It is very embarrassing when the Abia State Government sees the donation of Keke NAPEP to our hoodwinked brothers and sisters as a genuine means of empowering them to eke out a living. Gov. T.A Orji sees this as providing self-reliant job and wealth creation for them.

The government is so intolerant in this stead to say that it does this so that our people do not wait for the government to provide ‘limited’ white collar jobs. And you wonder why the white collar jobs are ‘limited’. Is it not an unprogressive government such as the Gov. T.A Orji that could be making comments in this direction? Showing of its height of ineptitude?

The government sees this thoughtless idea to mean that it has engaged our people economically when there are ecstasies in the North that the governor of Kano State and sundry are training their people as pilots, engineers, doctors, lawyers and so on and providing with them the white job opportunities, which Abia State Government sees as ‘limited’. Ours’ is only bent to saying, “There are limited white collar jobs”. This is the height of betrayal, when a government can’t give hope to its people, except retrogressive agenda, which exhibits the in-depth of the government’s shambled and lackadaisical policies.

This government has reduced our people to the level of one legendary Stevie Wonder and former US President, Alexandra Roosevelt who had deformities. The government now equates our people with these persons. The government forgot that while these persons had talents, their government harnessed them and made them come to the limelight. Their government didn’t buy them cabs to drive and mouthed of giving them hope on the pages of the newspapers as has been the incessant occupation of the Gov. Orji government in Abia State.

No people and government makes any progress with a foundation built on lies and deceit. Such foundation is like a market that its foundation was laid with the liver of tortoise. The traders in such a market would be treacherous. Despite the huge allocation that comes into our state on monthly basis and the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), like no other government in our state had enjoyed, Gov. Orji’s government is still showing off its man-made physical handicap, without making any impact in this world of possibilities and potentialities, except diving from one excuse to another and spending billions of the taxpayers money in the media to protect its shallowness from the public knowledge, yet, the people know that they can’t be helped liked the Stevie Wonders of America.

The American government did not make Stevie Wonder to feel like he was a less human being. The government didn’t send him to the school of the blind and called it empowerment, like the Gov. Orji government would show us distributed wheel chairs, artificial limbs, foodstuff and other items, built and furnished bungalows to some indigent men, women and widows, and call this empowerment. Who was even sure that the government did these things to our impoverished people? If this government did, it should be to the wards and cronies of the Orjis.

Buying wheelchair to our people has become “policy thrust” of Gov T. A. Orji’s care, support and empowerment of the downtrodden and the vulnerable groups in the state in his delivery of dividends of democracy. Imagine! And, the Lady Odochi Orji’s foundation’s mission and the much touted philanthropic work were tailored towards this line. Did you blink that this government is visionless?

When we say that Lady Orji should tell us the source of her income for the Foundation she is running in the state which she is using to appear in the media always like a political aspirant, many did not know that the wife of the governor was always thanking her “Sir T. A. Orji” for his contributions and assistance to the Foundation in carrying out her “numerous humanitarian services”. Is this not the bane of our state? Abia State has become a place where the Foundation of the wife of the governor has also become a part and parcel of the government.

But very surprising that some gangsters with the government see the Foundation as “Lady Orji’s compassion and care giving virtues”, which they have said has been a pedigree within the Gov Orji’s family. So, government no longer empowers its people except a Non Governmental Organisation run by the governor’s wife? No government survives this way, when it no longer assures its people of reducing poverty and fends for the people. This is selfish and would not charge our people to work together as brothers and sisters in order to build a state devoid of clannish divides. The Gov. Orji government had already set the pace for division in Abia State where it has become a public knowledge that his wife’s NGO handles most of the so-called philanthropic works, which the wife has always commended him for his unflinching support.

But they are not ordering to increase enrolment of our people into primary, secondary and university levels in the state, but to buy and increase the number of Keke NAPEP that they would buy for our people for their signature known as “Ochendo Global” to continue to be in the air. Twaddle! When would this government see us as the greatest asset of the Abia State and that as a people, we must be effectively treated well? When would Gov. T.A Orji ensure that we enjoy good healthcare, quality education, enabling environmental and adequate food security in Abia State?

It is the obligation of the government to empower all the people of our state through adequate governance and not a select few for cheap and untoward publicity. Let there be good programmes for our people by the government and not the programmes of the governor’s wife’s NGOs. Adequate security should not mean the enormous security pressure our people are suffering in the hands of the fierce-looking soldiers that dot the streets of Aba. No. Adequate security should mean and be that our people are free from hunger, poor healthcare, poor education, poor road networks, government of brickbats, blackmailers and other ugly sundry issues.

Adequate security in Abia State should mean and be when our people see the government’s ineptitude and report them, they are not harassed, labeled and called rapists, extortionists, kidnappers and other unprintable sundry names, like the media goons working with the government of this visionless Gov. Orji are wont to labeling critics as such with pseudonyms in the make-belief blogs and websites they create for their dastardly jobs. But Ndi-Abia now know better who the read robbers of good governance are. They are camped in the Government House, Umuahia, the Abia State capital.

It is our priority to the rights and privileges of Abia State, irrespective of what Gov. Orji is thinking. We must be protected from injuries and unnecessary attacks. It is our civic rights to cry out loud when this government is beating us, such as we are no longer enduring today. Like we are asked to report all suspicious activities around our neighbourhood to security agents, so also we have to report the Gov. Orji government that governance are not run like Non Governmental Organisations.

•Odimegwu Onwumere, Poet/Author, Media Consultant, contributed this piece from Rivers State. Contact tel: +2348032552855. E-mail: apoet_25@yahoo.com • Photo shows Gov. T.A. Orji.

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