More Stories on This Section

Apart from the ephemeral paraphernalia of public office which is quite transient, it remains to be proved if those who occupy political positions in a country like Nigeria should in all honesty, be envied. It is regretful that people who have offered themselves for service in this country are subjected to all kinds of abuses from all manner of persons in the society including scoundrels and out-castes even without any proven misdemeanour against such public office holders, all in the name of freedom of speech.

The recent assignment executed by one Yusuf Kehinde who dubiously dubbed himself a Company Executive on the back page of News paper of November 17 2008 is just but one of the numerous instances that expose this ugly culture.

Writing as a hired guest columnist, on an issue that has no link with him as his name and designation suggest, this idle man decided to have his adrenalin shoot up and his blood pressure rise because the governor of Abia State in South East Nigeria offered to wave his immunity and have anti graft agencies investigate him over watery reports and false allegations raised by a magazine that is not worth more than a latrine paper working in unholy alliance with the drowning opposition in the state.

After his treatise of the issue he set to address, that saw him attack several personalities without any links to the matter, Mr. Kehinde like the baboon that wants to die over the monkey's diarrhoea is insisting like his party that the governor ought to swear to an affidavit in court to wave his immunity if he was serious. Had the real author of that piece not hidden his identity under a pseudonym, well there may not have been any need to react.

The simple reason being that we are aware and so many Nigerians have expressed worry over the secret MoU signed between the mid- night Hitlers called opposition and a couple of morally and ethically bankrupt media outfits in the country and the dangers it portends for our nation's democracy. Just a few days earlier, an otherwise respectable newspaper editor in his Sunday column decided to stand the truth on its head, and on a holy Sunday for that matter, when he wrote that nearly nine months after the Election Petition Tribunal gave its verdict in Umuahia, that the Appeal Court is yet to begin hearing on the various appeals emanating from that verdict.

When you consider the personality of this editor in question and his highly sanctimonious views as expressed in his Sunday-sunday weekly column, coupled with the fact that he has capable reporters based in Port Harcourt who have been covering the court sittings, yet his conscience allowed him to use his position and office of today to deceive the reading public for whatever favours on earth, you will only agree that this MoU is not to the best interest of the larger public but to convey some pecuniary benefits on the major actors.

The ulterior motive behind the voyage becomes manifest when one observes that right under the writer's nose litany of appeal are begging for attention but he has not found time to look at it since the Abia case is of great interest to many even when we were not described as a mass of protoplasm by the late Chuba Okadigbo.

Like stated above, since we were brought into the know that almost all chieftains of PDP in Abia State hide under the influence of drugs and liquor to make psychedelic utterances, we have decided to adopt a wiser tactics which have been paying off- silence-, which we were told is the best answer to a fool. It is pertinent to remind the writer that Governor Orji is not even the first governor to have asked that his immunity be waived aside while he, be investigated. Common sense and elementary knowledge would have told him and his dumb-skull masters that wild and unsubstantiated allegations levelled against anybody be it in politics or private life remain at best –what they are- allegations. And that it will be in line with their terminal political hallucination to conceive that Governor Theodore Ahamefule Orji who has the mandate of the people of his state will succumb to their ball room permutation to step aside and be investigated and if found innocent goes back to his office clearly betrays their obvious stunted intellect. Investigations beget prosecution.

What the governor has done is a big challenge to both his accusers and the anti-graft agencies because its very simple for compromised cash and carry media houses to congregate documents whether real or fake and print what it desires for a gullible public. The people of Abia State who Governor Orji is accountable to are the ones who now draw the attention of government to these wishy-washy publications. It is so bad for the reputation of a media outfit when you come to the news stand and you hear ordinary Nigerians asking vendors what rubbish a particular magazine has written this week. Pitiable descent you will say of the once reputable height of journalism in our country.

One very dear and costly mistake of those who fight the governor of Abia is that they sheepishly go to battle on the pages of newspapers with a man they know little or nothing about. T.A or Ochendo as he is popularly known is not in the least bothered about what falsehood his opponents print in the media about him. Like he would say, it is not his making that those who fight him are wicked veterans who majored in negative propaganda which has been their stock-in-trade, and he would not indulge in their game all in the name of paying them back in their own coin.

He has consigned them to their conscience and their God. Rather, the governor is more obsessed on how to put smiles on the faces of the people and how he will be remembered at the end of his stewardship which is a better choice. That is why in face of all distractions from enemies of progress, Abia is still working to the pleasant consternation of many. Today over one thousand brand new cabs and buses under the state taxi scheme have been distributed to individuals to reintroduce township taxi services in the state . Government has awarded more contracts for the construction of some roads which even belong to the Federal Government, in addition to the flag off of the construction of roads situated even in his enemies' domain. It is a pity that the likes of Mr. Kehinde and his paymasters will not see these things as they are allergic to good things and so shall good things continue to elude them in their entire lives.