..By Eddie Onuzuruike…
It was Abraham Lincoln, the famous President of America who said these wise words, ‘You can fool some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time; but you can’t fool all the people all the time.’
Kalu, despite his known atrocity-characterized governance in 1999-2007, he still has the gumption to go on air and tread lies as truth. We are used to The Sun newspapers as Kalu’s mouthpiece, so their article on page 22, Thursday, January 30, 2014, in reply to my comments on Kalu’s abhorrent vituperation on TV was no surprise.
One Ebere Wabara who claims to be a media advisor to Kalu, though a regular name in The Sun Newspapers and the Nation, rejoined like a wounded lion, shamelessly buttressing Kalu’s bouquet of falsehood with an additional load of his own lies. Yet he forgot the unprintable things he said about Kalu some years ago. I may not go tit for tat with his uncouth language, but let him know that his past is not hidden as the truth will be told sometime.
Kalu said on African Independent Television (AIT) that Abia is static due to the maladministration of Chief T. A. Orji and I replied in two publications in the Vanguard and Daily Independent that Kalu’s statement was not only baseless but irresponsible. Abia is not static. Abia is highly mobile in the real terms of governance. One tends to ask, what can Kalu point at as a project he completed or a policy he undertook in his inglorious days as Governor of Abia from 1999-2007? Is it in roads, housing, Education, Health or Agriculture? Does Kalu not know that lies expire with superior data?
It is only children who come out publicly to claim things that they are not sure of. For instance, children can openly claim a parked car as theirs or point at tall and magnificent buildings belonging to them, and these will be forgiven as childish talk, but a situation where an adult indulges in such, then something should be wrong. Kalu needs to grow up. Kalu should learn to talk like a former governor. Has he heard his contemporaries like Achike Udenwa, Mbadinuju, Donald Duke, Bola Tinubu yapping so carelessly as he does? If he has any shame, he should be the last person to mention Abia for it was a state that he devastated with bad governance.
Since 2010 when he was placed where he belongs, he has ceaselessly mounted series of calumny with his media unleashing quantum lies of non performance and his intensive use of social media whose veracity is hardly subjected to hard scrutiny, but thanks to the good Lord that the good governance tours led by the Hon. Minister for information, Mr. Labaran Maku in January 2013 nailed his lies to the counter. Mohamed Garuba, NUJ president, acclaimed that Abia is under-reported as he transversed Abia and identified projects which Kalu and his boys previously and hugely refuted but now identify as legacy of underdevelopment in paragraph 7. Ochendo Legacy Projects are real, physically located on the map of Abia, especially with the present day GPRS mapping.
I will ask Wabara again, what is Kalu known for in Abia? Can anybody show us what Kalu built?
If Kalu built a new Government House, should Ochendo be building one?
If Kalu built an International Conference centre, should T. A be busy with one?
If Kalu properly housed the BCA which he put into excessive use in fighting hopeless wars, should Orji have built the 48 room complex ready for commissioning on the 6th of February?
If Kalu considered the plight of the civil servants who Ochendo promoted to the next level and now housed in a new secretariat in Ogurube Layout, should they be proud of the governor, let alone voting massively again in 2011 elections?
Let Kalu tell us and tell the world the executive bills which he sent to the house that are people-oriented. Is it the ban of Okada that was swelling up the accident wards in hospitals or the ASOPADEC bill creating a commission to help the highly environmentally devastated oil producing of the state where shameless Wabara comes from?
I can go on and on with projects and policy of Chief T. A. Orji, too many to enumerate.
Let me state it here that it is an insult to compare T. A. Orji and Orji Uzor Kalu. Kalu came into governance by default. He is a known trader and financial adventurist who took up governance to enhance his business empire. At least in-spite of his spurious claims of riches untold, he neither had his shipping, newspaper nor banks that are now tipping his ego.
T. A. Orji came into governance with a high pedigree as a successful Civil Servant with verifiable means and ways. At least, he did not go for a degree course while in office, so there is no basis for comparison.
If Kalu took care of Aba should Ochendo be building and commissioning geometric Access Road, Eke Akpara Road, Ngwa, Obikabia Ururuka and Faulks?
If Kalu put Aba in his front burner as an Aba boy should Ochendo have engaged Chikwe Tech to open all the drains? If Kalu took the health sector seriously should Ochendo have built the Abia diagnostic centres harboring the dialysis machines which the Hon. Minister for health Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu came and commissioned?
Which lives did Kalu touch? Let him tell us, let him tell the world: is it the youths who he neglected that T. A is guiding with empowerment, skills components, Scholarship and bursary? Or the old people he frequently insulted and owed pensions which T. A. liquidated.
Let Kalu point them out! The houses, the markets. Probably he built the Ubani Modern Market, which he sees on his way to Igbere. The industrial and spare part markets now functional are they not evident testimonies?
Mentioning Engr. Chinedu Orji shows the lack of decorum in The Sun and Wabara’s baseless article. Engr. Chinedu Orji is an adult, a private citizen and decorous in all he does. If he stepped up to cater for the welfare of his fellow youths, this should not call for chastisement. Wabara’s hallucinates that Kalu remains a political colossus tops his misgivings. How and where? Is it in Abia North, or in Aba, his boyhood place he turned his back on and Igbere where he lost his senatorial quest?
As we have said before in other write-ups, Kalu should keep quiet, rebuild his battered image and burnish his persona. His long time habit of mendacity cannot help him in these days of facts. According to an East African proverb, ‘no matter how long a tree trunk stays in the river, it cannot turn it into a fish.’ Kalu’s lies cannot stick anymore.
For wabara the new voice for Kalu, he has as the bible said put his head in a yoke of fire as he is manufacturing lies against Abia people. Kalu wasted 8 years of Abia people’s time and money and Wabara closed his eyes in his own Aba and T A Orji comes to console Abia and Wabara emerges from nowhere and applauds a man who did Abia in.
Even in Wabara’s Ukwa, there are the Liberation Farm, the 100 bed Hospital and the proposed seaport. Certainly, no sin goes unpunished. Abians and Nigerians are wiser now and so cannot be fooled everyday! Wabara and Kalu are empty bags that cannot stand erect. They are tarred with the same brush. Enough is enough.