?
For the interest of those who may not have had a firm grip on my polemic, it is will be proper that I call a spade by it’s name. At the inception of the present democratic dispensation in 1999, you served the government of Chief Orji Kanu as a commissioner. This you did at a relatively younger age -this was not a mean feat and I doff my hat for you for that. You were in office till you were butted out by the then governor. Once butted out, you quickly adorned the toga of a social crusader just like in the present circumstance. You are on record to have spurred many unprintable and unfathomable accusations and filth against that same government and governor you wined and dined with. Of course, you reserve the right to express your opinion but the moral issue is this – must it be only when you are butted out?
The same antics of shouting to be heard, some people call it cheap blackmail but I wouldn’t embrace such hard diction, became your last resort that warmed your way into the government of Chief T. A Orji as the honorable commissioner for information. Recall telling me in your official house that Chief T. A Orji is the best thing that has ever happened and would ever happen to Abia? From the tirades of acerbic criticism you are dishing out against Ikuku and his family, one cannot but wonder if Ikuku only metamorphosed into this monster you would want us to take him for only after the expiration of his father’s government. I said this because our paths crossed several in Ikuku’s house. I saw and know that you cringged and kow-towed before Ikuku for favors. As Ikuku’s milk of human kindness kept gushing out to you, all was well and good. As you were retained as the senior government functionary with it’s concomitant perquisites, there was no problem. You never noticed Ikuku’s sadism and callousness. You hero-worshiped him. You genuflected at the altar of his feet. It is not on record that you resigned your appointment in the government of Ikuku’s father on any ground especially, moral grounds and neither did you at any point utter any word of protest. For you it was praise, praise and praise.
I know that things started falling apart between you and the family when your house of assembly ambition suffered stillbirth in 2015. Painful and unfortunate as that may be, that is the nature of prebendal politics as played in the third world. As you may recall, I suffered the same fate in 2015. Mine may even be more painful in the sense that I won my primary election fair and square but I was robbed. The last straw that broke the camel’s back between you, Gov. Ikpeazu, Ikuku and his family was the last house of assembly primary election. We all contested upon the assurances that the exercise was going to be free and fair but like every guided democracy, the exercise was marred by many irregularities. I defeated an incumbent speaker but was cheated out. In other words, if you were a victim, I was equally a victim. I had to take it as one of the hazards of the trade but you opted out. As usual, I concede the right to you. As you take Gov. Ikpeazu, Ikuku and his entire family to the cleaners today, I wish to ask you if you would have aspersed these men and their families if the outcome the last PDP primaries were different?
You served Gov. Ikpeazu as a political adviser. You are not on record to have resigned on the moral account of any of these marrow-chilling accusations you are coming up with now. As usual, you were kicked out. I am not in a position of proving or disproving any of these accusations you are coming up with but suffice it to say that it would have made more sense if you had spewed this much when you were in office. I have ran into you severally in the dead hours of the night at the government lodge, Aba waiting to be ushered in to see Gov. Ikpeazu. The question is what you sneak in to do with him at such ungodly hours. You would have passed as that Abia messiah you want us to take you for if you had resigned any of your last positions on moral grounds.
I have got so much to say and so much to reveal but I wish to stop so far for now. You know what? In the Ngwa worldview, a hunter does not say all that he saw while hunting in the dreaded evil forest unless he’s forced to.
While I await your response, may it please you to accept the assurances of my warmest regards.
I remain,
Ord. Ezemuo Ubani Dannie
Gbachia Gbachia 1 of Ngwa Land
Goshen Vile
Mbutu.
21/06/2019.
