T.A. Orji: Why are the gods raging?



I follow with utter dismay the deliberate but unnecessary campaign of calumny mounted in a section of the nation’s media against Governor Theodore A. Orji of Abia State, who probably has no time to engage in such media war.

While not holding brief for him, I believe that no patriotic and well-meaning Nigerian should wait to be told before he can speak out against such unwholesome and irritant politics which comes in many hues and forms of which campaign of calumny is the most monstrous and abominable.

The travails of Abia governor spring mainly from his quarrel with his former boss and predecessor, Chief Orij Uzor Kalu (OUK), who may have sworn to run him down and possibly crush him, using the pages of newspapers.

The situation becomes all the more irritating when political jobbers and others who are not Abians and therefore strangers to the crux of the matter begin to dabble headlong in the whole affair.

These people cannot but display abject ignorance leading, of course, to famished analyses, biased conclusions and a jaundiced stand that only worsen the situation.

A typical example is the case of Rev. Father Patrick Ogu of the Ahiara Parish of the Mbaise Diocese of the Catholic Church, which the Daily Sun of March 7, 2013 under the headline, Catholic priest slams Governor Orji for witch-hunting Kalu, carried. My immediate reaction to Father Ogu’s “witchhunt” charge against T.A. Orji was that of surprise and indignation.

What has a parish priest based in a remote village in Mbaise, Imo State, got to do with the OUK/T.A Orji disagreement, when the clergy and laity in Abia State who are really conversant with the nitty-gritty of the matter, have deliberately refused to intervene because OUK still behaves as if he is a political deity to be worshiped by Abians in particular and Ndigbo in general.

Notice how, in flagrant disregard and negation of the Ohaneze Ndigbo’s principled stand on the quest for Igbo president vis-àvis Jonathan’s tenure, OUK has declared his presidential ambition, formed a parallel organization and named it Njiko Igbo – whatever that means – under whose canopy his campaign train has since hit the ground.

At the same time he appears desperate about returning to a Bamanga Tukur-led PDP that has no room for nonconformist former members like OUK that habour explicit anti- Jonathan sentiments.

In fact, OUK knows deep down that the road to the PDP was closed to him that very moment he publicly declared his candidacy for the 2015 presidential contest in which the PDP may field Jonathan.

So all this noise about his quest to return to the PDP may be only aimed at attracting publicity and distracting Governor Orji who has made a lot of developmental strides including the arrest of the menace of kidnapers and the culture of unbridled hooliganism inherited from the OUK era.

Ill-informed elements accuse the governor of “witch-hunting Kalu” and “armtwisting the state university”, but there is no iota of truth in such allegations. Abia State University is an autonomous institution with powers to review its policies and up-date its records from time to time.

If in the process of doing so this time around the interest of an eminent citizen like OUK is affected it could be pure coincidence and therefore, nobody should attribute it to any “witch-hunting” or “arm-twisting” by anybody.

As regards the issue of “gratitude” which Father Ogu raised who, between OUK and T. A. Orji, owes gratitude to whom? Has anybody taken time to verify the truth? How can T. A. Orji’s traducers say that he owes gratitude to OUK when in fact it should be the other way round?

Anyway, living as he does in faraway Imo State, Father Ogu may not know that as Kalu’s Chief of Staff, T.A. Orji’s incarceration ordeal before the 2007 general elections, was a tragic blackmail by a vindictive Federal Government that was hell-bent on tackling and jailing OUK like they did James Ibori, based on elaborate corruption charge.

But the gambit failed and they had to let T.A. Orji go when, to their utter dismay, it became clear that as a principled and descent Igbo man he could not betray his boss or be used in any way against him.

That was the singular act that won T.A. Orji popular sympathy in Abia State and which translated to his victory in the pending gubernatorial poll in 2007. That victory had nothing to do with any PPA miracle or OUK influence.

So, I laughed it off when recently a newsman in the OUK camp claimed that it was by the grace of his intervention and ultimate contact with an influential figure in Abuja, at Kalu’s behest, that fetched T.A. Orji freedom from detention. If one may ask, since when did it become the place of newsmen to broker the release of politicians from detention? All this sterile propaganda and blatant disinformation should stop. Adimora wrote from Umuahia