RECENTLY, the former governor of Abia State and one of the foundational financiers of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA), Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC). The unprecedented ripples are still reverberating because of Kalu’s irrefutable political invaluableness.
A fortnight ago, I did multimedia official justifications for that epochal defection. My swift interventions as Kalu’s media adviser quelled the festering malicious, vicious and wicked insinuations and mischievous vituperations about his motive for that inalienable decision with regard to his curiously articulated case with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Today, I establish my personal (please underscore this morphological distinction) reservations and grouses about his joining the floundering APC that has obviously reached its wits’ end. I would have given my principal three candid options to wit; rebuild the PPA which he founded and solely financed and on which platform two governors emerged in 2007; strengthen the fledgling All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA); or join in creating the emerging “New PDP”.  Any of these options would have put Kalu in the best stead devoid of wildcat suspicions and demonic rationalizations. There is no doubt whatsoever that Nigerians are nightmarishly disenchanted and disillusioned with the ruling party, the APC, whose takeover mantra from the ousted PDP was “change”. The way it dismally stands today is demonstrative of the analogical transition from the frying pan to the fire!
Hopes have been irredeemably dashed. The promise of a better life has become a mirage. Stagnancy and despondency seem to have taken over the socio-economic landscape without any anticipatory institutional mediation or governmental intervention in prospection for alleviation of the excruciating currency of asphyxiation occasioned by unprecedented national hardship.
I have the strong conviction that if members of the PDP could address their internal wrangling and get their act together, the “new PDP” that will evolve has the potentialities to reclaim power from the APC for reasons known even to children still in diapers! The APC that raised so much hope is gradually and systemically becoming one of the worst political associations to govern this blighted country. I will elucidate some of its foibles and also explicate reasons Nigerians will be desirous of another party in 2019.
The kind of regrouping I have in mind is such that will bring together surviving members of the Group of 34 that metamorphosed into the “original” PDP—not the adulterated PDP hijacked by infiltrators whose sole attraction was aggrandizement. In pursuit of their selfish goals they sabotaged all the transformative efforts of the last administration headed by a feeble, if not spineless, president under whose nose “boys’ were running all manner of deals/rackets without his knowledge! The consequence of the unconscionable looting and blatant bazaar with our oil wealth is the murderous cause of the current economic quagmire.   Now the aforementioned elucidation: How can any Igbo person vote for APC? There is no week that Igbo youths are not brutally murdered by the Nigerian Army for engaging in peaceful demonstrations over some grievances that successive governments have turned a blind eye to. The Army in an inexplicable justification says that the interminable repression is in defence of the country!   Why can’t the soldiers use the same animalistic force on Boko Haram? The Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) and Egbesu for years terrorized parts of the country before they were placated by the government and they sheathed their swords. Not the same with Igbo youth.
The Niger Delta militants explode oil pipelines which costs the country millions of dollars almost on a daily basis. Why can’t the Army shoot the economic insurgents? Of all these regional agitators, who does the most harm to the country? Yet, it is only MASSOB/IPOB protesters that must be crushed at all costs! What kind of federation is this? Any Igbo person who votes for APC in 2019 is most likely not to be a true son or daughter of Igbo land. Even ordinary bail cannot be granted the IPOB leader and other Biafran crusaders with him. Are we to talk of the lopsidedness in federal appointments? Detractors say we always cry of marginalization years after the civil war instead of getting integrated in the mainstream. Is that possible when there is a deliberate state policy to sideline us right from the era of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo till date? If not that my people are loved by God, resilient, diligent and industrious, we would probably have been wiped out of the surface of this polity!
Instead of finding a solution to the MASSOB/IPOB agitations, President Muhammadu Buhari continually expresses worry on one hand and declares at other times that Nigeria’s break-up is impossible as if such incidents are negotiated or discussed at the roundtable before the cataclysm sets in! No attempt has been formally made to understand these Biafran agitators, their demands and a meeting point. Rather, they must be futilely muzzled to submission using federal might.
Like a scripted narrative, the present government, just like past ones, either keeps mum or indulges in taciturnity as if nothing serious is happening when indeed state murders via the Army in the South East have become an official pastime! Unlike other regions which will not tolerate this kind of tragedy for long, it appears to me that my people are docile, timidly nonchalant and fearful. Nobody wants to take the bull by the horns. Kalu, tried to challenge Gen. Obasanjo on these issues bordering on South East neglect and almost got his fingers, vast business empire and political career razed! In fact, Kalu believes and insists that his EFCC trial is a consequence of his not supporting Baba Sege’s third-term autocratic and farcical project. Most Nigerians are disappointed that Kalu, a celebrated pan-Nigerian, a popular political icon, a superfluous philanthropist and entrepreneurial colossus of supranational aplomb, joined the APC because he should not have defected to a party that is facing imminent implosion, a party that promised Nigerians El Dorado only to reinvent Somali days here, a party that appears more clueless and dismal than the PDP, a party that is an assemblage of irreconcilable bedfellows, a party that has nurtured the worst economic time for the country, a party that is clearly overwhelmed by the onerous challenges of national governance, a party that is incapable of steering Nigeria out of its current socio-economic morass, a party that has unprecedentedly pauperized Nigerians, a party that is….I could go on and on but for space constraint.
President Buhari should not be reminding us that he inherited monumental corruption. He should rather be telling us what he is doing to attack the menace, especially when the finger points at some of the APC functionaries in his cabinet and some top members of the party. This administration cannot continue to pretend that most of the APC chaps are saints when in truth and reality the party may even be worse than the PDP in terms of corruption and criminality generally.
It is because of the foregoing and many other drawbacks associated with the APC that I kick against Kalu’s defection to the party. He would have his own reasons for joining the APC, but the feelers from his supporters in the South East suggest dispassionate opposition to the move. Why should Kalu join a party that cannot provide fundamental social infrastructures for the citizenship? Why should Kalu subscribe to a party which witch-hunts imaginary enemies and perceived foes, a party that its national leadership is at war with their followers and the executive arm of government over Ondo governorship candidacy and other allied issues?
A government that allows 17 agencies to illegally domicile N450 billion that could have been used to upgrade social infrastructure is confirmatory of inept APC leadership! Here is an administration where power generation drops by as much as 984mw and DISCOs charge arbitrary amounts for epileptic power supply and government watches with hands akimbo!  What good can be said of this ruling party that my boss has joined? I do not see any light at the end of the tunnel as the horizon remains cloudy and the citizens wonder what actually has hit them. It is difficult for me to explain the rationale for Kalu defecting to this APC “one chance” beyond my official expatiation on the matter.
Why should my oga join a party that cannot guarantee citizens’ security, well-being, development, healthcare, educational pursuit, housing, public transport system, potable water, affordable cost of living, long life and prosperity among other goodies of life? What shall we remember the APC for post-2019 when the scales fall off our eyes and we begin to see real “change”?
For me, it is regrettable that Kalu joined the APC, but being an expression of his fundamental right, I bottle up my reservations and wish him well as he navigates the hawkish and murky terrain of the APC!

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