Open Letter To Chief Orji Uzor Kalu

 (2)

RE: What happened to the ₦1 trillion Abia earned during your tenure
(1999-2007)? My second advise or infact warning, is that you should
henceforth desist from harassing Gov T.A Orji. Just think about it, are
you the only Governor who disagreed with his successor in office? Why all
the fuzz? Have you ever heard Dr Peter Odili, Chief Attah, Mr Donald Duke,
Alhaji Bafawara, Dr. Chimaroke Nnamani, Alhaji Adamu Muazu etc, say
anything against their successors? There is something fundamentally
childish and unbecoming about this whole episode. Can’t you simply get on
with your life, really? But if you choose to persist on this course, and
keep abusing Governor T.A Orji, we are firmly resolved to answer you in
kind. Our people have decided that this nonsense has gone on for too long.
It has to come to an end now!

Posted on September 1, 2014.

Orji Uzor Kalu2

Let me say upfront that I had intended to make these exchanges with you,
civil and educated. Apparently, you are not so minded. Your diatribe
against me last Wednesday, in your Sex, Crime and Gossip tabloid, was a
sickening reflection of the perverse quality of your mind and its chronic
inability to rise to the rigorous demands of cerebral discourse.

I was not disappointed, knowing you, artful dodger! Your intention was to
distract me from the core issue of your dismal performance as governor of
our dear state and even more importantly, your prodigious squandering of
the over N1 trillion Abia state earned in that period. Sorry sir, i will
not fall for that cheap trick! It is the oldest trick in the business,
hurling abuses in order to divert attention. Let us face the issues which
i believe Abians and millions of other Nigerians are really interested in.
What did you achieve as Governor in 8 years and what did you do with the
N1 trillion Abia earned, internally (1GR), and externally, from the
federation account? This is the question history will forever pose to you.
You were elected Governor in 1999 and entrusted with the responsibility of
leading Abia State and adding value to her. It was an esteemed mandate.
Abia had suffered immensely in the hands of various soldiers of fortune
who governed her under the military. Umuahia, the state capital, was the
epic centre of the Nigerian civil war, having served as the capital of the
defunct Biafra. As a young man, many had expected you to see your election
as a historic opportunity for a new generation of leaders to seize the
moment and put Abia on the path of sustained socio-economic development.
But eight years after the fact, what was your record? You claimed in your
initial onslaught against Governor T.A Orji, that he is now converting the
projects you established as his own. What projects? You assumed office in
1999 and inherited a dilapidated and ramshackle Governors lodge and
residence. These facilities had been requisitioned by the first military
Administration when the state was created in 1999. You spent eight years
living and working in the same make shift buildings. You didn’t build a
governor’s lodge.



You didn’t build a governor’s office. You didn’t build a state
secretariat, (even Governor Achike Udenwa of Imo State whom you often made
fun of at your dinner table built a state secretariat.) You didn’t build
an office for the judiciary. The house of assembly is still occupying a
temporary office. The commissioners quarters your predecessor started was
not completed. Unknown to millions of Nigerians, Abia state is therefore
the only state of its age where the seat of Government is still located in
temporary buildings, 23 years after. For eight years, the broadcasting
corporation of Abia state functioned in temporary apartments. Indeed,
everything under you was temporary. You didn’t build even a single
dualized road in 8 years. You didn’t build one hospital or even a
maternity, or a market, except the Igbere evening market. You ignored Aba,
Abia’s commercial nerve centre and allowed that great town to lose
traction and become wasted. You left Umuahia worse than you met it,
allowing the golden Guinnea Brewery to collapse. Sir, what did you really
achieve in Abia State? What did you give to Abiriba, your next door
neighbour and Arochukwu, the community you claimed to have adopted? I once
asked Chief Emma Nwokoro why you treated Arochukwu so cruelly.



You ignored the collpased intra city roads and didn’t pay attention to the
perennial water shortage. Yet, at every opportunity, you would go to
Arochukwu visiting with many of their illustrious sons. What of Ukwa-Ngwa,
what is your record there? The strategic road which passes from Umuahia
through the heart of Ngwa land, Ururuka road, and which you announced on
television that you would reconstruct, was abandoned. You didn’t build a
stadium. You didn’t build even one secondary school. You didn’t set up a
University. It was Gen Ike Nwachukwu who set up the Abia State University.
Governor Evan Enwerem set up the Imo State University. Governor Sam Egwu
set up Ebonyi state University.
So your Excellency, what did you achieve in Abia that T.A Orji is now
claiming? Please tell me? Practically, anything of note in Abia State
today which Okpara and Mbakwe did not build, was built by Gov. T.A. Orji…
New governor’s lodge, new secretariat, new governor’s office, new
conference centre, new judiciary complex, new general market and new
office complex, etc.
THE TRIAL OF ORJI UZOR KALU.
You were elected Governor and subsequently re-elected. The governorship is
a full time job. But that was not the way you saw it. For you, it was a
part time job, a platform to expand your fledging business empire, SLOK,
using the time and resources of Abia State. So while the fortunes of Abia
state were dwindling under you, the fortunes of your SLOK business empire
was expanding exponentially. While in office, you set up an airline, SLOK
AIRLINE. You set up a bank, First International Bank, Gambia. When you
attended board meetings of the bank in the Gambia, Abia state government
usually paid your bills and the ecstacode of the officials in your
entourage.

You set up a shipping line. You set up an insurance company, while a
plethora of companies fronted for you in the construction business. You
increased your equity in the defunct Hallmark Bank Plc. You set up a
newspaper, The Sun and also applied for a license to set up a bank in
Nigeria. Meanwhile, the State owned Newspaper, the Ambassador, was
deliberately allowed to vegetate. You didn’t build any housing estate.
Meanwhile the only one which the military government had established, the
Ehimiri Housing Estate, you acquired over 24 units for your personal use.
ICING ON THE CAKE: In 2007, you took us on a tour of your palatial castle
in Igbere. You were in an expansive mood that day and so failed to note
that the look on my face was actually a grimace.

I was put off by the grotesque display of opulence and was greatly
troubled by the sublime irony of it all. For 8 years, you built virtually
nothing in Abia state, not even an office to work from or a residence to
live in: And yet you built a palatial mansion, fit for a Saudi King, in
your village, just 20 kilometres from Government House! You showed us the
guest chalet, 72 rooms, the large lecture hall, larger in your own words
than the main hall of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs
(NIIA), the tennis courts, the various swimming pools, the 22-hole golf
course, the land you mapped out for the proposed aerodrome (to land small
gulf stream jets) the orchard, e.t.c, One question that kept ringing in my
mind that day was not where you got the money from (the answer was quiet
obvious) rather it was, “so you know how to build befitting structures and
you didn’t build even a lodge for the governor of Abia State?” Your
Excellency, I am still curious: why? Was it an act of wickedness or plain
selfishness? Did you nurse a psychological hatred for Abia and her people?
What did our people do wrong by you? How could you, a young man – given
such a wonderful opportunity – so crassly abuse it? How could you have
treated Abia as war booty? All the contracts in the Ministry of
Information, at least during my tenure, were executed by the company
belonging to your brother, Prince Nnanna Kalu. For 8 years, the Ministry
of Environment was absolutely under your mother. She nominated all the
commissioners and managed all the contracts. Choice real estate in Umuahia
and Aba, were allocated to your family or interests representing them. And
yet, when Governor T.A took over, you wanted that regime to continue. You
asked him to cede the Abia State Government-owned General Hospital in
Umunanto, the only one in the zone, to you to serve as the teaching
hospital of your proposed SLOK University of Technology. Haba Oga, can it
ever be enough? T.A’s refusal, (documented) is part of your bitterness
towards him. What you may not know is that it was Abia Elders who advised
him not to cede that hospital to you. They argued that you made enough
money to build a hospital if you needed one.



That is also my considered view. No government in Abia State, now or in
the future, should so indulge you again. You have made enough from the
system. Something should be left for the people of Abia State. Abia is not
a vassal of the Kalu family!
MATTERS ARISING FROM YOUR RESPONSE IN SUN NEWSPAPER
Oga, i sincerely do not relish the prospects of rummaging in the sewer
with you. I believe that adults can, and in fact should conduct debates,
no matter how contentious the topic, with civility. Nevertheless, I am
constrained to respond in kind to you not really because I wish to descend
to your gutter, but mainly to make a crucial point to you. Your
Excellency, you do not possess a monopoly of rascality, loud mouth or foul
language. Well, don’t blame me, you asked for this, now here goes, sir.
You accused me of disagreeing with my father, and yet buried him in style.
Well, I did o! So what’s the big deal with a son disagreeing with his
father on occasion? Which young man does not? But what of you; did you
have a father? When did he die, and how was he buried? I am referring to
the father of a governor, the self-acclaimed richest man in Abia State?
You once said that your father never visited you at the Government House
throughout your 8 years as governor. Please why was that so, if i may ask?
Could it be because he was bitter with you? And why? Does it have anything
to do with the occultic and incestuous desecration of sacred maternal
values in his family? Which father would be happy to so share his wife?
Indeed, your Excellency, you should be the last person to talk about
morality and family values. The truth is that you have none. You are
morally bankrupt, through and through. The funny thing is that it is
common knowledge. You made your choice a long time ago to pursue the god
of money. And I must say, you have succeeded. But the price is that you
are bereft of honour and integrity. You should not complain, after all,
you got what you always wanted – wealth. You believe that with money you
can purchase anything. Your latest project is to become a Papal knight.
Well, you are allegedly a Catholic and know the rules. So which wife will
you present? Ifeoma, Ifeyinwa, Gladys or Waziri?


You accused me of not having a home in Abuja or Lagos and that I beg for
adverts for my newspaper. You are correct sir. I am a tenant in Lagos and
I don’t live in Abuja so I don’t need a house there. But look at it this
way, your Excellency; you have houses in Lagos, Aba, Umuahia, Igbere,
Abuja, Dubai, Charlotte (USA), Maryland, (USA) London and South Africa;
all of them residential! And yet every night you sleep only in one room
and in one house. Don’t you think the joke really is on you? If I may ask,
what really are you seeking with this primitive accumulation of wealth?
The wise man wrote in the book of Proverbs: “don’t envy the wicked man his
riches, in a twinkle of an eye they would develop wings and fly away!” As
the Igbo also say, “A beggar is better than a thief” And I would add, he
is also better than a serial looter, an abuser of public office and an
aggrandiser!
A judicial panel of inquiry recently concluded an inquiry into the
disappearance of the Goss Printing Machine purchased by your predecessor,
Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu for The Ambassador newspaper. It is alleged that a
former top Govt. official spirited it out of government warehouse in
Ahiake to Lagos, where it is being used to print a certain tabloid.
I remember that the panel summoned you, but you declined to appear. But
sir, between you and I, tell me, do you know anything about the missing
printing press? I also understand that it is part of the charges the EFCC
arraigned you for.
The problem you have is that you don’t make a distinction between the
public and private. As governor, you abdicated the duties for which Abia
people hired you, and instead leveraged on the position to build your
personal financial empire. You forgot I was still commissioner when you
set up The Sun Newspaper in 2001 and saw how you shamelessly and
recklessly used your office to market the newspaper.



You forced all state Government owned ministries, parasatals,
institutions, local governments, e.t.c to place regular advertisements in
it. You harassed government agents, contractors, counter parties, banks
and other institutions, to patronize it. In 2003 after your re-election,
my friend Mr Vin Mgbemena, former MD of Orange Drugs Ltd, placed
congratulatory adverts in This Day and Champion newspapers, for you. You
were angry and queried him why he didn’t place the adverts in The Sun.
After his meeting with you, he told me that you are an amazing character.
“He didn’t even thank me for the adverts, he was peeved that it was not in
The Sun”. To imagine that you once aspired to contest for the Presidency.
Just imagine you as President of Nigeria! Hmm, you would convert NNPC into
a subsidiary of SLOK Group! And they say you want to be senator! Ha, ha,
ha!!! Please, on what record of achievement, if I may ask? The amazing
thing is that despite your fabulous wealth, you are so pathetically cheap
and beggarly. Do you know the common joke about you among the Lagos
in-crowd? That you are the only governor who rather than add to your
friends pockets, would rather take even the last kobo from them. The late
Tayo Aderinokun told me that he and the bank used to buy air tickets for
some of your foreign junkets.



Your former friend, Prince Sunny Aku is relieved that he no longer has to
pick your bills when you are in Lagos and pay for the cost of your private
jet rentals. Chief Chikwe Udensi still rues how much he spent on you.
Remember in 2001 when we were in London and Governor Ibori gave you eight
hundred pounds for Chuka Odom, former Hon. Minister of State, FCT? You
took three hundred pounds from the money claiming, “after all, if I didn’t
give you the job, James would not have given you the money, Chuka Obu asi?
( Chuka, is it a lie?)” Of course Chuka agreed with you. Please sir, how
many governors can descend so low? But of course that’s you. No amount is
too small, just as no amount is big enough. Should I talk of your former
staffer you had recommended for appointment. When as a mark of respect he
brought the C of O of the four plots of land he was allocated in Abuja?
Remember what you said to him, “I will take one, give one to Odiuko (your
mother) and one to Nnanna (your brother)!” You collected three and left
him with only one. That’s how you accumulated your buildings in Abuja and
all over the world. However, let me ask you sir; truly how much is enough?
Will it ever be enough? What is responsible for this craze for material
acquisition, a craze that recognizes no moral inhibitions? I fear o!
There should be a limit to everything. But you recognise no limits. No
role is too low or degrading for you. As you told Chijioke Nwakodo and
some others long ago in Umuahia, “the difference between you and the
typical person is that there is no limit to how far you can go to get
whatever you want!” You see sir, it is this amoral disposition that has
always worried reasonable people about you. Even in those days when we
tried to repackage you, that was the feedback we always got from the
public. “He cannot be trusted!” You would agree, they have a point. They
recall the early years of the Babangida administration when a certain
“upsart” presented a letter allegedly signed by Gen Sani Abacha to
Governor Amadi Ikwechegh on the strength of which he was appointed the
chairman of the Cooperative and Commerce Bank (CCB). Subsequently, it
emerged that the letter was a forgery. DHQ tongue-lashed Ikwechegh who
promptly nullified the appointment thereby making you the shortest serving
Chairman of a bank in the world. Sir, some people still remember. They
also remember a certain youngster who was surreptitiously admitted into
Government College Umuahia in the 70′s as the alleged son of the
famous Nnanna Kalu. The story of the pugnacious Maiduguri-based
businessman who cut pieces of paper and mixed them up with naira notes and
announced a huge donation at the Borno State Public Appeal Fund Lunch, has
became legendary.


I understand that your Excellency is angry with Abia State University for
withdrawing your B.Sc (Hons) Political Science certificate. Pray tell me,
what would a reasonable institution do regarding that odious episode? Is
it right that a Visitor to a University would enrol in the final year
class of the same University, more than a decade after dropping out from
another university, write exams and expect to be examined objectively by
the same lecturers who depend on him for their salaries and career
advancement? Haba, oga, don’t you have ‘stop’ in your dictionary? For your
information, there have been intense speculations in Abia over who
actually wrote that exam, including the final year project. I have my
suspicions. Could it be that same “very close aide?”
If the truth is to be told sir, you live in a glass house, as someone who
phoned me last week said. You know it, so why are you embarking on such a
risky venture of throwing stones? But I know why.



You are doing what we Lagosians call “ogboju”. You assume that you can
shout people down. Or maybe because you have set up a sprawling newspaper
empire, no one can dare you. However, you are wrong. If you like, you can
set up a dozen more newspapers, and employ a legion of journalists to
launder your image. But as William Shakespeare prophesied long ago, “not
even all the waters of Arabia can wash away this stain!! Sir, you are
besmirched for life.
It is wrong and unconscionable for you to set up newspapers to launder
your image, turning a national newspaper into a personal album and turning
otherwise respectable professionals into attack dogs. No Publisher has
done that in the history of the media in Nigeria. A friend of man keeps
count of how many times your picture makes the front cover of THE SUN and
the ailing NEW TELEGRAPH. No other publisher so abuses his newspaper.
Indeed, you have no sense of propriety. How can you devote two newspapers
to attack your successor in office regularly?



In normal circumstances, no editor would accept what you are doing,
especially this idea of a column being ghosted in your name weekly. What
is that! You have corrupted the profession. Now you want to be President
of NPAN? Ha, as what? Anyway, be rest assured that some of us will review
our membership as soon as you succeed in buying yourself into that
esteemed position. I don’t believe you possess the nobility of character
to lead such an August body. Oga, with due respect, allow me to advise you
as your former strategist. Calm down a little and be a bit more
circumspect. You can’t continue hustling in the same manner you were doing
in Maidugiri over twenty five years ago. You are all over the place,
running around. Usually, as people age, they tend to slow down and become
more measured and even dignified. This business of hawking proposals all
over town at your age and level, harassing governors and all, is
demeaning. In government house circles in Uyo, you have become the butt of
jokes over your repeated attempts to talk Governor Godswill Akpabio into
investing in your New Telegraph. He does not want to. Can’t you get the
message? He believes that what he has done for your Sun newspaper group so
far is more than enough. It is also quite interesting that you are
struggling with New Telegraph.



Three Managing Directors in less than six months, and still counting. I
heard you also had to slash salaries a few months ago. Now that you are no
longer governor to leverage on your office, may be you can appreciate how
difficult it is to publish a daily newspaper. And these are early days
yet. After squandering the N500m “loan” you obtained from the coffers of
SUN NEWSPAPERS account with Fidelity Bank, part of the quarterly N250m
Government PR largesse paid from that our brother’s office in Abuja, now
you will be forced to bring out your own money. That would be crunch time,
since you don’t like spending your own money; indeed, you are an OPM
(other peoples money) expert!
My second advice or in fact warning, is that you should henceforth desist
from harassing Gov T.A Orji. Just think about it, are you the only
Governor who disagreed with his successor in office? Why all the fuzz?
Have you ever heard Dr Peter Odili, Chief Attah, Mr Donald Duke, Alhaji
Bafawara, Dr. Chimaroke Nnamani, Alhaji Adamu Muazu, etc, say anything
against their successors? There is something fundamentally childish and
unbecoming about this whole episode. Can’t you simply get on with your
life, really? But if you choose to persist on this course, and keep
abusing Governor T.A Orji, we are firmly resolved to answer you in kind.
Our people have decided that this nonsense has gone on for too long. It
has to come to an end now!
Finally, my dearest oga, pay attention to the wisdom of the ancients: No
king reigns for ever. You know why? Otherwise he would become God and no
man can be God. Nothing lasts for ever. No one holds all the aces. No one
knows everything, not even Albert Einstein, voted as the most intelligent
man of the millennium. The path of wisdom is to know when to stop.
Ask any law enforcement officer, the reason most criminals are eventually
caught is that they don’t know when to stop. You would remember the old
saying “every day is for the thief, but one day is for the house owner.”
Whereas you can fool some of the people some of the time, you certainly
can’t fool all the people all the time. Biko, if you ask me, i will say
you have tried. But in all honesty, it is time to stop, even if it is only
to review. Your first son (the one outside wedlock) will soon marry and
you will become a grand pa. All these gra gra, what is it in aid of?
As the late British writer, Enoch Powel once opined, “every political
career eventually ends in failure.” It is especially so for those who
don’t know when to stop. Artful dodgers do get caught.
As the Igbo say, it is the small shit that spoils that “place.” It is true
that old soldiers never die, but then they also fade away! In the theatre,
when an actor overstays on the stage, the audience eventually boos him
off.
In the old Oyo empire, when an Alaafin desecrates the land as you have
done, the Oyomesi will present him with the calabash of death. His tragedy
is his own making. Obviously, times have changed. But when a recalcitrant
and cantankerous has-been refuses to heed the sunset, he becomes cannon
fodder for children at the moonlight play.
Your Excellency, I regret to say this, you have left us with little
choice. It is not only sad, it is really tragic.

Emeka Obasi