(Let the truth be told )
By Kelechi Mejuobi
I have read with great amusement, the very puerile statement authored by a well known deceitful, pretentious and mindless element, masquerading under the cloak of an unknown amorphous group called, Ohaji Equity Mandate.
Unfortunately, after a long hiatus leaking his wounds from a human misadventure, the notorious ingrate unabashedly is about to dance naked again, this time to the tune of his inglorious Lord of Manor, peddling gibberish, rather than learning from his habitual infelicity of changing paymasters with equanimity.
No matter how he tries to mask himself with pen names and pseudo groups, his trademark of coming out from forced hibernation after obvious crimes against nature, slinging incoherent aspersions on the person of a former Speaker of the Imo State House of Assembly and Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, in the person of Rt Hon Goodluck Nanah Opiah, while trying to misinform the public about which area is entitled to the position of Chairmanship of Ohaji/Egbema LGA in the forthcoming council Election cannot pass unnoticed.
The well known fellow with serious question mark on integrity after scandal-riddled personality can’t come in the open to express himself, hence the resort to use of fictitious names and unknown groups.
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have spared an ink to give his jejune a response, but for the sake of the unsupecting reading public who may be deceived by the distortion of fact embellished in the bile, he credited to a non existing group, named Ohaji Equity Mandate, this piece has to come up.
The writer, well known and identifiable in Ohaji as an established social misfit parading effervescent penchant of turning 360 to blackmail his benefactors, again decided to follow the rabid and incendiary path of abusing one of his care givers in the past, Rt Hon Goodluck Nanah Opiah, to please his new sponsors he will soon dump and return to usual trademark of backbiting.
Suffice it to note that there is no registered and existing group in Ohaji/Egbema land known as Ohaji Equity Mandate, other than a hurriedly arranged name, the latest stoic merchant of lies in town and other nugatory cohorts are using to deceive the public about recent developments in Ohaji/ Egbema LGA politics.
As one who has keenly observed the politics of Ohaji/Egbema LGA in the past three decades and duly related with Rt Hon Opiah’s political trajectory, it would amount to incriminating silence to allow the writer still nursing bitterness and vindictiveness over numerous failures in a miserable life, run away with a jaundiced commentary on politics of Ohaji/Egbema meant to deride an icon of our time, Rt Hon Opiah who have created history to become a two-time member who represented Ohaji/ Egbema State Constituency in the Imo State House of Assembly, where he became the only Speaker of the state legislature, the people of Ohaji/ Egbema have ever produced, before he graciously moved ahead to represent them at the National Assembly and capping his political honours as the first and only minister the LGA has merited at the moment.
The grouse of the misguided writer arises from the fact that the Ohaji/ Egbema LGA APC Chapter, led by the party Chairman, Hon Obioma Obasi, met recently in the Obosima country home of the highest political office holder of the party from the LGA, Hon Barr Kelvin Ugwu, the Vice Chairman in charge of Orlu Zone, to take far reaching decisions including; the rejection and subsequent condemnation of a meeting held in Umuokanne Ohaji by one behemoth political actor to allocate the LGA Chairmanship position to Awarra Court Area of Ohaji.
Reason behind the decision of the Ohaji Egbema LGA APC Chapter to reject outrightly the Umuokanne agenda is hinged on the fact that the said gathering at Umuokanne was not an APC party affair as it was named “stakeholders meeting” where the convener merely gathered his unsuspecting lackeys at his home and dished out the orders to them like a garrison commander in a democratic set up. The convenor who lacks democratic ethos in his approach to political issues affecting the council only mandated his suspected daft cronies, including the uninformed writer and co-travelers that it was the turn of a particular area to produce the Chairmanship candidate of APC in the forthcoming LGA election as if Ohaji/Egbema is his fiefdom or father’s property he has the inalienable rights to share elective party positions without recourse to the dispositions of the different parties, their leaders and members.
Apparently not in agreement with the unilateral order of the Umuokanne meeting convener, giving a particular area the position of Chairmanship of the council, the APC Chapter in the LGA met at an official meeting to chart a way forward ahead the coming election where it unanimously agreed to distance itself from the Umuokanne arrangement and agreed to set up a proper Zoning arrangement committee amongst other committees inaugurated on the day of the meeting.
Incensed by the collective decision of the APC members in Ohaji/Egbema, the writer who has been searching for a slight chance to pour undeserved venoms on Rt Hon Opiah, who had handed him a lifeline with political appointment in the past, came up with the vituperative remarks enshrined in the offensive write up.
There is no doubt that the manner APC in Ohaji/ Egbema is shaping the party for the LGA election has done incalculable damage to the mental psyche of the writer and his sponsors evident in his analysis demonstrated through warped imagination rather than hard facts and figures.
Going by the illogical reasoning adduced by the writer who appears to be suffering from grandeur of delusion about Opiah’s fame, discussion about Chairmanship of Ohaji/ Egbema dates back to the time Oguta LGA was separated from Ohaji/ Egbema LGA. Before now, it used to be Ohaji/Egbema/Oguta with headquarters at Mmahu, Egbema.
It is on record that the first elected chairman of Ohaji/ Egbema LGA after Oguta left is Hon Paulinus Oparaji, from Awarra in the so called Awarra Court Area. A clear sign of the writer’s disconnect from reality is his mischievous avoidance of the fact that Ohaji/Egbema LGA didn’t start in 1999. Ohaji/Egbema LGA had had an elected Chairman before 1999. The interesting aspect of it was that Oparaji was a two- time elected Chairman of Ohaji/Egbema LGA in the history of the council the writer deliberately swept under the carpet in trying to justify his irrational thinking.
While I won’t bother delving into tissues of lies used to fertilize the write up, an average politician in Ohaji/ Egbema knows that there has always been a great understanding between Ohaji and Egbema in sharing elective positions overtime and 2024 won’t be different. It’s trite to note that leaders of the different parties including the ruling APC and stakeholders always respond to this common understanding. The coming LGA elections wouldn’t be a different ball game except some purveyors of falsehood are on a mission to distort facts by trying to be economic with the truth of the matter.
Without falling fool to clannish proclivity in this discourse, I stand to be disputed that each administration at the state level may not respect the zoning/rotation arrangement in terms of appointing LGA Caretaker Committee Chairmen and Sole Administrators between Ohaji and Egbema divides since it is a transitory appoinment, but positions for elected chairman of the LGA and House of Assembly have always been shared accordingly through a common understanding the writer and his sponsors cannot deny knowledge of.
Using emperical evidences to buttress this point, it is important to note that if Ohaji produces House of Assembly member, Egbema under the rotational understanding has elected chairman. And this procedure has been on since the acclaimed 1999 the writer quoted with distorted facts. Except that the writer tried to manufacture half baked truth to hoodwink readers into believing his skewed facts , In 1999, Late Chief Celestine Uwakwe of Opuoma Egbema got the Chairman, while Ohaji person in Rt Hon (Dr) Esom Obodo was the House of Assembly member. After Uwakwe of Egbema, the next elected Chairman of Ohaji/ Egbema LGA was Chief Luke Chukwu of Umuapu Ward in Ohaji divide while Rt Hon Goodluck Nanah Opiah of Egbema was the House of Assembly member. When Opiah was observing his second term as a lawmaker in the House of Assembly, another Ohaji man from Mgbirichi, late Prince Chinonye Ikegwuruka, succeeded a fellow Ohaji man as elected chairman of the council because Opiah from Egbema was on a second missionary journey. Even in the last dispensation Imo State had an election to usher in council Chairmen in the LGAs , Hon Ebenezer Amadi ( Obey) of Obitti /Mgbuisi Ward of Ohaji was elected, while the House of Assembly came from Egbema in the person of Hon Hercleus Cyracuse Okoro. Since 2019 Okorocha left power and the council Chairmen were dissolved, there has never been an election for the LGAs till date. Interestingly
this system is not only peculiar to Ohaji/Egbema but also to other LGAs with two clans like Ihitte/Uboma, Ahiazu Mbaise (Ahiara/Ekwereazu) etc where one clan gets House of Assembly, the other gets Elected Chairmanship position.
Except that the writer and his mindless sponsors are wallowing in suspected amnesia, they would have known about the conventional method of deciding which clan between Egbema and Ohaji is entitled to produce the elected Chairman when the present House of Assembly member, Hon Dr Christopher Osuoha, (Eze Buguma) is from Obitti Mgbuisi Ward of Ohaji.
It’s also sheer insensitivity for the writer and his myopic sympathizers to bring in issue of those who have occupied House of Reps for Ohaji/Egbema/Oguta and Oru West Federal Constituency which can be said to be a position for three LGAs. Occupation of the national assembly seat is not solely a rotatory position between Ohaji and Egbema, the author of the vexatious statement would have known before now that power is taken and not given where people from the other LGAs would carry the Certificate of Return for the House of Reps to the doorsteps of an Ohaji contender.
The writer should be ashamed to brand Opiah an Ohaji hater if he is not suffering from mental blackout. For record purposes, majority of Opiah’s aides while in office and till date remains people from Ohaji. And I am aware the writer who is a bloody ingrate is one of the greatest beneficiaries of Opiah’s appoinment before his unquantifiable shenanigans coupled with unbridled rascality that has seen him jump from one political benefactor to another, each year, pursued him away from Opiah’s office. When Opiah was made Speaker of the Imo State House of Assembly, two of the five principal officers attached to his office, were from Ohaji and yours truly was among and served as his Chief Press Secretary until he left the state assembly. When Opiah was elected House of Reps member in Abuja, Barr Temple Okonji from Assa ward of Awarra Court Area of Ohaji was his first Senior Legislative Aide, SLA, until he left the office unceremoniously after skirmishes with other support staff. How could Opiah have been unfair to Awarra Court area if he considered the Awarra Court Area Okonji his SLA in the National Assembly?
In Abuja as Minister of State for Education, people of Ohaji including my humble self made the list of his special aides. And we remained with him until the end of that administration.
Only an unrepentant ingrate in the mould of the writer would say that Opiah is a hater of Ohaji if one considers that during his first term as a member of the House of Assembly, Opiah, personally sponsored the private member Bill for the Law that created the Imo State Oil Producing Areas Development, ISOPADEC, which today has an Ohaji man in the person of Chief Charles Orie as the Managing Director with several other Ohaji men and women employed as either political appointees or staff of the interventionist’s agency. Worthy of note is that the first Bill passed into law under Opiah as Speaker of the Imo State House of Assembly was the law converting Micheal Okpara College of Agriculture and Technology (MOCATECH) to Imo State Polytechnic, Imo Poly, located in Umuagwo Ohaji, thereby changing the status of the institution from a monotechnic to polytechnic.
Worthy of note also is Opiah’s attraction from the Niger Delta Development Commission,a federal Housing Estate project on Owerri Porthacort Road, Umuagwo Ohaji, while his inclusion of the LGA into the Post Amnesty Scheme of the Federal Government where several Ohaji youths were included remains a footprint on the sands of time in the history of the LGA.
A dossier of achievements Opiah recorded in Ohaji and beyond have the imprints of an Ohaji son, Barr Temple Okonji who once served him as SLA and such epistles he assembled have not been obliterated from his record declaring Rt Hon Opiah as an all round achiever of our time.
Several empowerments and reach out programs in terms of political appointments Opiah have done for Ohaji people while in office are enormous to enumerate as space may not be able to accommodate it in this report.
The writer, his fake outfit and sponsors should have a rethink to imbibe democratic ethos for the sake of nation building rather than resort to old fashioned cheap blackmails and irrelevant name calling dogma that do not guarantee access to power.
Kelechi Mejuobi writes from Umuagwo, Ohaji
