The question among many Abia people is whether Governor T.A Orji has built a new capital city in the state, except Umuahia. This is sequel to the government’s deafening blare of ‘accomplishing its campaign promises’. Another side of it is that the governor is using two hands to grab even the works that were there by the predecessor.

One Abdullahi Kure of Niger State would attest to the fact that he commissioned a particular project in the government that precedes T.A Orji government, but the later is claiming credit of the work.

Nonetheless, this is what happens in a state of many sycophants. They would not know when they counted the dead among the living and the living, among the dead. The sycophants do this in order to show that they love Gov. Orji so much, oblivious that they are digging in for more problems for him.

When critics send in their critique, the same yesmen would shout to the high heavens that ‘critics are unfair to Orji’. Except in Gov. Orji’s government, elsewhere, someone who has critics always stand up fervently to prove the critics wrong.

Everywhere you went and mentioned that you are from Abia State, the first embarrassment is dished out that you guys do not have a governor. Abia State is too far apart from the many ‘awards’ that the friends and cronies of Gov. Orji have given to him, with some describing him as the best governor and the best government in term of development and others.

If the sycophants think that we do not have a right to criticise Gov. Orji, we shall continue to tell him that he has no right not to develop our state, to come to abreast with developments as are won’t in other states across the federation.

Gov. Orji’s governance style marvels and madden many people that they cannot conceal the shame anymore, than to tell the world that the state is prejudiced by the governor, no matter what the opinions of the state’s media gangster are.

The media assailants of the governor are won’t to saying and writing that the world should not pay attention to what critics write or say about the government, because they have refused to measure things in inches. This is not with the case of Aristotle who was credited as saying: To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.

Gov. T.A Orji knows it very well that no matter how his yesmen try to paint his government as the most performing one; this by no means signifies that there are other people who are not seeing through the lens of dignity.

It is only in Abia State, due to the monumental failures that have befallen the government, that we are disturbed with the story that the state was a pariah many years ago and that the governor is re-righting the wrongs. Such crass mentality of aligning the woes of the government with the past government is like the Igbo proverb, which says that when a child was unable to catch a rat he or she was pursuing, that rat invariably becomes a useless rat.

Apart from his double-standards of saying that he has accomplished his campaign promises, Gov. Orji would have saved himself the many hypocrisies by being his own biggest critic, which should be in line with the comments and judgments of the people and not, what a few rented persons want the world to read, hear and know about the government.

But even the flatterers telling the world of the many things that the governor has been doing in the cause of governance is also criticism, though in the most wrong and biased form. They forgot that a good leader does not run away from the acceptance, bravery and courage of critics and their critical-criticism of his or her leadership. Criticism is acceptable and agreeable and necessary.

Gov. T.A Orji should know that such fulfill the same function of the government, only where a leader pays attention to criticism and use them for the welfare of state of things. Gov. T.A Orji should realise what Carlos Ruiz Zafón writes in The Shadow of the Wind: “The words with which a child’s heart is poisoned, whether through malice or through ignorance, remain branded in his memory, and sooner or later they burn his soul.”

He had attacked his predecessor wrongly and has been doing everything to ruin his reputation, by often saying that he was grossly responsible for his non-performance. But Charlotte Brontë in Jane Eyre tells the world that: “Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the (Crown of Thorns).”

Brontë continues that these things and deeds (in Abia State. mine) are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded: appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed...

•Odimegwu Onwumere, a Poet/Writer, writes from Rivers State. He can be reached via apoet_25@yahoo.com. Photo shows Governor T.A Orji.

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