By Madubuko Hart
Opposition politicians in Abia State are looking for trouble in the name
of playing politics; they are diagnosing the politics in that state
incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies, all in a bid to smear the
image of Governor Theodore Orji and mislead the general public.
One wonders from where they got their information from which they titled,
“Abia PDP Appeal Panel Disqualifies Orji’s Son, Others” published in the
Thisday Newspapers of November 26, 2014.
The report has been found to be untrue, and has been rebuffed by many
government officials in Abia State whose opinions were sought at the
breakout of the hoodwinking news. It, therefore, behooves on Abia people
to see government as the preserve of their fundamental rights, which
should not by any means be pushed into disarray by misleading politicians;
Abia people should not allow the oppositions load the people with
perpetual disinformation.
It is essential that the people make the state where opposition
politicians do not mislead them with distorted reports as if the
government is taxing their meat and their drink, their necessaries and
comforts, their labours and their amusements…
The report of the disqualification of the governor’s son by the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) not to contest in the 2015 elections is opposed to
the fact that the young man is still in the race. On flippancy smacking
report, the opposition in doing everything to pull the name of the
governor into the mud, lied that the son is a member of a secret cult
known as Black Axe Confraternity, which has been later found out to be
untrue, also.
It could be as a result of the shenanigan habits of the opposition in a
democracy that moved John Adams in “The Letters of John and Abigail Adams”
to write that, “I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on
the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy
has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but
while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … Remember, democracy never
lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.
“There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in
vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less
ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not
true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same
in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked,
produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.
“When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or
ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most
considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist
the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large
bodies of men, never.”
Rebuffing the nuisance that was created by the opposition politicians that
the son of the governor is a cultist and has been disqualified from the
race, the Abia PDP in a report titled, “Orji’s son not a cultist – Abia
PDP”, published in The Punch, described the report as mischievous and
fraudulent.
According to the Chairman of PDP in the state, Senator Emma Nwaka at a
news briefing in Umuahia, “For the benefit of doubt, the governor’s son is
still very much in the race for Umuahia Central State constituency, adding
that, the clearance certificate issued to him has not been withdrawn.”
It is palpable that the government is not the problem in Abia State but
the oppositions who have found it as their stock in trade to be misleading
the people irrespective that it was said that there was no petition filed
against the governor’s son before the PDP Screening Appeal panel or
anywhere. In the same vein, which is not in vain, the Commissioner for
Information and Strategy, Chief Anthony Agbazuere, described as brigandage
the contention that the governor’s son was a cultist.
As if Franklin D. Roosevelt had the opposition politicians in Abia at
heart and he said that Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express
their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of
democracy, therefore, is education. Malcolm X added that Education is our
passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for
it today. But C.S. Lewis would say that Education without values, as
useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.
Hope those that have found it as their occupation to mislead the world
against the government in Abia State are taking note?