Orji Uzor- Kalu Replies

That show of shame in Owerri (2)
By Orji Kalu [Okalu@orjikalu.com]
Saturday, August 8, 2009


Last week I gave an overview of what transpired in Owerri on July 25, 2009. In the said article, I warned against the plot by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to decapitate the opposition and foist a one-party state on the nation. I also drew attention, in the same article, to the determination of the Nigerian people never to be deceived again by any politician.

In this concluding part of the article, I will pay attention to the relationship between the Imo Governor Ikedi Ohakim (the man at the centre of the show of ignominy that took place in the Eastern Heartland town of Owerri) and my humble self-spanning over 30 years. Contrary to the devious insinuation in some quarters, spearheaded by Ohakim and his band of his ego-trippers and charlatans, I have nothing personal against him. Even his decision to switch political camp and continued campaign of calumny against my person cannot make me think evil against him. Perhaps he has resorted to self-help as a preemptive strategy to box me to a corner and turn the tide against me to justify his calamitous mistake. Unfortunately, that strategy, to me, is not only puerile and old-fashioned but wicked and senseless.

Would anybody, who is aware of all that I have done for Ikedi Ohakim in the past 30 years, believe that the man could be too mean, callous and desperate as to allege that I was planning to kill him? Who would believe such gibberish? He wrote a petition to the State Security Services (SSS) that I was after his life long before the show of shame took place. Who is Ohakim for me to plot to kill him? He knows deep in his heart that I have never been in league with anybody, all through my life, to harm anybody – no matter how highly or lowly-placed. I have been in active business for the past 25 years but I have never quarreled with anybody. I do my things cleanly and openly with mutual respect, honour and candour.

Is it not curious that Ohakim was just realizing that I was after his life 26 months after I championed the campaign to make him governor? Ohakim lacks integrity and self-esteem, if so. I say so because he was with me in my Abuja residence in the presence of Dr. Sam Nkire until 1 a.m. a week before he staged the show of shame in Owerri. When I asked him that night to confirm the rumour making the rounds that he was planning to defect to the PDP, he vehemently denied it - assuring me that in the event of such happening that I would be the first person he would notify. In my usual way, I believed him since I heard it from the horse’s mouth. But inside of Ohakim, he knew he was lying to me.

He lied to me, his friend and benefactor that had stood by him and his family all these years. He defected to the PDP without even having the courtesy to tell me, despite all his assurances. How could a man of his calibre, a whole governor, tell barefaced lies against me while I am still alive? He goes about telling people that he made effort to reach me on phone but could not. I challenge him to ask the telecommunications companies to print-out the call log to show if he ever called me. This is a man who used to call me three times daily!

When he launched his three books in Lagos, I told him pointblank that I would be in Igbere for an important engagement, which had been scheduled long before he fixed the date for the book launch. I am that open.

What brought Ohakim and I together was his travails - and he had a litany of them for all the period I had known him. Despite the strange things I was told about him by those who knew him inside out (including top police chiefs) I still stood by him. It is not in my character to judge people by what others say about them. His close associates and those who had had soured business relationships with him warned me that I would regret my association with him. They also told me he was a slippery character who feeds fat on character-assassination and blackmail.

Probably, I did not believe these stories because I was too empathic over his plights. Without sounding immodest, I wish to state that I took care of Ohakim and his family for the past 30 years before he became governor. I took care of all his needs and literally gave him my shoulder regularly to lean on. This is why I feel betrayed by his harlotry and open campaign to smear my hard-earned reputation. I am yet to come to terms with why his wife, knowing all that transpired between Ohakim and me, opted not to advise him against his present negative dispositions against me. I stood by Ohakim when every other person abandoned him and his family. When his father died five years ago, I bore almost the entire cost of the burial. He was virtually living in Government House, Umuahia throughout my tenure as governor – inundating me with regular visits and requests for assistance, which I willingly obliged. On the day of the interment of his father, I arrived in his village at Ossuh-Owerri, Isiala-Mbano as early as 9 a.m with the full paraphernalia of the office of governor, and did not leave until 6 p.m. What else could a friend do for his cherished friend?

Even though I played a strategic role in the making of Governor Ohakim, I have never asked him for any form of favour. In fact, I have never visited Government House, Owerri or his village more than once in each case. My first and only visit to Government House, Owerri, was when our party held its national convention in Owerri, and I stayed there for less than one hour to wait for guests in order for all of us, in company with the governor, to leave for Grasshopper’s Stadium together. The same thing was applicable to his village, which I visited only once - during the burial of his father in 2004.

Those who know me very well can attest to the fact that I am always content with whatever I have. I believe that those elected to serve the people should be given a free hand to do so. There is nothing Ohakim can do for me. Nothing absolutely! He needs me more than I have ever needed him. I was the facilitator of the first contract he did at the Central Bank of Nigeria. I personally guaranteed him for the job when nobody or bank agreed to offer such a guarantee. When he was working in an aluminium company in Ogba, Ikeja, Lagos, I was the person bringing most of the customers that patronized him. See how Ohakim has paid me back for all that I did for him!

I have always known that human beings can be funny at times, but little did I know that Ohakim, for all that I represented in his life, would treat me so shabbily and wickedly. I leave him to his conscience and God.

I must confess that I am not angry with Ohakim because he defected to the PDP. My grouse about him was his malicious allegation that I was plotting to kill him and use MASSOB to make Imo ungovernable for him. Writing a petition on the allegation to the SSS, without even confronting me to know whether it was true or false, showed that he told lies to destroy my reputation. As I wrote in the beginning of this piece, his devilish plot has boomeranged. In fact, it has turned round to hunt him and his fellow conspirators.

How I wish he would cast his mind back and see what I had gone through for his sake, yet he had the mindlessness to accuse me of a crime I knew nothing about. Has he forgotten too soon how many persons I knelt down for so that he would become governor? I knelt down for one of his closest aides, whom he dotes on every day, for him to be allowed to run. I did the same for a popular businessman and a family resident in Abuja who vowed that he would become governor over their dead bodies. It is sad that after all these sacrifices all Ohakim could pay me back with was blackmail.

He is my elder brother and I have never disrespected him. Why then treat me this way? Did he need to malign me to justify his defection to the PDP? The decision to defect to the PDP was entirely his. Why then drag me into it?

I know that those he has joined camp with now are watching him. They know certainly he would treat them the same way some day if they trust him the way I did. He left the Alliance for Democracy (AD) for the PDP, then to PPA and now back to PDP. Who knows where the tide would take him to next?
He should not forget that one day - very soon - he would finish his tenure as governor and leave. The longest period he can stay in office as governor, according to our constitution, is eight years. After that, he will pack his bag and baggage and leave. That is when the gravity of his folly will dawn on him. I was governor for eight years and when it was time I left the stage.

The same fate awaits him. How he will be treated at the end of his tenure by the people will be determined by how he conducts himself while in office. It is foolhardy for him to think that posterity will judge him well if he does not merit it. Is it because he now owns plush mansions in South Africa, Lagos, Abuja and the United States of America less than three years in the saddle as governor, that is making him lose his decorum and sanity? I had these things long before I became Abia State governor, yet they did not influence me negatively or make me lose my control.

I thought he knew that why he sought the opportunity to become governor was to deliver quality dividends of democracy to the people. And that much he assured me when I tried to sound him out before he was given the mandate to run on the platform of PPA.
The Ohakim I knew before May 29, 2007 was always behaving like a lamb – very meek and unassuming. But some persons still insisted he made up the stuff to hoodwink me. I almost believed the stories making the rounds then about his unstable character because of certain things he did at some times which called to question his seeming docility. What happened in Owerri on July 25, 2009 has opened my eyes and reinforced the veracity of the popular saying that not all that glitters is gold.

Even some of the people – politicians, businessmen – who have teamed up with Ohakim in the new-found union were people I assisted one way or another. Today they are junketing with him and making unsavoury comments about me in the name of politics, forgetting, however, that everything we do on earth has its recompense. One day – surely – the bazaar will be over and we will all meet again.
I bear no grudge against him, even though what he did was despicable, ungentlemanly and impolite. I leave him to God and his conscience –if he has any modicum of it. But time shall tell.

Let me nevertheless remind him that one of the keys to success is being honest to your partner and stand by whatever agreements reached - no matter what it may cost you.

If politicians continue to show perfidy in their dealings with one another, then our democracy will never advance beyond its present stage.
It is left to the Nigerian electorate to decide the fate of such unreliable politicians, not me.