I have read Ako Obioma’s self-spiting missive and childish insinuations and had no choice but to pity him for his pains brought upon himself by greed and the inordinate desire to keep milking the State dry in the name of executing road projects hardly executed even after his gimmicks and deceit have since been discovered and halted.
The song of the young lady he referred to that he claimed stirred his misdirected article was actually referring to individuals like him who feed fat on our common patrimony and leave the people leaner through their wickedness.
Is it not self-indicting that Ako Obioma claimed to have invested as much as N4bn on road construction awarded to his company in Abia State, which he claimed the current Governor, Dr Okezie Ikpeazu ‘has abandoned all my ongoing projects and neither awarded new ones to us’, yet, Abians can’t even see where the projects he executed are? Rather than blame Ikpeazu or the preceding government for his own self-imposed predicament, Ako Obioma should look inwards and wonder why despite being a self-acclaimed veteran in road construction, government has looked away from him and has been patronizing other local contractors? So, it is not even true that government is not using indigenous contractors after all. Many indigenous contractors including PUMACO, Eckleen etc have been fruitfully engaged and they are delivering, hence, the accolades the current governor is receiving everywhere.
In his usual pride and immodesty, Ako Obioma thinks himself alone constitutes indigenous contractors in Abia so that once contracts are not awarded him, he runs to the media with an infantile propaganda that indigenous contractors are being neglected by the Abia State government. Nothing can be further from the truth!
Going by the standards of work with which Ako Obioma’s construction companies are known for, he would have messed up Dr Okezie Ikpeazu’s #KineticAbia programme of massive infrastructural development drive just like he messed up the Umuopara Ring Road contract awarded him previously and abandoned same after indigenes had expressed gross displeasure at the quality of work he was executing on the road.
If Obioma did the roads awarded to him in Umuahia right from day one according to standards, he would not return to refer to Umuahia as a ‘glorified village’. Is it not also indicting on him to in one breath claim that indigenous contractors are being neglected in Abia, yet, in the same breath say “the past glory of Aba is fast being restored” because Ikpeazu is using his kinsmen. Are Ikpeazu’s kinsmen no longer indigenes of Abia? Or are they now Lebanese, or from Enugu and Anambra since he claimed in his article that contractors were brought in from those places to build roads in Abia as if such contracts should be given to him on a platter of gold simply because he is from Umuahia even when he has demonstrated gross incompetence?
Self-centred men will always shoot themselves in the foot while trying to undo others. The same Obioma who claimed he made it big as a contractor in Port Harcourt where he is not an indigene is bellyaching and shouting that Abia should not be giving contracts to non-Abians even if such contractors have an excellent record in quality and timely road delivery. What a hypocrite!
The truth is that, just like some politicians in the State, once they are out of power, they start crying and whining like frightened infants as if their whole life depended on it. They embark on media missives and mischiefs, campaign of calumy and blackmail as a way of trying to gain attention and get patronized all over again.
Contractors like Ako Obioma seem to have learnt the same scheme, once they can no longer fund their expensive lifestyle of impudent opulence through contracts they hardly execute at all or execute shabbily, they begin to cry and whine and blackmail those in power. Unfortunately for them, such stunts will not work! Ako Obioma should look for legitimate means to fund his banalities. Abia will not fund such vain lifestyle for any individual or company in the name of awarding contracts!
– Barth Onyekachi sent this piece from Umuahia
