Campaign of Calumny against Sen. Orji by Bawas et al – Right of Reply

 Our attention has been drawn to a charade by one self-acclaimed Ibeku Traditional Prime Minister, Chief Uche Akwukwaegbu (Bawas), against our amiable Senator Theodore Ahamefule Orji, published in Sun and New telegraph newspapers editions of Tuesday 20th and Friday, 23rd September 2016 respectively with these unappealing headlines: HOW T.A ORJI MADE OJUKWU WEEP; ORJI TRADED ABIA GOVERNORSHIP FOR SENATORIAL AMBITION.

 With the exception to restating the facts as they were, we primarily wouldn’t have pondered given artificial respiration to the tomfoolery of this characterless individual being au fait with the trending development in Abia State where every Tom, Dick and Harry (who’s sliding into political oblivion) must attack and/or tie his melancholy to the apron of Sen. Orji to harvest public compassion being that he is the biggest politician in Abia State.

In his self-defeating interview, Bawas as he is popularly referred to within the ethos of his duplicitous Abidjan colleagues rubbished his decade of toilsome efforts to asphyxiate his known trade name – fraudulence- for politics when he claimed thus: “I became an independent oil marketer since year 2000, chief executive officer of Geo James International S.A.R.L Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, which deals on importation of fabrics, when he was made governor in 2007.

 “Bawas Oil Nigeria Ltd and Bawas Investments have been in business before he was made governor, these are verifiable facts. I don’t know who among the two of us is lying against each other. I was the chairman of the youth wing of the defunct National Party of Nigeria (NPN) Ikwuano Umuahia under Chief B.B. Apugo; state treasurer of the defunct National Republican Convention (NRC) in the then Imo state while Chime Nzeribe was the state chairman.

” Bravo! Only children born in the year 2000 will applaud this twaddle as every adult in Abia State knows what the name Bawas symbolizes. Bawas should have been bold enough to complete his insipid braggadocio by telling us how fraud related matters led to his arrest and subsequent incarceration in Abidjan prison until his rehabilitation by Sen. Orji few years ago when he escaped back to Umuahia.

 To preserve anonymity, we will resist the inducement of divulging names of Ibeku boys who Bawas trafficked to Abidjan and almost made useless; majority of them were also recipients of Sen. Orji’s munificence, still he has the temerity to say only God will judge between him and Sen. Orji. What Insolence! Furthermore, in his wishy-washy interview pervades with trash, Bawas eulogized Orji Uzor Kalu with these words, “Why didn’t somebody like Orji Uzor Kalu remove Senator Uche Chukwumerije to install himself as senator, why didn’t he make his brother a governor because he had the arsenal to do that? It is because he has conscience.

You said that I am nobody, the day you came back from prison, was I not the one that Dr Orji Uzor Kalu handed you over to, while we were in the same bus that brought you to Umuahia? Was it not me, ADC Okoro, your wife and driver in the bus that Orji Kalu told Okoro to give you the seal of the state and said Bawas, I have done your wish and left, because I personally asked him to make you governor but you betrayed the man who lifted you up and I.” A round of applause for this Ibeku slapstick comedian! It is absolutely outl

andish how Bawas at his age decided to bring himself to opprobrium just to score cheap political goal. So Bawas remembered all these so called Orji Kalu’s congeniality and reverence for him, still he went ahead to rain abuses on him in support of Sen. Orji during the 2010 fallout that led to the liberation slogan? This lends credence to why we referred to him as fair weather politician who kowtow individuals in power for loaf of bread. When it became clear that Kalu has lost his political relevance in Abia State, Bawas pitched his tent with Sen. Orji and when his lobby to get his wife become ASUBEB Chairperson could not materialize, Sen. Orji became the worst thing that happened to Abia State.

 It’s contemptible that our traditional rulers still find such chameleonic individuals worthy of traditional titles. Blinded by greed and animosity over his failed bid to impose his wife ASUBEB chairperson, Bawas completely ran amok, forgot in less than 15 months how through the support of Sen. Orji, his wife was elected two time legislator in Abia House of Assembly with nothing to show for her eight years stay in the ABSH except two boreholes – one dug at Afara Prison and another at Ugwu Nchara ghetto – and four sets of obsolete computers she donated to Amuzukwu Girls Secondary School.

Yet he singled out a man who made him, liberated Ibeku land from obscurity as well as blazed the trail for Abia development with conspicuous projects nicknamed Legacy Projects for denigration. What a shame! For Bawas who exhibited his primitivism in the contemporary Nigeria when he postulated that ghost of dead persons buried in Umuahia cemetery close to Health Centre road awarded to him for construction rose at odd hours of the night to destroy the road he constructed the next day when confronted by Sen. Orji over the poor quality of the road to states in his namby-pamby interview thus: “A contract was given to me with an ulterior motive, a contract which he never paid me a dime for, after spending my personal money.

 He did it to siphon money and frustrate me in life, it was never done with good intentions, but he did not succeed.” Shows the charlatanism in the character called Bawas.

The deplorable state of Amuzukwu road, Health Centre road, Afara/Ojukwu bunker area and many other roads constructed by Bawas just 24 months ago has made nonsense of his inglorious assertion. For the records, miffed by the low quality of their road constructed by Bawas, the Afara Ibeku boys subsequently seized one of his bulldozers in protest until Sen. Orji the then governor came to his rescue by assuring the youths that government will take decisive action. What then does this village masquerade called Bawas mean by saying that he who goes to equity must go with clean hand? The fact that Bawas in him primitivism played politics with the death of Ojukwu by knotting it to political decision of our amiable Sen. Orji to decamp from APGA to PDP which offers him a better political platform and get it published to the extent that a national newspaper used it as headline just to massage the fading political ego of its publisher is petty.

 Even if Bawas does not know what led to Ojukwu’s death, the national newspaper’s management ought to have known the dangers of misinforming the people. The aphorism that one cannot cut off the nose to spite ones face is significant in this multiplicity of contrived media attacks and propagandas against Sen. Orji by these peeved individuals because the more they try to make him look like a monster; the faster they make mockery of themselves. This is the reason Sen. Orji has rising to the pinnacle of his political career while all his accusers have remained torpid; battling oblivion with their entire munitions store.

 Should we mention names? Anyway, no need to stir hornets’ nest. As the Father of Modern Abia, Sen. Orji will continue to prescribe norms of behavior to his erring and/or misguided children despite the malignancy. We also want to use this medium to plead to the conscience of the mastermind of these campaigns of calumny against Sen. Orji to borrow a leaf from his political contemporaries who rather than create false dualism and dichotomy among the citizenries in their various states have used their media to stimulate peace and tranquility as well as create the conviviality needed for development.

 Projecting Abia State ad infinitum in bad light through his media is self-defeating; the reason his political fortunes have drastically diminished to the contemptible degree that winning a senatorial district has completely becomes a mirage despite the multiplicity of propagandas and media hypes. A word is enough for the wise. Signed Don Norman Obinna. Media Adviser to His Excellency, Senator T.A Orji, Ochendo (CON).