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Even obstreperous detractors and eclipsing oppositional elements to the Senate Chief Whip and former governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, know full well his illimitable political value hence they are always afraid of his domineering tendencies and overbearing inclinations. Kalu’s robust pedigree and profundity of prospects cannot be ignored by anyone or group.
There should be retraining and refresher courses for the membership of the Editorial Boards of Nigerian newspapers to hone their skills. Recently, a member of the Editorial Board of THISDAY and columnist (name withheld!) venomously and unprofessionally prefaced his article on Chief James Ibori, former governor of Delta State, with a specious reference to the rousing from slumber of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on the protracted case of Kalu. That was a very bovine interjection by someone who should know legalistic processes. The litigation is ongoing and comes up on adjourned dates. So, why should an editorialist so-called advertise his ignorance in confirmation of occupational incompetency and communicative incapacity?
It takes more than academic qualifications to be an editorial board member and also a columnist. The hallowed and privileged nature of this dual role requires maturity, knowledge, wisdom, candour and responsibility in addition to whatever credentials and experiences the person has so as to forestal this kind of aforementioned idiocy.
Last week, I read online and offline a few mischievous, malicious, vicious and pernicious insinuations that Kalu joined the All Progressives Congress (APC) to escape EFCC trial. I have lost count of the viral misrepresentation of this matter, most especially whenever Kalu is on political ascendancy. How can some people be so daft and shallow to the point of stupidity? The EFCC-Kalu tango has been lingering over the years to the point that Kalu took the case to the Supreme Court which ordered a lower court to resume the trial. What now is the relationship between this case and Kalu’s defection to the APC? Is the trial a novelty? Even if it were, what is the interconnectedness between litigants and the ruling party? What kind of asinine innuendo is this?
It is easy to ascertain the oppositional camp from where this fresh attack is evolving. With the recent declaration of the election petition tribunal, which would soon be interrogated by a superior temple of justice, more of these clandestine inquisitions are to be expected. The good thing is that such dubieties cannot upturn Abia North people’s mandate entrusted with Kalu.
For purposes of argument, if Kalu had wanted to explore any unlikely meddlesomeness by the APC in the matter, why did he not join the party since May 29, 2015? Those who communicate for public consumption, especially in the social media, should show some measure of cerebral attainment so as to foreclose opprobrium from the majority who know the trajectory of the EFCC-Kalu narrative. You cannot come to a public platform to misinform people when you are odiously a stark ignoramus!
The dimension of the EFCC-Kalu case has gone beyond intervention by anyone, institution or arm of government. The high court handling the matter will make its contribution and if the parties are unsatisfied, they could appeal up to the apex court, again. Therefore, the perverse and permissive gossip that Kalu wants to escape trial by the commission on grounds of his deft political move is an unfounded and calumnious balderdash!
Members of the fossilizing Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Abia State would still be jubilating over the unexpected circumstances that made their “tormentor”, Kalu, to finally dump their vanishing association and join the APC on Wednesday, November 16, 2016. Kalu was disappointedly blessed not to be welcome by the vituperative Abia PDP members who stoutly resisted his comeback moves because of the prospects of his taking over the political power machinery of the local PDP. It would have raised eyebrows if he had returned to the PDP and is jumping out again to the ruling party. Such a miscalculation would have kicked up a lot of imbecilities. So, it is good that he defected from the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA) which he exclusively founded and funded in 2006 and on which platform former Governors Theodore Ahamefule Orji (Abia) and Ikedi Ohakim (Imo) rose to power at the behest of Kalu in the 2007 polls.
Everyone knows that Kalu’s entrenchment in the APC will, first and foremost, reinvigorate the life of the party in Abia State, particularly and South East and South South generally ahead of 2023 when the party is expected to take over the remnant states from the disintegrating PDP. Kalu’s clout and antecedents in the zone will go a long way in positioning APC in these areas. There is no doubt that Kalu has the capacity and instrumentalities to turn around the fortunes of the APC in the two geopolitical zones. Beyond this, he sees his auspicious move as a mechanism to continue his widely-acclaimed service to the people.
Unlike most other politicians, Kalu came into politics not as a pauper but an accomplished global entrepreneur and one of Forbes’ 50 richest Africans. Undoubtedly, as Kalu had noted, it would be difficult marketing the APC in the South East because of weird misconceptions about the party and the inexplicable obsession of the Igbo with the PDP in its heyday. Kalu’s prodigious diligence in political re-engineering and philanthropic superfluity will manifest shortly in the revitalization of the APC in the two geo-polities.
Sometime ago, a bunch of disgruntled, famished and misguided rascals under the aegis of “PDP Youth Wing Abia State” sent a boyish open letter to the leadership of the PDP expressing fears that the planned return of the former governor of the state (1999-2007) will diminish most of their cliquish sponsors thereby resulting in the disintegration of the state chapter of the party. Above all, they declared that Kalu was a “distraction”. It is ironical that the national leadership of the PDP had courted Kalu till futility to bring him back to his “roots”!
The aforementioned public letter was demonstrative of sheer cerebral laziness hastily put together in justification of the budget for such dirty jobs or in anticipation of more slush funds. At the risk of intellectual sophistry, ‘distraction’ could be negative or positive depending on the level of one’s vocabulary depth, etymological appreciation and contextualization. Having underscored this, it is certain that Kalu is positively a distraction to these boys’ benefactors’ shenanigans in the state! Otherwise, how can any sane person in his right frame of mind without any memory loss (amnesia) declare that Kalu, a founding member and foundational financier of the PDP, was a distraction in Abia PDP in the negative sense? Even Abia PDP elders, patriots and other members of the oligarchy in the state know that this erroneousness is falsehood in its brazen blatancy!
The Abia youth messengers are like computer systems which when fed with garbage inevitably produce garbage too—there cannot be any sensibility in such applicative results. It is even worse when these unemployed, unemployable and easily pliable youth do not have minds of their own and are essentially concerned with survivalist instincts and other allied stomach infrastructural issues. In the manipulatively asphyxiating circumstance, any political jobbing is worth more than their while! Just finance and egg them on and they are ready to break coconuts with their heads or even snuff out their own lives for a bowl of messy porridge suffused with condiments from loot.
After needlessly and wastefully toasting to the ‘divine mandate’ and revolutionary credentials of one-time chairman of the PDP, Alhaji Adamu Mu’azu, in the kindergarten full-page advertorial, published in THE NATION ON SUNDAY of September 14, 2014, Page 66, the first juvenile umbrage goes thus: “We did tell you among things (sic) that we do not want ORJI UZOR KALU readmitted into Abia Chapter of the Party. Apart from the collateral damage his re–entry (sic) may cause the Party, we are aware that his readmittance (sic) would (sic) reintroduce politics of division in Abia, which was the most prominent trait of his years in Abia PDP.”
The nursery blunders apart, admission or readmission of political party members is not the function of the office of the chairman. Those who sent these ignorant chaps should have let them know the guidelines concerning these associational basics. How would have Kalu’s fundamental return to the party cause any ‘collateral damage’?
