By Ijele Agha-Ibeka
When during October 2013 an Aba-based musician Brightman Cletus De Colonel released his music video on the decay of Aba, the commercial capital of Abia State, it was apparent that Governor Theodore Orji consigned the lyrical lamentations of the young musician to the trash can. Otherwise, he would have done something positive to redeem Aba, for the music video, with seductive dance steps of Abia maidens, put a pictorial visage to the rot of the famous Enyimba City. Ironically Aba decayed in tandem with the cocktail of taxes imposed on its inhabitants by the various arms of the Orji administration.
Brightman talked about dog permit, monkey permit and other forms of permits and emblems on sale in Aba all of which, in the face of government’s negligence of the city, amounted to a colossal swindle. If the musician’s powerful message did not as much as stir Governor Orji’s conscience to live up to his constitutional responsibilities, the indigenes of Abia State can only hope that the tick-off recently administered on their governor by Prince Arthur Eze will do the magic. Governor Orji had gathered the high and the mighty, the low and the disillusioned, to what he conceived as another cavalcade for sycophancy and praise singing. It was actually the 23rd anniversary of the creation of Abia State on September 2, 2014 which took place at the Michael Okpara Auditorium in Umuahia. As these things happen, Prince Eze, popularly known as and called Ozo Igbo Ndu (Saver of Igbo life), was the guest of the governor. [eap_ad_2] If any diviner had told Governor Orji what awaited him that day from one of his guests, he would have abominated such a hapless fellow. But Prince Eze was in his elements as reported widely in the media. The oil magnate fired a devastating missile on Orji at pointblank range: “Abia State stinks,” he declared. “Right from the Abia Tower in Umuahia, the rot hits you. Abia State is now the dirtiest in the country – garbage everywhere, along with bad roads. “The people are really suffering and you see it in their faces. Are there no elders in Abia again? If so, what are they doing? What are the senators, the members of House of Representatives, and other elected people doing? Nothing! If you do not know what to do again, please write to President Goodluck Jonathan and let him come to your aid. Abia State needs help.” When he had done with the evisceration of Orji, the billionaire prince from Ukpo in Anambra State tossed the microphone to the floor and stormed out of the venue of the lackluster event. We will need to delve a little into the past in order to ventilate this proposition.
Governor Theodore Orji was the Chief of Staff to the former governor Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu who got him elected as his successor. Indeed, it will matter to all to remember that Theodore Orji won his governorship while still in EFCC detention chambers in Lagos where he had been kept on charges of financial impropriety. In what qualified as Rambo theatricals that combined an inattentive judiciary and political permutations, Theodore Orji got sworn-in as Abia Governor inside the state’s liaison office in Lagos. This was done to preclude the contingency of the EFCC re-arresting him.
As it turned out, impunity became Theodore Orji’s middle name the moment he acquired the toga of gubernatorial immunity. In another nine months, Theodore Orji would have done eight years as Abia State Governor. It is disappointing that all he has for legacy after all these years is the damning censure that Prince Arthur Eze publicly administered upon him. Well, it is in his best interest to bear in mind that, once out of power, the warmth of political hirelings and praise singers will melt away like wax in extreme heat.
Then will he realize that the arms of prisons are still wide open for those deserving of its disorienting embrace. As apposite as the points raised by Prince Eze are, many other “sins of Theodore” cry to the heavens for expiation. He has severally been accused of having handed over the state apparatus to his son, a fellow who goes by the sobriquet of Ikuku (Wind!) and who, in league with a battalion of “bodyguards” has allegedly converted Abia State into a frighteningly highhanded political enclave.
