By Daniel Egwu
With quite a heavy heart and tears in my eyes, I continually watch the events developing and unfolding in Abia State and I begin to ask myself why so much money is being wasted in fighting opposition and people trying to liberate our dear state. When did mediocre minds become our mouthpiece in God’s Own State? Why has it become the order of the day to try to shut down notable men, who have continually emphasised and identified the issues hindering our state democracy? Why has tyranny and blackmail become the order of the day?
While perusing the shameful and atrocious rubbish piped together as an article by one of such mediocre agents known as Obinna Don Norman, I begin to wonder how our God’s Own State has become so deplorable, that a nuisance will keep putting out lies and stringing together uncouth words in his bid to blackmail the notable traditional prime minister, who, even to the surprise of many, has continually called out the atrocious activities of the past governor, who disgracefully parades himself as Ochendo when evidence and events have portrayed him as Ocheonwu.
I persistently ask my colleagues everyday if Abia State is now devoid of intellectuals that some terribly dense individuals are now being portrayed as media advisers. Without much ado, I would like to move forward with why I decided to write this article. Firstly, I will like to clearly state to the mediocre minds, who would probably want to insinuate that this article was sponsored. I write this article today of my own free will, as I have watched events unravelling in our state, giving rise to other states categorising our state as stupid and useless. Now I wish to correct that notion. Our state is not stupid and useless. Rather we have been forced to accept mediocrities and motor park touts as our leaders in Abia State.
Back to the tomfoolery of Obinna Don Norman. I have advice for you: Stop lifting words you barely know their meanings off the dictionary and stringing them together without even making sense. Reading your incoherent and disjointed article merely points to the fact that you are already raving mad. Do you know the first rule of communication? Well, I will like to educate you more, so you don’t keep making a fool of yourself all over the media. The first rule of communication is to convey messages in a clear, unambiguous and effective manner. If you are going to say anything at all, then it should be as clear and as concise as possible.
Secondly, please, I advise you visit your closest bookshop and pick brighter grammar so your writing will be polished and you won’t have to make yourself look so dense. Only unintelligent and uneducated individuals will be impressed with the words you lifted from the dictionary and Google only to use them wrongly. Whoever told you self-acclaimed was a dictionary word. Self-proclaimed you mean? For someone who claimed to be a “former editor of New Telegraph” and a current editor of Realm, your command of English language is very poor. You termed an individual as characterless, yet you called him an arrogant individual in the same article; your flagrant use of words without knowing their meanings exposes your intellectual quotient level as below zero. It is very sad that touts who pass themselves as intellectuals now pose as media advisers for a state, which can easily pride itself on producing intellectuals who have contributed to the development of our dear nation Nigeria.
Now back to your obtuse article. You stated in your own words that: Only children born in the year 2000 will applaud this twaddle as every adult in Abia State knows what the name Bawas symbolises. Bawas should have been bold enough to complete his insipid braggadocio by telling us how fraud-related matters led to his arrest and subsequent incarceration in Abidjan prison until his rehabilitation by Senator Orji a few years ago when he escaped back to Umuahia.
This part of your article is the most laughable of all the garbage and hogwash you tried to pass off as valuable information. Now I put it to you that I was not born in year 2000 and all you have written in your article are hogwash and garbage stringed together to try to blackmail an individual for calling out your corrupt principal. Go back to your principal and his predecessor and ask questions about this hogwash you just passed. Any Abia person in Abidjan at the time you claimed he was imprisoned would remind you that Chief Uche Akwukwaegbu hosted the Enyimba football team when they came to Abidjan at the time you were claiming he was incarcerated. The same incarcerated individual received, hosted a party for the football team, Felix Avanti and the ex-governor when they came to Abidjan in his personal residence in Kokodi. Now, how can a man who was supposedly incarcerated be able to host such an event?
You call yourself a journalist, yet you pass hogwash and lies in your bid to blackmail an individual from calling out your principal’s corrupt activities. You also talked about your principal, TA Orji rehabilitating Chief Uche Akwukwaegbu. Now I will like to use your own words. It is only a child who was born in the year 2000 that will believe such hogwash. Who in Umuahia does not know that Chief Akwukwaegbu had thriving businesses and was more comfortable than your principal, who could only claim ownership of just one house, his official residence as chief of staff in Afara. Anybody who visited that one-storey building knew its appalling state before he was made governor. Did your principal spend or have any dime for his election? Was his election not sponsored by Orji Uzor Kalu and the same Bawas you said he rehabilitated? Should I begin to recount the many times Odochi Orji came running to Bawas’ residence to seek assistance anytime she was impoverished when her husband was incarcerated? A simple search on Google will show you who the criminals are. You can never produce an evidence to back up your claims against Bawas as being a criminal; rather you will see his achievements. He is not like your principal who misappropriated taxpayer’s money.
Who in Abia State does not know how your principal conveniently ejected people from their personal residence, without compensation, razed the buildings down and then built an estate with each house, belonging to each of his children? Should we even begin to consider the land that was given to Catholic Church by the previous Abia State governor, which TA Orji forcefully repossessed and built a spa for his son’s wife on St. Finbarrs Road? He relocated the market they rely on for their livelihood and built a personal estate there for himself and family. Do we talk about the Timber Market, which was given to an individual for a personal estate because of PDP ticket? How about the Old Spare Parts Market? Whose property is it now? Can I talk about Garki, which he took to build what he called Abia Mall/Shoprite, but which is now his personal property? No compensation whatsoever was paid to their owners.
Do we talk about the new Timber Market, which he took from Ndume people? He used part of it to build his personal estate. Or is it the cemetery, which he turned to a warehouse? You termed this same “characterless” human being as being insolent, yet throughout your write-up, you were the only person pervading and coming-off as insolent.
Furthermore, you also stated in your hogwash, in your own words as copied: So, Bawas remembered all these so-called Orji Kālu’s congeniality and reverence for him, still he went ahead to rain abuses on him in support of Sen. Orji during the 2010 fallout that led to the liberation slogan? This lends credence to why we referred to him as fair weather politician, who kowtows individuals in power for loaf of bread. I will like to point you back to your article that you wrote to Sahara Reporters and posted on some blogs in July 26, 2013 which rightly state: Abia State Governor has failed, by Don Norman Obinna. Attached herein are the links to the article you circulated round the media: http://clemsdebest.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/abia-state-governor-has-failed-by-don.html. In your own words you stated: Contrary to what was propagated on the traditional and social media, we saw a state characterised by conspicuous abysmal dividend of good governance,” Obinna reports.
“Dilapidated school buildings, deplorable roads, and infrastructures pervade the entire state,” he further said.
“Aba, commercial nerve centre of the state, is the worst affected with flood, heaps of refuse, decomposing corpses, deplorable streets and roads and dilapidated school buildings common sights.” Seeking an official statement, Obinna then contacted the governor’s office on July 5th in order to gain some clarity from the governor on the claimed developments and use of citizens’ resources. The inquiry, which also included an 18-question questionnaire, was never answered.
Only an intelligent person would understand that the Internet never forgets and that whatever you put out can always come back to bite you in the arse. Now this begs the question of what actually happened to change your mind to not only become a media adviser for the same man but to also sell your integrity and dignity on the altar of shame. Also you were accused, during same period, of trying to extort N5 million from this same person who has become your principal in order not to publish the said article and when he refused and called your blackmail a bluff, you went ahead and circulated your report around various media houses, including Sahara Reporters. Herein attached also is a Sahara Reporters article, accusing you of duplicity: http://saharareporters.com/2013/07/25/attempt-extort-money-abia-state-government-one-don-norman-obinna. This is an excerpt from the same article written about you by the same man you try to defend today: “Our attention has been drawn to a publication on Sahara Reporters by one Don Norman Obinna, who published tissues of lies on Abia State government after an unsuccessful attempt to extort the sum of 5 million Naira from the state government.”
Take a glance at these links and tell us who should be classified as a fair-weather politician. You also said Bawas only dances to the beat of who is currently in power. It is either you are so dense or too thick to realise that Orji Uzor Kalu is no longer in power in Abia State and Bawas’ apology to Orji Uzor Kalu had nothing to do with power but merely a friend, apologising to a friend he wronged. Also human trafficking is a weighty statement; I suggest you be careful next time you accuse someone of such without evidence to back it up. Flagrantly throwing words around won’t make you sound less imprudent than you already do.
You also falsely stated: When it became clear that Kalu has lost his political relevance in Abia State, Bawas pitched his tent with Sen. Orji and when his lobby to get his wife become ASUBEB chairperson could not materialise, Sen. Orji became the worst thing that happened to Abia State. Only a wicked and duplicitous person would deny the good deeds Hon Grace Nkem Uche did for her constituency during her tenure in Abia State House of Assembly. Your principal and his son came crawling to that woman and begged her to step down for them, and endorse the son, knowing anything otherwise would make him lose the election, owing to the woman’s popularity, as she had become more popular in Umuahia Central Constituency even more than your principal.
She garnered the highest votes at election booths even in your principal’s ward. They promised that the reason they wanted this was to be able to put back things in order in the state and cleanup the mess they had done in the state. Your principal was scared of being incarcerated, which was why he was pitching his son as speaker, but thankfully their plans failed. The same woman, I remember when I followed Mercy Odochi Orji to Port Harcourt to see Patience Jonathan when her husband was the vice president as one of the personal assistants. Who paid for a hotel for all the workers, pressmen, journalists, and security personnel that your principal’s wife asked to sleep in the bus and cars while she conveniently slept in a presidential suite in the Presidential Hotel, Port Harcourt? The same woman lodged and paid for all the personnel to be able to sleep in a room rather than in a car, which your madam wanted them to stay in. This same woman donated over 30 vehicles to Umuahia residents, as one of her constituency projects funded with her own personal money. This woman gave out scholarships, put a lot of Umuahia indigenes in universities; she built boreholes, distributed Keke NAPEP, transformers, built and refurbished houses for widows, paid hospital bills and so many more.
Your principal’s son leveraged on this woman’s achievements when he was campaigning for the Abia State House of Assembly. He virtually begged this woman to go round Abia State and endorse him in front of her constituents. Ask your principal’s son if he won any election? The constituents were angry with the replacement and massively voted against your principal’s son. Herein also is an attachment of some of her achievements: https://ugbogubright.wordpress.com/i-donated-transformers-that-restored-light-to-your-communities-engr-chinedu-orji-challenges-other-political-parties-says-their-candidates-should-be-of-practical-relevance-to-their-communities/>http://nigerianewsflight.com/article/ibeku-egwu-asaa-honours-prominent-indigenes>
You also claimed in your obtuse unintelligent report: It’s contemptible that our traditional rulers still find such chameleonic individuals worthy of traditional titles.
Blinded by greed and animosity over his failed bid to impose his wife ASUBEB chairperson, Bawas completely ran amok, forgot in less than 15 months how, through the support of Sen. Orji, his wife was elected two-time legislator in Abia House of Assembly with nothing to show for her eight years stay in the ABSH except two boreholes – one dug at Afara Prison and another at Ugwu Nchara ghetto – and four sets of obsolete computers she donated to Amuzukwu Girls Secondary School.
Firstly, I thought you claimed he is self-acclaimed? Now you claim his title was given to him by traditional rulers. Do you even know the meaning of self-proclaimed? I think I have been able to prove here who the chameleon is. You see the great Bob Marley once said: The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively. ”
People who knew Hon Grace Nkem Uche when she worked at Federal Medical Centre, Queen Elizabeth Specialist Hospital, Umuahia will attest to her popularity there as a saint who catered and paid off bills for people who could not afford to pay. This was how she was already popular before she got into the Abia State House of Assembly. Your principal leveraged on this to win elections in her constituency. So you see how you continually expose your stupidity in your reports. You said your principal liberated Ibeku land. How? By selling off their assets or making most Umuahia indigenes to Keke NAPEP drivers. Please try to come off as less dense next time. Have you even seen the deplorable state of Abia State?
• Egwu wrote in from Aba, Abia State.