For the live of me, when will politics ever end, and decency and decorum thrive in our land. Why I’m I saying this? It’s in respect of this unending war unleashed on former Abia State Governor Orji Uzor Kalu by the man he handpicked and foisted on the state as his successor, Governor Theodore Orji. After moves to block Kalu’s return to PDP failed, the governor and his cohorts quickly resorted to getting his Abia State University degree certificate awarded him 12 years ago withdrawn.


Governor Orji says he has no hand in the certificate cancellation. He says it’s the same ABSU Senate, which awarded it in the first instance that withdrew it. I believe the governor. Yes, the decision to withdraw the certificate was contained in a statement signed by the Registrar and Secretary of the Senate of the university, Mr. Earnest Onuoha. Yes, it was released last weekend after the Senate meeting where it was approved that the certificate be withdrawn and cancelled.

The statement read in part: “On the strength of the findings and recommendations of an investigative panel into allegations of breach of the extant Academic Regulations of Abia State University in the admission process and graduation of Kalu, Orji Uzor in the discipline of Government and Public Administration with matriculation number 00/42226, the Senate of Abia State University at its resumed 69th Extra-Ordinary meeting of Friday, 1st March 2013 and by a vote of eighty-eight (88) against there (3) dissenting voices only, approved the cancellation and withdrawal of the degree results and certificate awarded to him.” ABSU predicated its decision on certain grounds, which included “violation of the academic regulations of the university on admission-by-transfer” and “non-completion of the mandatory six (6) semesters i. e. three academic years of study before he was awarded a degree of the university”.


You may raise issues with the admission because Kalu was a sitting governor of the state when he was given the admission and you could be right, because as the governor he was the visitor to the university and owner and would always get whatever he wanted from the school. Our Editorial Board Chairman Olusegun Adeniyi made that point succinctly last Thursday in his column.But for me, my worry is what kind of a university is that, what kind of a university senate is that, that it would take 12 years to discover something is wrong in the admission given in 2000. What does that say about the credibility of the school? I doubt if the school’s admission and degree are worth the paper they were written on and the ink with which they were penned.

Governor Orji’s claims he does n’t have a hand in it. But how comes his Chief Press Secretary Ugochukwu Emezue knows so much about the university’s action? Emezue even has more information about the reason for the cancellation of Kalu’s degree certificate than ABSU itself. If in doubt, see Page 6 of The Nation on Sunday of March 3, 2013. Why is T.A. Orji this opposed to his political benefactor OUK? Back to my starting point, I think it’s high time governors began to rethink their penchant to wont to handpick their successors at election time at the expense of the people because this godfather-godson thing has n’t really worked. Handpicked successors of some governors are their worst political enemies today. Why not allow a free and fair process to reign! Any governor who emerges through that process will respect that spirit of openness and transparency, and maybe protect the predecessor when he is gone.

I still remember the story of T.A. Orji’s ascension to the governorship in Abia. He was Chief of Staff to Kalu. He virtually won the election from detention to which the EFCC had clamped him over alleged money laundering offences. But close to the inauguration date, former governor Kalu was able to arrange a bail for him and before the EFCC could take another move, Kalu had whisked Orji to the state’s Liasion office in Lagos to be inaugurated as governor.

It was May 27, 2007, two days to May 29, 2007, when other elected governors would be sworn in. Kalu had stepped down as governor ahead of the May 29 date since he was on his way out anyway. It was a political masterstroke, which beat both EFCC and the rampaging President Obasanjo hollow. Once Orji was inaugurated governor he was free from arrest and prosecution because of governors’ immunity. But how does T.A. Orji pay back OUK?

Courtesy
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