OPINION

2015 race: Only Gov. T.A Orji will vote for Jonathan 

 By Odimegwu Onwumere

Some persons resort to exhibiting the trait of madness in whatever thing they do and have the philosophy that there is freedom and safety in madness. You cannot understand such people, because they are not lonely, but busy doing nothing. 

They are far from being genius. You see them as oddballs. They like to rebel so much and are troublemakers. When others are putting round pegs in round hole, they are putting round pegs in the square holes. They do not do things the way of the people, but the way frivolous ideas crop-up in their heads. They do not follow rules and they have no respect for humanity. They push whatever agenda that comes to them backwards. They speak before they think. You cannot ignore them and wouldn't want to associate with them.

That was my generalisation of Theodore Ahamefule Orji of Abia State when I read an article that was titled “2015: Igbo‘ll Deliver S-East Votes To Jonathan – Orji” in which the governor was reported to have said that the people of the South East would remain unwavering in their support for President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015. Much as every party has an interest in winning in elections, Gov. Orji would be a bad sell for Jonathan in the regard that the governor was saying that our people were poised to deliver the region to Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.

I have been wondering which people that the governor meant. Is it the people that he sent packing from the Civil Service in his state in the floating language that they were not aboriginal citizens of Abia State? The people that the governor sent out of job were Igbo people who happened to come from other states but from the South-East political zone that the governor has said that was balanced to give Jonathan the full-swing support come 2015.

I’m not against Jonathan as a person, but I’m not sure what Orji meant when he was also reported to have said that the “bread of the Igbos will be buttered” when they support President Jonathan and that a contrary view is simply telling lies. I cannot stop laughing at persons who do not know that they have shot themselves on their feet, but continue to make positions irrelevant as their ways of life and themselves are.

However, we know that Gov. Orji is a drowned politician who is looking for every available means to be favoured by the president. Though, we know that the president is a man who knows who is who in governance across the 36 states of the country and that Gov. Orji is not performing and is not regarded as a personality in the South-East, because of his stumpy mentality to render good governance to Abia State.

Evidence of this is fad, because Gov. Orji is the only governor who has been pelted, booed and heckled publicly and laughed-at secretly among Ndigbo. A typical example was at Aba, the commercial city of Abia State, when the remains of our dearly beloved Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu were laying in state in Abia. But the governor later referred to that noble act of the masses calling him up to perform, as the handiwork of his political rivals. Does such a drowned governor have a rival? Yet, he continues to develop our state, but only in the media.

There is no amount of sugarcoated words from Gov. Orji that will make him be loved by Jonathan, though Mr. President has not said that he hates Orji. But what the governor is doing from his body-language is to paint Jonathan as a messiah that Ndigbo would not afford to miss in 2015, whereas Orji himself has not done any meaningful project in our state.

Gov. Orji wants Jonathan to see and take him seriously as one of the leaders in the South-East zone. But being a governor is far from being a leader of the people. This is to say that if a man like President Jonathan should rely on Gov. Orji to deliver the South-East to him in an election, it would be only the governor that would vote. It does not mean that we hate Jonathan, but the man Gov. Orji is a hiss.

Gov. Orji now takes Abuja as his first home. This is coming after we harangued that his incessant traveling to overseas was becoming much. He seemed to have curtailed that as we are yet to hear his protégés and rented crowed deafening our ears from the Government House, Umuahia that their “Ochendo Global” has ‘returned’.  

We could remember that in April this year, the same Gov. Orji who was reported to have said that the people of South-East would support Jonathan in 2015, as if he was a leader of our people, asked our people to return home from the North in a treatise that was captioned “Boko Haram: North No Longer Safe, Return Home Orji Tells Ndi Igbo”.

My worry was that the governor made the unguided statement without a recourse to the damage he had done to Ndigbo who were working in Abia State that were not of Abia origin. He sent them packing. So, his clamour that Ndigbo should return home was baseless. What was expected of Gov. Orji was to say that Ndi-Abia who were residents of the North should return to our state. We can see that Abia State under Gov. Orji is no longer safe for the people of South-East who are not from Abia State. So, which South-East is Gov. Orji talking about to support President Jonathan in 2015?

It is my belief that Gov. Orji should stop bringing himself to the public ridicule for people to laugh. He should stop bringing us, the people of South-East, into his disastrous political posturing, in making sure that he is in the ‘good book’ of President Jonathan. If our people will support President Jonathan in 2015, Gov. Orji is not in any way near the position to tell us. He has to first keep and govern his state well before dragging the entire South-East zone into his political oblivion, because Ndigbo are not insane, oddballs and troublemakers who put round pegs in the square holes.