Another Movement, Huge Expectations

Governor Theodore Ahamefule Orji of Abia state

As Abia State Governor, Theodore Ahamefule Orji makes his second decampment in less than two months, analysts say there are huge expectations from him in terms of quality leadership
By Chidiebere Onyemaizu
“We are entering the motor car of independence. There are good and bad drivers, but the worst is the back seat driver who seeks to advise the man at the wheel what to do.”
A commentator on Nigeria’s independence made the above statement on October 1, 1960, the day the country shook itself off the yoke of British colonialism. In 21st century Nigeria, and almost 50 years after that profounded assertion, its import has found expression in Abia state.
On May 29, 2007, Theodore Ahamefule Orji had rightly assumed the driver’s seat in Abia state as its Chief Executive Officer. But he was not the only driver. There were other back seat drivers who continuously distracted him. For three years, he loudly proclaimed his opponents in the state governorship contest – the likes of Onyema Ugochukwu, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate in the guber contest – as one of such back seat drivers.
Though it was palpable that his predecessor in office, Orji Uzor Kalu, was also a back seat driver in Governor Orji's administrative vehicle–and thus a huge distraction on the wheel– the governor never raised a voice. He never complained. But on Friday, July 2, 2010, he did, and in grand style, which had a telling effect.
On that day, he turned his back on the party that brought him to power, the People’s Progressive Alliance (PPA) and embraced the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA). The PPA had been formed and promoted by Uzor Kalu in the run-up to the 2007 polls. Though he did not openly mention the ex-governor by name, he nontheless insinuated that he, (Governor Orji) had all along been under the yoke of Uzor Kalus political slavery. This formed the fulcrum of Governor Orji’s speech at the grand ceremony in Umuahia, the Abia state capital during his defection to APGA.
He, in fact, termed his disentanglement from the PPA/Kalu stranglehold “a liberation.” Governor Orji: "It is a historic day in the life of Abia state… it is a day that the sun is shinning; it is a day that our eyes are opened; it is a day we are relieved… I was pushed to the wall and even beyond the wall… if you are rejected, you go to another place and seek solace. As a leader, one has to be free to lead and take decisions for the people he is leading. If I miss this opportunity (to join APGA), myself, my family and entire Abia people would be in bondage forever.”
Less than two months after he successfully ejected one of the back seat drivers – Uzor Kalu – from the vehicle of governance in Abia state, the other back seat drivers have voluntarily disembarked to allow the vehicle a smooth ride.
This is essentially because both they, and Governor Orji now belong to the same political family, the PDP. The governor, in ditching APGA for PDP less than two months after pitching tent there, said he was responding to the yearnings of Abia people. Essentially, when he abandoned PPA for APGA, he had also alluded to the primacy of his people interest as the guiding principle behind his decision. “As a leader, there is a time you must listen to the yearnings of the people. There is a time you must do what pleases the people because I have the peoples’ mandate,” Governor Orji had said.
By defecting to the PDP from APGA less than two months after supposedly acting in concert with Abians’ the interpretation according to analysts, is that Abians have yet again “yearned” for full integration.
Indeed, keen followers of Abia politics contend that now is the time for Abians to expect a high quality of leadership in the interest of the state since he virtually no longer has trenchant opponents.
Notedly, almost all of Governor Orji’s die-hard opponents and critics are now on his side and are perhaps prepared to swim or sink with him in his bid for a second term in office. These include Ugochukwu, Ojo Maduekwe and Vincent Ogbulafor, immediate past national chairman of the PDP, among other PDP heavyweights from the state.
For example, to demonstrate his total commitment in support of Governor Orji’s second term bid, Ugochukwu last week declared that he would not contest the 2011 guber election in the state, in deference to the governor.
Briefing PDP stakeholders in his country home, Umule in Umuahia North council of the state, Ugochukwu said he has decided to work with Governor Orji for the overall interest of the state.
The Abia PDP guber candidate in the 2007 polls said that it was not the will of God for him to be governor: “After the retrial at the Court of Appeal Owerri, I discovered that it isn’t the will of God that I will govern Abia… The judgement of the court in Owerri is appealable to the Supreme Court, but since it is not God’s will for me to become governor, I accepted the verdict happily.”
He denied reports that he was offered three billion Naira by Governor Orji, saying “I want to confirm to you that it is false and that nobody has given me one Naira. “If I was given three billion naira, how much did they give Prince Vincent Ogbulafor and Chief Ojo Maduekwe, initiators of the plan to bring Orji back to the PDP?,” Ugochukwu asked rhetorically.
Though the governor has recorded a degree of achievement in some sectors of the state's economy, the most critical area Abians will probably want Orji to pay more serious attention to is security. Abia has lately assumed the status of a haven for kidnappers. Two months ago, kidnappers in the state did the unthinkable when they grabbed four journalists and their driver in the Obingwa axis of the state. The journalists were returning from a meeting in Uyo, the Akwa-Ibom state capital. The governor understands this too well, but insists that insecurity is not the exclusive of Abia. The journalists, for example, he notes, were trailed from Akwa Ibom state, and kidnapped as they were driving through Abia.The impact Governor Orji’s return to the PDP will create in area of security is sure to receive a boost with the expected federal support.
Another critical area is that of environment. Aba, the state's commercial nerve centre is regarded in some quarters as the filth capital of Nigeria. Though the governor, upon assumption of office, commissioned a company, Phoenix Nigeria Limited to tackle the state’s environmental problem with bias for Umuahia and Aba, shortly before he jumped ship, and abandoned the PPA, the party’s leadership had in its query to him, ordered him to immediately rehabilitate and construct major roads in Aba, as well as clean up the city. Yet, it must be noted that Aba is cleaner now than when Orji became the governor. The filth is disappearing, and the roads are being fixed.
Evidently, the governor’s defection to PDP and his subsequent embrace by his hitherto bitter PDP enemies, followers of Abia politics predict, has left the state as a one party state – PDP– one in which the state’s immediate past governor, Uzor Kalu appears to have been completely sidelined. Though a founder and promoter of PPA, the former governor recently pronounced the party dead, and said he was returning to his “father’s house (PDP) gallantly,” having, according to him “left gallantly.”
However, analysts say the former governor’s precarious situation in the PDP now stems from the fact that, in compliance with Governor Orji’s conditions before joining the party, the party’s national leadership has practically handed over Abia PDP to him, having dissolved the state’s chapter of the party recently. And, in any case, Kalu has not yet been accepted by the PDP.
“Uzor Kalu was once the strong- man of Abia/PDP politics but right now, I can authoritatively tell you that he is a King without a Kingdom because his enemies have taken over the state and also PDP. His enemies are in charge and will never allow him any role,” a top notcher of the party in the state told The Source.
Essentially, the impeachment of Comrade Chris Akomas, Kalu’s staunch ally and Governor Orji’s deputy till last month, the dissolution of Abia PDP exco thought to be sympathetic to the ex-governor, and the befriending of the governor by his erstwhile opponents who are also Kalu’s opponents, analysts opine have combined to inflict a heavy blow on the former governor’s political influence in the state.
The Source gathered that, in abandoning the party he formed for his "father’s house,” the billionaire ex-governor had hoped to hijack the state’s PDP and use it to fight Governor Orji in APGA to a standstill during next year’s guber contest in the state. But with Governor Orji himself not only in PDP, but at the party’s driver's seat, the former governor, observers say, is now somewhat in the middle of an ocean.