Those who have not been to Abia State would swallow all that they read in
the media from the government of Governor Theodore Ahamefule Orji, line,
hook and sinker, oblivious that they are glaring lies painted by the
government’s propagandists to be taken as truths by onlookers. The good
people of Abia State, however, knew that the politics that have come to
stay in the present state government is what many observers regard as
“Politics of relocation to acquire”.
We have read or heard about the different relocations of peoples in Abia
State that mainly comprise traders from one point to another. But what we
were not told was how many of the traders could not get accommodations in
the places where we were acquainted they were transferred to.
The dust of relocations of traders in Abia State from one place to another
can never settle down till the government tells the general public who the
real occupants of the stalls in the markets are and how much they were
asked to pay before they gained entrance.
It is imperative to say that Abia State, especially, the city of Aba is now
worse than Governor Orji met it. He would not tell us that Aba has become a
place where residents are packing their property and are relocating to
other states like Akwa Ibom State, because there is no presence of good
governance in Abia State. Wait till the Akwa Ibom State Government
completes its ever built ultra-modern market, and Abia State would be
empty. Mark this statement!
It is a crying shame that this government continues to sell lies to the
public that things are normal in Abia State, when everything has gone
shamble, except the presence of marked-faces security operatives, who have
taken occupation in intimidating people and, who knows where they want our
people to relocate their shops, vehicles and co to. Do they now see anybody
in our state as Osisikankwu that must be hounded? Especially, the fear of
one Awa, who was fingered to be in charge of ‘loading buses and cars’ in
the state, has become the beginning of wisdom, as his agberos now work
legitimately and illegitimately.
In Aba for instance, the state government wants all the vehicles to be
loading in the parks. Just two parks in a place like Aba: ‘Mivaton’ Park
and Osisioma Park.
If we have to accept that vehicles must load in the parks, it behooves the
government to provide the people with infrastructure, but there is rarely
any one functional in the state. There is hardly any smooth and motorable
road in the state to the Parks.
The Parks themselves are glorified Hades. You want somebody, say, at Ngwa
road to come to the park and enter vehicle, when there is no access from
there to the park. So, vehicles no longer stop beside the road and pick
passengers? Not even bustops are built to help the drivers; just for the
lucre of governance, anywhere drivers pack their vehicles that is not park,
they have failed law and must pay sums of money that are not below N20, 000
and N25, 000. Odikwa egwu o!
But Gov. Orji’s propagandists would lie to those they can deceive that
Umuahia, the capital of Abia State, has become a utopian capital, when what
we could see are mainly whitewash projects that dot the state and
contractors given most of the internal revenue projects being uncivil to
our people, so that they could meet up with the demand of cash from
Umuahia.
While expansion is part of development, we have to ask of what exactly is
this government expanding. In earnest, instead of good governance being
expanded in all the nooks and crannies of the state, what we could see are
expansion of agberos and security personnel intimidating our peoples,
already battered-by-bad governance.
This government should stop making Keke riders to cry, due to the many
tickets they are ‘intimidatingly’ asked to purchase before the day runs
off. The annoying thing is that the sellers of these tickets have no
routine hours they operate.
As early as 5am and as late as 10pm, they are on the roads collecting money
for tickets from Keke riders, likewise those channeled to man vehicles in
Abia State. The latter’s habit of collecting money for the tickets is by
force and fire, and needs to be curtailed, but only by the help of a
spiritualist, because they invariably have the full support of the Abia
State Government for their shameless conducts.
Their habits show that we do not have a government in Abia State that
regulates its operations, but one that enjoys the presence of ‘anything can
go’, as far as the money that would not be used to develop our state
continues to ‘enter’. It is only in this state that wheelbarrow pushers are
pressurised to purchase plate numbers.
Agberos in the state are plenty. You laugh with anger, about the presence
of cops on patrol, usually two persons on a motorcycle, parading the
dilapidated city of Aba and making preys of the citizens. As far as good
governance is concerned, majority of our people are yet to see
people-oriented reforms. It is not reform when residents are asked not to
drop refuse where they drop them before, because you do not want new
comers’ comments, whereas the state already smells of government’s
incapacitations.
This Gov. T.A Orji government should be told that a performing government
is not equated by the number of peoples it has displaced, but by the number
of peoples that have been enlivened in its performance, but, sadly, Abia
State under him has become a home of agberos and displaced and displeased
persons.
Gov. T.A Orji has to buy his conscience back and put things in place that
are at present wishing our people death and some have perhaps died of poor
management. He should know that the only empowerment that he was able to
give to our youths is to provide Kekes and Taxis for them to drive, and at
the same time fill the city with agberos, who were said are contractors to
the state government.
