By Michael Chijioke
“We are all frustrated, we’re almost helpless” – Mallam Nasir El Rufai
The above statement by Mallam Nasir El Rufai, a foremost Governor (of Kaduna State) and one of the poster boys of the All Progressives Congress, APC, was made on Monday while featuring in a television programme. The statement succinctly defines the dire situation Nigerians have found themselves in the last five years of APC’s reign over the country.
But while El-Rufai might have finally realised how frustrated Nigerians are currently, and lamenting the situation for a possible solution, his fellow political actors in APC in Abia State have invested heavy (in)human and (im)material resources in the past few days in divisive, mischievous, misleading and malicious politicking that smacks of their insensitivity to the pitiable plight of the ordinary citizens who have been subjected to all manner of deprivation, dehumanization and indignity by the APC.
While Nigerians of good conscience are lamenting our nation’s situation and seeking ways out of the woods, some APC “chieftains” in Abia have taken to the media to heat the polity by making unguarded statements, attacking the PDP and the Government of Abia State, embarking on political showboating while their Party throws the entire country in the pitch darkness of poverty, insecurity, economic recession, hunger, infrastructural decay, social and industrial unrests etc.
Never in the history of this country have we witnessed such high number of kidnappings and killings of citizens, including the high and the mighty, the lowly and the downtrodden; or even soldiers and policemen, since the end of the civil war in 1970.
Today, under APC, dirges are sung in marriages, graves are dug for mourners at funerals because of the near-certainty of audacious attacks on them by common urchins emboldened by the conspiracy of silence and the ineptitude of APC.
It, therefore, becomes inhuman for APC leaders anywhere, not to talk of those in Abia State where the Governor, despite the “frustration” and the situation of “almost helplessness”, according to El Rufai, is doing his best to steer the ship of the state against the tide of poverty and insecurity, to condemn the Governor while looking away from the disaster which their Party has thrown Nigerians into!
Seeing APC leaders in Abia line up for banal photo-ops of dry defection ceremonies organised for political featherweights who can’t even deliver their immediate wards, and attacking the PDP-led Government in the State is an indication of highly unrepentantly immoral characters who choose to revel in “defeated joy” (apologies to Shakespeare) over the graves of citizens felled by bandits and failed by their government. It is even most unconscionable for anyone to begin to talk 2023 now, over two clear years to the time, just to distract the Governor. That is the antics of the depraved!
The saddest part of this puerile venture is that it is being led by Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, a man who currently endures the inglorious rating by no other institution but the Senate itself as one of the very few Senators who have refused, failed or neglected, unwilling, unable or simply not ready to sponsor even one Bill in the Senate in the last one year. Because of this, Abia North Senatorial District which he represents has gone from a zone that produces quality legislators to one that is now being referred to as a “voiceless zone”. How else does one define failure? Yet, APC in Abia wants us to believe that they can do better than the PDP? Never!
The truth is that no matter how hard these characters try, Abians will never succumb to their mischief, half-truths and outright falsehood in an attempt to bring home the wanton loss of lives that has become the lot of a great number of Nigerians in other places.
Fact is, when 2023 comes, Abians will judge APC based on their disastrous national performances and will, completely, absolutely and comprehensively reject them in Abia once again even far more than they did in 2019! APC’s odious pride of evil will never stand in the State!
For now, Governor Okezie Ikpeazu is focused on governance and the continued provision of dividends of democracy to the people. When the time for politics comes, then it will dawn on all those now running faster than their shadows that no matter how many fishes leave the ocean, water will remain their master!
