2011 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: ENOUGH OF THIS ORJI KALU RANTING
By SAINT AZUH
Walahi! Nigerian is one very interesting country where the serious minded people by design neglected and oftentimes relegated to obscurity and completely ignored in the scheme of serious national issues. On the other hand, mediocres tend to have field days behaving the way they want and at the end messing up everything and everybody.
How else can any one describe the ongoing campaign by the former governor of Abia state, Orji Uzo Kalu to become Nigeria’s president come 2011?
Agreed that every Nigeria is entitled to vote and be voted for in any election, does that warrant the colossal waste of the “interestingly acquired” fund by the former Abia state chief executive on his current nation wide campaign that has no focus, no message and worst still of no clearly declared intention.
There is nothing wrong in Orji Kalu’s doing legitimate politicking to buy relevance in the politics of the nation but there is everything wrong in not only being childish about it but displaying wanton recklessness in his pronouncements or rather insults against well known seniors and elder statesmen across the country.
The former Abia state governor should be able to draw a clear line between jesting and genuine ambition because almost everything he has done so far as campaign for his 2011 presidential ambition falls well within the sphere of pure jest the kind you get around Ariaria and Ochanja markets in Aba and Onitsha.
The young man no doubt has a future in Nigerian politics but the way he is going about it, he may just end up squandering whatever goodwill or rather bridge he has managed to build over the years. This is because everybody he is running down would the same people (directly or by proxy) he will need tomorrow to actualize whatever political aspiration he may be nursing at the centre.
The curious question is what is Kalu actually campaigning for? He wants to be the President of Nigeria come 2011 or what? It is very funny that Orji Kalu who betrayed the progressives’ decision against the 2007 presidential election to drag his PPA to join the Yar’Adua’s Government of National Unity, now wants to replace the man that actually rehabilitated him back into normal life after he was bailed from Kuje prisons where he was detained for alleged fraud and corrupt enrichment.
Has Kalu forgotten that the zoning arrangement which he was a party to before he quarreled with Obasanjo as a result of his reckless handling of Abia state funds, still remains in the north till 2015?
Except the Aba businessman would say that he has commenced the pursuit of his presidential ambition in 2015 when the rotational arrangement would leave the north to maybe the south east or south south, the colossal waste of resources on his ongoing presidential campaign could best be described as witchcraft.
As was aptly captured by a media report, “It is a measure of how low this country has descended that a man standing trial for corruption should be going around with a swagger and maligning his elders in order to earn some political points.”
Blinded by his own ambition and the delusion that the presidency of Nigeria is open to just anyone with money and sufficient rascality, Orji Kalu chose to insult everybody he perceives as impediment to his presidential ambition.
To Kalu, Obasanjo is his mate or rather an inferior who should be talked to anyhow and ran down at the slightest opportunity.
He (Orji) would not have anything to do with Atiku politically because the former vice president went to Ota to visit Obasanjo without consulting the progressives. Of course he did not say he would not have anything to do with Atiku in business because to Kalu, politics is pure business where you invest to reap huge profit as he did in Umuahia.
To the former Abia state governor, Yar’Adua is an invalid that does not deserve being associated with in the Government of National Unity. Yar’Adua has not only failed the nation, he equally failed himself.
Buhari, to Orji Kalu, is a tyrant, Islamic bigot and a tribal champion.
Haba enyi! This ladder you are destroying now, you will desperately need it tomorrow to climb to your dreamed presidency oo!
Kalu left Abia state in a terrible state of disrepair. He cashed in the disagreement with his first deputy governor who is from Abia south to completely blank out that part of the state from even the minutest influence of government as service to the people. That would have been half pardoned if the former governor had focused development initiatives in his part of Abia (north). But he also woefully failed to touch the lives of the people of Abia north. So where did he spend the huge allocations from the federation account and internally generated revenues.
Kalu institutionalized criminality in Abia as the governor of the state and that produced the current near-total breakdown of security of lives and property in the state. Abia state today has over ten times the cases of kidnapping and pipeline breaking than the combined incidents in the entire Niger Delta region. This is a very glaring truth in the security and intelligence circles.
Nigerians would have expected the former Abia state governor to first of all clear himself of all the allegations of fraud, corruption and diversion of Abia state’s funds in the eight years he presided over the affairs of the state as the chief executive.
Orji Kalu has not told Nigerians how he made the money he used to establish Slok airlines and other heavy money investments in the Slok group of companies. And he has to do that before parading himself as the only qualified Igbo presidential candidate.
Igbo kwenu kwenu kwezuanu! I herby introduce to you the good people of igboland your highly esteemed leader- Orji Uzo Kalu, President gburu gburu 1. Mbanu! Tufiakwa! Alu! Alu!
SAINT AZUH, 10 FREETOWN CLOSE ABA ( saint_azuh@yahoo.com)
