OPINION

Where Orji is good

 By Odimegwu Onwumere

Some persons are so clever that they don't understand their misbehaviours. A cheap bookshop is better than the costliest ignorance. A person with intelligence through an organised religion/government has a measured intelligence. And anybody with a measured intelligence is just not witticism. 

Better is the person who goes borrowing brains than the one that is okay with his or her brains, because there is always disease of thought. Have you seen that person who exhibit intelligence, but with soul of a clown?

The above was what came to my mind on reading an interview in one of the national dailies by one of the garrulous aides of Gov. T.A Orji of Abia State titled: “Orji Has Built Legacy Projects In Abia”. Like I have always said, the Governor is better outside than at home. Better put, he is a governor who has preferred to rule Abia State from abroad, and his aides are copying from him, as the aide in the interview granted journalists the interview in Lagos, not even in any states of the South-East or South-South. Can you see that? Oka mma n’ama leadership!

The shamefaced aspect of it was that journalists’ seek the interviewee’s response to the position of the opposition in the state that Orji was not doing anything in terms of infrastructural development of Abia State, the aide was so swift to conclude that “Governor T.A. Orji is not averse to criticisms, especially when they are coming from the opposition.” Can you see that the governor and the aides have grown thick-skin against the cries of the people that the government in that state does not have a humane heart to listen to the outpours of the people!

The government sees any speeches from the populace pointing at any of the its inadequacies and says that Gov. Orji “is never perturbed by negative criticisms from the opposition in the state.” Can we see the bane of our state? Is this not where Gov. Orji is better of?

The ruse is that the government always says that Gov. Orji remains focused, and you wonder the type of focus it meant here, when the song on the lips of the people remains that they have been robbed of the dividends of democracy to Abia State, on any angles that one stands to look it?

Upon telling Abia people that he was held down by persons (which was later found to be untruth) and that they should endure to see the dividends of democracy in his second term, the judgments of our people were better in Gov. Orji’s first term than the perilous times they have come to endure in the second term in the name of democracy.

Ask Gov. Orji and his loquacious aides to tell you one single completed project that the government has embark on in the state, you hear them say, “Orji has been able to lay a solid foundation for a new Abia State in all sectors”. Hooey!

The only achievement Orji has made is the one his aide said was a “silent revolution”. And that was in the Agricultural sector. But are you not wondering why it is not an ‘open revolution’. You hear them say also that Orji has been investing in education and you wonder which education that he had been investing in, when teachers were owed months of their salaries and students school fees were increased? Drivel!

Whenever I read from the Orjis in government, what comes to my mind is that they have since lost focus, and need to borrow brains; but regrettably, a peacock would not want to see the way of the chickens, because of self-serving pride. What dividends of democracy that Governor Orji has been boastful of? Is it the hoodwinking and sharing of buses and tricycles (Keke) to his cronies and he calls it dividends of democracy, whereas the state is in total shamble?

Gov. Orji prefers to do that so that he would stamp his photographs on the Buses and Kekes with his signal “Ochendo” instead of developing the state’s transport sector for the true dividends of democracy to reach all and sundry from the revenue that would accrue from the transport business.

The crying shameful aspect of Orji’s dimwitted donations to the individuals was that majority of the receivers were university graduates whom Orji did not see that they would be better people if they were empowered to expertise in their different professions instead of turning them into street urchins and agberos. Did you say empowerment, indeed?

I am not sure that Orji and his voluble boys know what shame is all about. Can any of them wish his family members being a Keke rider? This is the only empowerment to the youth that Orji has known and is boastful about. Did you say the limit of brain?

Our people are wiser today, no matter all the intimidations from Gov. Orji with his arsenal of security people, who are making the fates of our people insecure, because our people are forced to pay multiple taxes in their shops, buildings, workplaces, just name them, before the fiercely watch of the marked-faces security people.

If not, how could it be alleged that parents were not explained to why about 2, 420 students of Umuocham Girls Secondary School, World Bank, Aba, had to pay N3, 700 each, without naming the purpose of the payment and without any receipt or written note issued for the payment, when there was supposed to be free education in the state, which was the foundation of the government that Gov. Orji succeeded?

If you multiply N3, 700 by 2,420 students, would that not give you N8, 954,000? Is this the type of education sector that Orji and his boys have been boastful about that the government has reformed? Why were the students of the mentioned school who were alleged to have not paid the money sent home on Monday 20^th May, 2013, by the school authorities?  But whether this is true or false, does it not go a long way to show that the only news that can come out from Abia State is sick ones, because the head of the government needs to visit a hospital?

Perhaps, the alleged fees asked by the school authorities to pay, are what the teachers are using to look after themselves, since the Abia State Government has turned eyes-right in making sure that they are not paid.  

Our people are the victims of this un-performing government that they did not bargain for. Everywhere in Abia State is the presence of taskforce, intimidating the citizens; and the annoying side of it is that the citizens cannot see anything good their hard-earned monies are channeled to in Abia State. Everyday, our people keep on paying bills they are forced to pay by the government with the aid of security people. Is it not only in Abia State that even primary school children are asked to pay about N8, 800.00 for ordinary Common Entrance examination?

Odimegwu Onwumere, Poet/Author, contributed this piece from Rivers State.