Kalu’s mutative traducers, by Ebere Wabara

They vituperatively keep mushrooming! For a while, they will recess and another irritant set will restlessly come up in mutative trance and exponential dimensions. Social media and provincial rag-sheets are the yellowish instrumentalities of their unbridled scurrility.

The latest demented clan is a concocted online platform known as “PUOreports.com” and sponsored by the Abia State Government right from the inception of the former lax administration to the currency of surrogacy in Umuahia. The clownish portal is pseudonymously represented by one Moses A. Orji, a fictitious mercenary and media mercantilist hired to criminalize and demonize the former vociferous Governor of the state, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, the political godfather of his unfortunate successor, Theodore Ahamefule Orji, who begat and crassly foisted the present Governor, Dr. Okezie Victor Ikpeazu, on dehumanized Abians.

These illegitimate governmental offspring of Kalu and their murderous agents have remained his irredeemable nemesis and symptomatic of a godchildren genealogy that is unprecedented in Nigeria’s socio-political history. Indeed, Kalu is contending with an unrivalled bunch of amnesic and vicious ingrates who are simply obstreperous!

Let us continue this intervention with the prefatory outburst of the latest hireling: “Of late (sic), Abia State Governor, Dr Okezie Ikpeazu (another comma) has been the butt of a sustained, well orchestrated (sic) media attack by Orji Uzor Kalu and his media outfit, The Sun Newspaper. Reading from the front page editorial of the (sic) The Sun of 21st March, 2018 (another comma) captioned ‘As Abia descends into rot’ and juxtaposing it with an earlier publication by the same newspaper in less than a month (27th February) in which the same tabloid praised Dr Ikpeazu as having done enough to deserve second term, one is left with no option but to concede (sic) to the fact that you cannot retain your colour and remain with the chameleon.”

It is apposite to declare here, with all due respect and sense of responsibility, that our “Ngwa gburugburu” governor is too junior—in all ramifications—for the man who threw up his mentor to expend time and energy “fighting” him, his adopted grandson! That would amount to juvenility of the worst order.

Issuing from the above, it is demonstrative of asininity for any buffoon to affirm that “Dr. Ikpeazu has been the butt of a sustained, well orchestrated media attack by Kalu and his media outfit….” To the best of my knowledge—I stand to be corrected—The Sun titles have not been hostile to the present leadership in Abia State. This is not to say that when there are cogency, absoluteness and inevitability of an editorial to be done on the degeneration in the state, The Sun should turn a blind eye so as not to be accused of adversarial media practice. The professionalism and independence in The Sun from the outset transcend political murkiness and partisanship. It is only bovine-headed persons who  believe that Kalu meddles in the day-to-day editorial policies of his newspapering empire. Some of us even accuse Kalu of aloofness in the management of his publications.

For purposes of well-informed debates, if a medium acknowledges the performance of a governor today and tomorrow the same governor does worse than his predecessor, for instance, the newspaper should fold its arms and watch the rot because it had passed a vote of confidence in the helmsman? This is sheer imbecilic thinking to say the least. Governance is a continual process as the machinery of administration does not stop until tenure-end—and thereafter reckoning. In other words, assessment is perpetual even after leaving office.

The next brazen idiocy from the rascal: “He (Kalu) belongs to the political clan who craves publicity and media attention, and often takes bizarre and high-risk adventures just to attract it.” It should interest the bohemian who purports to be Moses to know that Kalu is not a docile or fringe politician. In all his political trajectories he has always been active and productive at his own expense. He is not like a senator from Abia State whose passivity in the red chamber is unparalleled! Kalu is unstoppably a party leader and reputed financier of political associations right from his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) days. It is on record that he donated N500 million to the PDP during its formation in 1998, among other financial interventions.

Kalu does not seek publicity by any shred. He is an institutional publicity himself. If anything, he runs away from visibility most times because whatever he does or says is news. News hounds and top media establishments run after him for audience wherever he goes and oftentimes his arrival in airports which is a routine is a veritable source of information any day for airport correspondents. Anyone who knows Kalu’s profile should realize that he cannot seek publicity—contrarily, publicists look for him at all costs. It is specious for any sane Nigerian to say that Kalu craves publicity. That is the summit of stupidity. Kalu does not need to take any odd or octane step to attract media attention—it comes to him rather circumstantially and naturally.

Yet another venomous entry by the deviant identified as Moses: “Again, while serving as the Governor of Abia state (sic) and visitor of (sic) the state owned (sic) university, Orji Kalu bulldozed his way and commandeered a university degree for himself contrary to the laid down rules of the institution.”

Each time these regenerative and oppositional baboons mutate they rehash what their co-conspirators and sponsors have devilishly, erroneously and defiantly been gossiping about since 2007 one of which is that “Kalu did not go to university.” This is one of the greatest fallacies of our generation. Kalu, on his own exuberance and accord, withdrew in protest from the University of Maduguri on grounds of student unionism that led to the rustication of a few co-unionists. Prof. Jubril Aminu, as vice-chancellor then, can confirm this.

Recently, the foremost university in the country, the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) lionized Kalu by conferring on him an honorary doctorate degree in Business Administration. This was long before a high court vacated the vindictive directive by T. A. Orji to the Abia State University (ABSU) to quash the bachelor’s degree certificate duly awarded to Kalu. The revalidation of his degree by the high court is a testimony to Kalu’s serial victimization by those he taught how to fish. In all his struggles, Kalu is always vindicated because he does not witch-hunt anyone unlike his vanishing, mischievous and malicious opponents whose cruelty is boundless and borderless.

Beyond the salacious and contrived non-issues of Kalu’s scholarship, have his tribes of antagonists established the cerebral optimality of their victim in and out of school? Such audacious brigands will be astounded by Kalu’s off-class intellectual depth and the profundity of his active knowledge quotient. If it were otherwise, he would be taciturn and less Interactive in the public. He will also shy away from regular TV/radio interviews and parley sessions on multifarious national and global issues. How many members of his 2007 governorship class are still in the limelight?

Still on PUOreports’ tomfoolery: “Perhaps, we should all pause for a moment and ask Chief Orji Kalu to point at one legacy he left behind to write his epitaph” Harebrained Moses and his equally moronic paymasters should direct their invidious question to the former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and ask him the legacies he saw before declaring Kalu as the only “action governor” in the country during a state visit to Abia State. In addition to Chief Obasanjo’s dispassionate affirmation on Kalu, have Moses and his principals bothered to find out why it was easy for Kalu to install his successor and erstwhile Imo State Governor, Dr. Ikedi Ohakim, on the platform of Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA)—which Kalu founded and solely funded—in the heyday of the PDP.

On a germane critical note, is the singlehanded inauguration of T. A Orji when he was supposed to be languishing in prison not an eternal legacy taking cognition of the rapacious and rampaging onslaught of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) at the time? The same political lineage of Kalu produced T. A. Orji’s “boy” now in government—not power! Which dynastic legacy—or any other legacy for that matter—will be greater than this?

Just before the small fry called Moses thunders the last interjection, let us take this: “Is Kalu now not campaigning for Buhari’s second term in office, with his personal resources I am told?” This is confirmatory of how propagandistic tiny tots think. What is wrong with Kalu campaigning for President Buhari’s well-deserved second term? And why should the deployment of his personal resources for an irrevocable course he confidently subscribes to be any mite’s concern? It is only a moppet like Moses who will tell other brats like him how to spend their impoverished resources—not an entrepreneurial behemoth like Kalu whose opulence is certified by Forbes resulting in his classification as one of Africa’s 50 richest men. Whether papooses like Moses and his sponsors like it or not, Kalu is unflinchingly and unapologetically committed to the re-election of President Buhari next year, unfailingly by God’s grace and resolutions like Kalu’s and this writer’s amid innumerable others in the same lofty train with us.

From the bambino known as Moses of PUOreports comes this impolitic statement of falsehood: “The issue of backlog of unpaid salaries dates back to his (Kalu, of course) days at the helm. Abia’s Information Commissioner, John Okiyi Kalu, alluded to this when he said…”we have never gone public to inform our people about the origin of the salary and pension payment challenge in the state which dates back to the 1999-2007 era”. If Moses and his ilk, John, are not cherubs, let them give us a detailed and forensically verifiable record of paid and unpaid salaries and pensions between 1999 and 2015 when the duo of Kalu and T. A. Orji held sway in God’s Own State. I charge them to come up with the information from today till the end of this month or forever shut their garrulous cavities! The inquest should be carried out by chartered external auditors—not government operatives.

The foregoing appeal is the only way to clinically address the yarns and realities of salary and pension backlogs in Abia State. Their audit should equally extend to May 29, 2015 and July 31, 2018. If they do this, I will hand over my certificates of occupancy for my plots in Ikorodu and Agbara both in Lagos as recompense for their diligence in the looming expose! I deliberately do not want to reaffirm Kalu’s exoneration since I have demanded a holistic (1999-2018) audit enquiry.

The last entry by the stripling whose nomenclature is James: “Rather than mount undue pressure on his editorial team, Kalu should concentrate on his well mouthed multi billion dollar (you mean multi-billion-dollar?) business conglomerate.” On behalf of OUK Media Team worldwide, let me inform Moses that our assiduous work is no pressure of any hue, but pleasurable engagement informed by our illimitable convictions.

Wabara ([email protected]/08055001948) is the Senior Special Assistant (Media) to Dr. Orji Kalu.