Dear Governor T A Orji,
By the time this letter is brought to your attention you
must have vacated or about to vacate the Government house in Umuahia as the
Governor of Abia state after 8 years of misrule and incompetence .It was
Shakespear who once wrote that “the evil that men do lives after them'. It is
my wish and I believe that of millions of Abia citizens both at home and here
in diaspora that the evil you perpetrated and unleashed on the people of that
state continue to follow you wherever you go and that you be constantly
reminded by everyone you meet or associate with of what you did. It is also in
that light that I am writing this letter so that it will be a constant reminder
to you and to generations unborn that there was once a Governor like you who
raped his state of its resources and finances and left it bankrupt,
underdeveloped and ghetto like.
For those who might want to question my competence to write
about you as well as evaluate your performance as governor by virtue of the
fact that I live in New York, I want them to know that I did not only do my due
diligence about you and your tenure as governor , I also took the time to visit
your state and my home state of Abia ( God's own state) , which you
conveniently turned to 'the devil's own domain', but nothing I read or heard
prepared me for what I saw. All the same I learned a lot about you and the
havoc you unleashed on the people of the state. I also came to agree with those
who have consistently
referred to you as “ the worst Governor globally'. Having
visited the Enyimba city of Aba during my visit, the glorified village called
Umuahia and having travelled through the dilapidated road from Aba to Arochukwu
and a few other places, I immediately came to the realization that you did more
than enough damage to earn that title. So when recently I read about a
thanksgiving service organized in your honor in Umuahia during which you were
reported to have asked for forgiveness from the citizens of the state for
offenses committed against them which you attributed to the difficulty you had
in making hard decisions, I began to wonder, what was difficult about making
the decision to fix the roads in Aba, provide adequate healthcare, modernize
our schools, pay workers salaries and pensions, provide basic social
infrastructure and youth employment , rebuild our roads and above all protect
and safeguard the state's finances? The irony in your comment is that
leadership is all about making tough decisions. The question is , why didn't
you resign if you thought the job of Governor and governance was beyond your
abilities and your pay scale?
What irks me even more after reading your request for
forgiveness is the fact that as usual the man of God , the Archbishop of Aba ,
Ecclesiastical province of the Anglican church and Bishop of Umuahia, diocese
Ikechi Nwosu, who is supposed to always say the truth stood before that
audience as a sycophant and without shame proclaimed that you Governor Orji
would be remembered for your patience and the development you brought to the
state. He even went further to claim that apart from the infrastructural
development, you brought
peace, security, healthcare and youth empowerment . Which
begs the question , what planet does he reside on? This to me was the height of
sycophancy. That priest should not only be disrobed for lying, he has in my
opinion brought dishonor, distrust and shame to the fraternity of priesthood.
But then , it has to be expected since I am told you make periodic financial
contribution from the coffers of the state to members of the clergy.
As you leave office I wonder if you have any idea or
appreciation of the amount of damage you are leaving behind , what governance
was all about or how deeply the Abia people dislike you. The atrocities you
committed during your tenure are so many that i wouldn't know where to start ,
what to include or what to leave out. While other state Governors assumed
office with set goals of what they planned to achieve during their term, you on
the other hand entered office with evident agenda of enrichment. We are well
aware that wealth and politics have never been strange bedfellows and that for
people like you the salary cap of public service was irrelevant. Even though in
Nigeria the path from public service to private riches is well trodden you took
an unusually aggressive and expansive approach to stealing money. People like you
who raised their hands and swore to public service in their self congratulatory
parlance are usually not at peace with the economic humility that the phrase
connotes. For you, public service was a fig leaf over private cupidity and a
prelude to a lucrative payday you counted on.
Your 8 years in office was one of avarice, acquisitiveness
and a resistance to living within the financial boundaries of elected office.
Your stay in office was a discomfiting spectacle and a dissonant one. Yours was
a combination of cluelessness and incompetence. Under your administration,
corruption was created and nurtured in every level of government, whereby it
became part of the culture. You ignored checks and balances and ruled by
exercising a vast system of patronage. Under your reign the integrity of the
state institutions were systematically corrupted and compromised. You
conveniently turned the state House of assembly into a chamber of yes men,
business enterprise and parliamentary bazaar .The Abia state Assembly according
to one Nigerian writer could better be described as a House of Trade and
commerce hence assemblymen traded support and silence for financial favors. You
also politicized the civil service , turning permanent secretaries and your
temporary local government chairman into polling and collation officers , while
judicial appointments were given to party chieftains. As a consequence the
people were left to the mercy of your administration whose rules were murky and
remedies to problems at best costly and unpredictable. You demanded and
collected all kinds of taxes, levies and fees with nothing to show for them.
You appropriated all the security allocation money for your personal use and of
course that of the local government councils, hence you did not conduct any
local government elections during your 8 year reign. Instead of providing jobs
for our teaming youths ,you collected one thousand naira each from over 40,000
unemployed youths for non existent job positions. Your way of empowering our
youths was to lease
tricycles or keke to them and consequently turning some of
them into your touts to use during the just concluded elections. With regards
to the Enyimba city of Aba , you let a promising commercial decay by criminally
neglecting it. In the pretense of fixing some of their roads , you dug them up
and abandoned them leaving them worse than they were. You increased a thousand
fold the school fees of all the state higher institutions and yet owed their
parents salaries and pensions. Which begs the question, where did you expect
them to get the money for the increased fees? .Anyone who dare criticize or
condemn your administration was placed on an enemy list to be eliminated. In 8
years your government collected over I trillion naira from the federation account
and yet you are leaving the state with enormous debt.
In your 8 years in office what merged was as expected the
tyranny of the state. Yours was a moral less gang of people mistakenly called
Abia state government. It is therefore accurate to say that Abia state during
your 8 years in office was neglected, ransacked, robbed ,and abandoned. Your
rule was one of not only widespread bureaucratic corruption alongside
administrative inefficiency but also ineptitude and outright failure. You were
a self aggrandizer and self perpetuator who subverted and debauched every key
institution to serve your need, that of your son and your family. In so doing
you muzzled the press , bought over or silenced all the Abia elites and in an
attempt to cover your misdeeds rigged your party's primaries and the general
election so that you will replace yourself with a stooge who will cover your
stench. Unfortunately the Ngwa people believe you were doing them a favor when
you picked one of their son's who in my opinion though a good
man is considered guilty by association and to say the least
not equal to the job.
It does not matter which social science model is used in
studying corruption in your administration, yours was simply a classic example
and proof positive that corruption sands the wheels of development. Despite the
billions of Naira received during your administration, isn't it most
unfortunate and unforgiving that you will be leaving behind your real legacy of
not paying the salaries of the following state workers, namely, State teaching
Hospital 9 months, Hospital management Board 8 months, Abia Polythecnic 5
months, Abia State Universal education Board 6 months and local Government
Councils 3 months. Yet your Commissioner of Finance had the guts to lie during
a recent interview that you were leaving the state in a sound financial
footing.
. All key attributes of governance as clarified by the
United Nations Committee on Human Rights , namely Transparency, responsibility,
Accountability and Participation were all lacking in your 8 years as governor.
Your bad governance did not only result in huge loss in economic growth, it
also affected human capital, resources and ingenuity. It also deterred
investments and flight of investors. Right and wrong is not supposed to be confusing.
There is no blur line in it, but when corruption is established by corruptors
and becomes part of the culture there is no clear line between the two.
As you leave office we say good riddance. History will
forever judge you as the man who came in from jail as Governor and left it
worse than he found it. Posterity will judge you as the Governor who stood by
and watched the city of Aba decay and regress from the bustling
commercial power house it once was to a ghetto town. The
Abia people will remember you as the man without conscience. A deceitful man
who is so evil that even the late senator Chukwumerije left a standing
instruction not to allow you or any of your representative at his burial
ceremony . Hopefully you will be denied entry into the senate by the now
sitting tribunal because you are not deserving to be called a senator.
With your exit and the reversal of Ikpeazu's stolen mandate
in favor of the peoples governor and their choice Dr Alex Otti, real change
will finally come to Abia state. The change we need and expect can only come
through a new beginning with a change in leadership. We need a new leader like
Dr Otti who will bring more attention to national and international efforts
that will help ensure that Abia remains inherently global in its outlook. We
hope for a state where our people will think, work, and live without
boundaries, situating their ideas and their aspirations in the broadest context
possible and the cosmopolitan and entrepreneurial spirit present from Aba's
earliest days enlivened for all to imagine and see. It is my personal wish and
I am sure the wish of many Abians that you live a life of obscurity, regret,
sorrow , pain and rejection in retirement for all the damage you did the people
of Abia and even if by some divine intervention you repent your sins and ask
God for forgiveness , satan will file an appeal asking God to reconsider
granting you entry into heaven on the grounds that your sins are so enormous
that your place should be in hell.
Regrettably Yours
Nnanna ijomah
Nnanna Ijomah , a former Special Assistant to Chief Emeka
Ojukwu is a New York City based Political Science lecturer.
21 Comments
OMG! This letter is a swear!!!
ReplyDeleteThe point is not that he replaced himself with Ikpeazu, the truth is that with Ikpeazu's presence there, Abia is still under the wicked control of Orji & things will remain the same, unless Ikpeazu will pick a fight with Orji which is close to impossible.
ReplyDeleteThis Orji must be evil human face.
DeleteHe ruined Abia, corruption is order of d day. Go to Abia state university you will see corruption in human face.
ReplyDeleteNawah oooo!
DeleteIt's so sad!
ReplyDeleteDr. Alex Otti should do something to save Abia.
ReplyDeleteI have come to realise how senseless Ngwa pple can be thou, they forgot one thing. Nobody is talking about ethnic group here, but the party that have brought abia to nothing. Had Ngwa pple had sense, nothing would've made them allow PDP near their treasury again. They shouldve also understud that being that PDP has no more hold on FG, any state they rule in 2015 -2019, will be in financial bondage.
ReplyDeleteMay Amadioha blasts your tongue for saying Ngwa people are senseless.
DeleteWe pray Otti doesn't leave things lying low
ReplyDeleteOrji has no concience.
ReplyDeleteEvil man!
ReplyDeleteAs far as PDP is still ruling Abia, Orji will continue draining their finances.
ReplyDeleteThe so-called Ngwa peeps that feel it's their turn never realised that Ohuhu peeps, I mean the bad crop of Ohuhu peeps are still having hold on them. In a terrible way!
ReplyDeleteWell, it's uncalled for
DeleteIt's sad!!!
ReplyDeleteHe committed an abomination.
ReplyDeleteIf you see the increment of sch fees in ABSU, & students must sort lecturers be4 they pass their courses. Ofcourse what do you expect when the lecturers are not being paid.
ReplyDeleteEvery sector of Abia govt is arrange money
ReplyDeleteOnly a right thinking man with fear of God will correct the evil in Abia
ReplyDeleteGod help us!
ReplyDelete