The statement that somebody has done very well is dicey. If somebody is sent to beat another person and he or she comes back victoriously, it is said that the victimizer has done very well. And if the victim that was asked to be beaten defended himself or herself from the supposedly victimizer, it is also said that the embattled has done very well.
It is, therefore, a juxtaposition to say that Governor Theodore Ahamefule Orji of Abia State has done very well in delivering undemocratic bonuses to the people of our state in a democracy and to Nigerians in general, who once loved Abia State. It is no gainsaying the fact that Gov. Orji has done very well, because any government that knows its onus in the business of governance, hardly experiences the posters of protesters. Sadly, this Utopian government is not the one in Abia State.
Gov. Orji’s inequitable governance appearances have made Abia State in recent times a state of protesters. The worsened condition of internal roads in Aba once compelled lawyers in the area in 2012, to stage a peaceful protest and urged the lameduck State Government to rise up to the occasion of fixing the roads. Some of the roads the government latter boasted of repairing are, in few days, worst than they were.
Whoever said that Gov. T.A Orji has not done very well should desist from doing that, so that he does not call you a mischief-maker, because he has said that all the critics of his government are mischief-makers.
But how would the critics not be troublemakers, when the government in Abia State is enjoying in its numerous affronts and bitterness that the people of Abia State have come to suffer under it? The governor has done very well in the area of imposing unnecessary levies and taxes against the people. Another area that Gov. Orji has done very well is in the area of despotic demolition of residents’ property, which the government christened illegal structures, illegal markets and sundry.
Many of us who are bystanders had expected the government to swing into action in the reconstruction of the pit-of-hell called roads in the state, with the velocity with which goons of the government swing into operation to collect the undue taxes from residents. The State Government has done very well in not giving any account for the huge Federal Allocations expected to be about N54 billion naira annually that come to the state.
This is different from the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of about N48 billion naira annually, in which wheelbarrow pushers are even forced to purchase plate numbers. Keke NAPEP riders are taxed through their nostrils. Gov. T.A Orji has also done very well in the ill-treatment of other allocations, which were given by observers as Domestic Crude Account, Subsidy Reinvestment Programme (SURE-P), Derivation (for oil producing states), Excess Crude Account, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) refund and Foreign exchange differentials.
In a statement by one Don Norman Obinna published in many media platforms titled, “”Abia State: Theodore Orji’s Government of Deceit And Falsehood”, we are meant to understand that there is a recent communiqué issued by the Technical Sub-committee of the Federal Account Allocation (FAAC) for the month of March, 2013, which demonstrates that Abia State shared among other states, a total sum of N117,942 billion (26.72%), as against N106,442 billion it had acknowledged for the month of February.
Obinna further wrote that the Local Governments in Abia State are among the Local Governments, which shared N90,928 billion (20.60%), as against N82,062 billion received for the month of February. In-the-face-of all these, Gov. T.A Orji has done very well in rendering undemocratic dividends in the areas of abysmal infrastructural decay in the economically shortchanged 17 Local Government Areas (LGA) of the state.
In the area of refuse in-disposals, it is no longer news that Gov. T.A Orji has done very well in making Abia State number one in dirtiness. He worked hard for it. See Aba and cry.
Obinna had stressed that a principal of a popular Secondary School in Umuahia, Abia State capital, who preferred obscurity, talked of the much touted Gov. Orji’s “Legacy Projects” as a deceit.
The principal was reported to have said that with regards to the buildings referred to as Legacy Projects, which had been in abeyance since T.A Orji’s administration, were mostly uncompleted buildings and some existed old buildings, hurriedly painted to deceive the Good Governance Team led by the Honourable Minister for Information, Labaran Maku.
The buildings were given as the old secretariat building, School Road model primary school building, Dialysis and Ophthalmology Centre, Umuahia (former Aloma hospital) and General hospital Amachara.
While Gov. T.A Orji and his gangsters called aides were feeding the general public with wrong information, far from the true state in Abia State and are much swimming in the euphoria of their Legacy Projects, there was an uneasy in Umuahia a fortnight as workers took over the streets in protest of their prolonged owed salaries.
Some said six months salaries, while others said one year salaries are being owed them by the government of Gov. Orji. This is another failed feat that he had worked very hard to achieve.
Much as we know, Gov. Orji has done very well in not allowing the general public to ask questions about his government whenever there was a guest at the Government House, Umuahia, but his rented praise singers.
This is a government that has done very well in acknowledging unmerited eulogies from its borrowed crowd to the chagrin of the true people of Abia State. Has he not done well when it was said that Gov. Orji introduced the Consolidated Assets and Resources Inventory Services (CARIS) for the first time ever; a project which is seen as taking the inclusive register of all property in the State, to further the act of undue tax collection around the state without anything to show for it?
What sets Gov. T.A Orji apart is that he has done very well in lacking of vision, positive plan for true governance to be experienced in Abia State. He has done very well that Abia people are no longer happy with their governor and their state. Gov. Orji has done very well by liberating the state from good governance to a bad one. This is why many of us are not surprised that he is leading the state in this direction.
Gov. Orji has done very well by assembling media mobsters who are bent on writing malicious reports to undermine what the people of the state are suffering under this “Legacy Projects” government. It is also not a surprise that the governor will continue to move the state forward to a more unpromising land.
He has done very well in making Abia State the fastest state in economic growth in the entire world but only in the media. He has done very well in making Abia State to progress but in the gloomy direction. He has done very well in the direction that he has repaid the electorates’ votes with bewildered sycophants, propagandists, and undemocratic bricklayers.
Yes, Gov. Theodore Ahamefule Orji has done very well by being a host of numerous televisions and newspapers and the internet media portals that sing his praise with our people’s hard-earned money.
Odimegwu Onwumere, Poet/Writer, contributed this piece from Rivers State. E-mail: apoet_25@yahoo.com
