It is good to live in harmony and happiness. These were the words coming
from an ex-Governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, when a select of
journalists approached him on his return from Zimbabwe, where he had gone
to observe that country’s election under the patronage of African Union’s
(AU) observer team.
Dr. Kalu regretted that Nigeria has become a place where individualism
plays a lot of roles in lieu of collectivism. He bemoaned that he was away
from home when reports went rampant that his kinsmen were deported from
Lagos State, by the Governor Babatunde Fashola administration. Although, he
had sent in his comments from the faraway country, and condemned the action
in its entirety and threatened to go to court with the government in the
event that it refused to apologise to Ndigbo.
Speaking, Kalu said that after his press statement condemning the act, a
lot of dignitaries, especially of the Yoruba descent, sent in messages and
beseeched him not to take action yet, pending when they must have
investigated the matter to its root cause, as any action he took would
further the heating up of the country that is in dire need of peace. It was
a matter that Kalu said he has listened to them since he is a man of peace,
but has not swept the matter under the carpet.
In his sermon, Kalu said that Nigerians should know that they can’t
continue to live with sentiments. He advised the citizens to always see
peace and the rule of law as the hallmarks for coexistence for the common
good of the country, which the forebears lived to protect, even to the
detriment of many of them.
Such a matter like the deportation, according to Kalu, needed everybody’s
intervention, because if one did not chase out a fowl that was feeding on
feaces, no one knew who was going to eat the fowl’s legs one day. If it was
Igbo today and the rest Nigerians think that it was an Igbo matter,
tommorrow it might be another tribe’s case and before it could be known, it
has escalated to anarchy.
The ex-Governor condemned any forms of brickbats among Nigerians and
advised any Nigerian who is not engaged in any meaningful job to so in
order to curtail nuisance that some persons have seen and taken as a way of
life and living with it. He said that such persons are stabbing Nigeria’s
image by making the country to look like a country of lazy people, which
she is not.
Kalu did not support any fight to crop up between the Lagos State
Government and Ndigbo in that state, but said that every misunderstanding
has to be re-dressed through the due process instead of confrontational
way. He said that the latter has never helped in such a situation. He,
however, said that the country belongs to all Nigerians and, no part of the
country should claim or see itself as hegemonic before others. He decried
any types of imposition, describing it as barbaric and gobbledygook.
It was convincing to Kalu that Ndigbo have to unite and be prepaid to scrap
their challenge, whenever such arises. Kalu said that having money alone
cannot win in a war of political extirpation of a people like Ndigbo in
Nigeria. Unity wins.
It’s obvious that begging and always crying were not in the character of
Ndigbo, but these are somewhat happening today, because of the Capitalistic
theory that majority of Nigerians have embraced. So, whenever a section of
Nigeria is attacked, the affected begins to cry foul, because such a people
had erroneously thought that any self-serving purposes were superior to
Communalism. Kalu said that it was the power in Communalism (not
Capitalism) that the forebears, even walked on waters, because they had the
support of people, not the volume of money in their different banks.
Kalu, conversely, called on Governor Fashola to see Ndigbo in his state as
Nigerians, and not as a people of different tribe from his. He admonished
Fashola that it would be inappropriate in the case that there was an
accident, say, involving a person from Igbo and Yoruba, and the Igbo is
deported to his home town for the state government to take care, while the
Yoruba is immediately taken to the hospital, because the person is Yoruba.
He condemned this, should it happen, and ascribed bias and ineffective to
it.
Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu thanked all, who have so far, have expressed their
concern in the deportation imbroglio and were suing for peace and did not
allow it to degenerate to lawlessness before he returned. Nonetheless, Kalu
said that his threat of going to court with Fashola over the deportation
was not just merely, but that he is waiting for the findings of the people
who have implored him not to take further action on the matter following
their vow to handle it and get back to him.
