Wednesday, November 6, 2024
HomeAbia State DiaryISSUES: PREACHING WHAT YOU PRACTICED: THE HYPOCRISY OF OBINNA ORIAKU ET AL....

ISSUES: PREACHING WHAT YOU PRACTICED: THE HYPOCRISY OF OBINNA ORIAKU ET AL. – BY CITIZEN UKOHA NJOKU UKOHA

Your Beliefs don't make you a better person, Your Behavior does" - Sukhraj S. Dhillon. OUTSOURCING OF JOBS:

 

IMMEDIATELY after the election of the immediate past Governor of Abia State in 2015, TrackCare Global Construction Company was registered to undertake construction jobs for Abia State Government, leveraging on the relationship between the Chief Executive Officer, Engr. Timothy Iheoma (Popular) and the then Governor including those around him.

The technical suitability of the new company to handle such jobs is a story for another day.

Mr. Obinna Oriaku, as the then Commissioner for Finance, had no problems and saw nothing wrong with processing the payments of the company when Abia State Ministry of Works can handle such projects through direct labour.

He just realised how wrong it is for Abia State Government under Governor Alex Otti (OFR), to outsource Government legal services to a private law firm owned by an old friend of Governor Otti who is eminently qualified as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria to handle such brief when the Ministry of Justice have lawyers as if Ministry of Works during his time was short of Engineers.

Mr. Obinna Oriaku and his serial Post Master Generals ought to have checked the world over including Europe and America to ascertain if governments engage and outsource their legal services to private law firms.

Governments around the globe including the Federal Government of Nigeria engage and retain the services of private Accounting and Auditing firms.

I hope Ekwedike is not operating under any illusion that the governments are short of Accountants and Auditors under their employment.

PENSIONS AND SALARIES:

Governor Alex Otti, is barely 17 months on the saddle and has paid the full pension of Abia retirees till date from the day of his inauguration.

My friend and the new advocate of Government is a Continuum, Sir Onyebuchi Emamanka has been jumping from pillar to post on the side of a cross-section of the pensioners who want to both be and not be.

What he has refused to mention in his pro bono activism for the cross-section of pensioners is that he was part and a member of the kitchen cabinet in the administration that starved the whole Abia pensioners and retirees of their emoluments/entitlements and sent them to their early graves.

He pretends to have forgotten in a hurry how a government he served and was part of the decision making hierarchy, ignored the dying pensioners but turned on to be blackmailing a government that is struggling to clean the mess they left behind.

The argument that government is a continuum does not hold water in the circumstance. It is like saying that civil servants, public sector workers and pensioners can continue to wait for their salaries, pensions and entitlements till God knows when, as Governor Otti’s administration will not be the last government.

The non-payment of workers salaries and Retirees Pensions that the immediate past administration and their cronies were justifying as legitimate government action is called monthly wage and entitlement of the drivers of the government without which the engine of government will be grounded.

Government is a continuum only if the engine of government continues to steam and move. The outstanding arrears of retirees pensions was negotiated and compromise reached between the representatives of pensioners and the Government.

The government has fulfilled its own part of the bargain and agreement reached and the case has been closed.

It was after the settlement of the pension mess left by the immediate past administration that Governor Otti moved to work out the modalities to defray the almost N18bn arrears of salaries owed to workers of state institutions and parastatals.

Okezie Ikpeazu

The state government has started defraying the arrears as agreed. If anyone is claiming that he/she was forced on gun-point to sign the agreement reached with pensioners, was he/she also forced to receive the N11bn deployed by the state government to settle the full pension arrears as agreed in sharp contrast to the normalised practice of paying half of the pension to retirees by the immediate past administration?

Can those who are now claiming not to be part of the negotiation return what they were paid as proceeds of the agreement to enable the government return back to the negotiating table with them as they cannot cherry-pick the terms of the agreement in parts.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTION AND AUTONOMY:

Local Government Financial Autonomy is not new. It has always been a constitutional provision but was bypassed by the government where Mr. Obinna Oriaku, was the Commissioner for Finance and managed Local Government funds without any enabling law from the State House of Assembly who by section 7 of the Constitution are empowered to make laws for the administration of the Local Governments.

The Supreme Court did not make new laws on Local Government Financial Autonomy. The Apex Court only gave a ruling mandating the Federal Government to enforce the existing provision of the Local Government Financial Autonomy in the Constitution. Why would the same bunch of characters who against the provision of the constitution illegally managed Local Government funds without recourse to any law passed by the State House of Assembly as provided by the constitution be taken seriously for shouting and jumping on social media spaces to stop the State House of Assembly from exercising their powers guaranteed by the constitution.

These are the same persons that managed the Local Government funds as their out of pocket expenses while leaving all the Local Government Secretariat in ruins, rot and abandonment.

Governor Otti has been intentional and deliberate about making Local Government Administration highly competitive through the experiment of appointing mostly successful people from the private sector as Mayors to set a template for those that will be elected after them.

Today, go round the Local Government in Abia State and see the new look of almost All the Local Government Secretariats as a workplace environment and the prompt payment of Local Government staff salaries without being on the news or setting-up delay and deceive committees as it was the practice in the past.

How can Sir Onyebuchi Emamanka be talking about Local Government Election and imposition of candidates? Was there a single free, fair and credible Local Government Election under the Government he served for 8 years?

Ururu-Aja, I am your friend and an aspirant for Ohafia LGA Chairmanship Election in 2016 under the PDP platform. I spent millions of Naira obtaining the nomination forms, consultation and campaigns.

I was under the illusion then that it was an election which is a contest. I never knew that it was an extortion plot to formalise an already shared positions.

Unknown to me, it was a continuation and transition from appointed TC Chairmen to (S)elected Executive TC Chairmen.

I am happy to be alive to narrate my ordeal in that exercise and my departure from ‘Piri Dimgba Pigbuo’ (PDP). It is up to those who were handpicked to testify how they were funded and how they deployed the funds to better the lives of the rural dwellers and develop the Local Government Areas.

Governor Alex Otti is the leader of the party and directed the party to use concensus in the conduct of the primaries to avoid deceiving aspirants to obtain forms and spend scarce resources like the PDP.

No sitting Governor will allow anyone hijack the State Party machinery from him and Governor Otti cannot be an exception and allow the bitter and desperate opposition to outwit or outmanuever him and brand him inexperienced.

POLITICAL PARTY CRISIS:

Prior to the 2023 General Election, ‘Piri Dimgba Pigbuo’ (PDP) has been engulfed in crisis. Emamanka’s boss was in the G5 where their leader and his principal, Ex-Governor Wike used him and 3 other PDP Governors to cunningly bargain for a stake in the APC Government. The rest is history and our former governor ia PA or handbag to Minister Wike currently.

The leadership of the PDP both at the National level and many states are in turmoil. It is surprising that Sir Onyebuchi Emamanka, and his bunch of e-Rats are taking Panadol for the slight headache in Labour Party leaving the pains and discomfort of their red apollo-eye which requires an eye drop.

Labour Party is a socio-political platform with different players and actors. It is not out of place to disagree but effort is being made to reconcile the differences.

Ururu-Aja, face your front. Allow LP to manage their headache, it just started. Don’t infect them with your chronic red eys apollo which has lasted for more than 2 years.

INFRASTRUCTURE:

Governor Alex Otti has Reconstructed, Rehabilitated and Maintained more than 108 Roads across the State. Some Roads are still ongoing and many others will be flagged-off soon.

The actors who failed the State and People in the past are quick to run around on social media spaces to berate the Government for claiming to reconstruct Roads already done by Ex-Governor Okezie Ikpeazu.

It is just like saying that Ex-Governor Ikpeazu claimed Roads done by Ex-Governor Sam Mbakwe.

If Ex-Governor Okezie Ikpeazu, fixed the Roads as his e-Rats are claiming, the Nigeria Bar Association as a professional body wouldn’t have embarked on protest in November, 2021 against the dilapidated and disgraceful abandonment of Aba Roads by Dr. Ikpeazu’s Administration.

These characters have remained shameless and deceitful to claim completing 60 to 70% of All Roads being Reconstructed by Governor Alex Otti.

I am sure they actually completed them 100% on billboards but nothing to show on ground. Port-Harcourt Road, Omuma Road, Ohanku Road, Obiohia Road are classical cases of their shamelessness in lying with straight face.

If they want to test how and what the people living along those corridors feel about the PDP and what they represent, l challenge them to walk the streets with a PDP flag.

I am sure that they won’t come back to stream on social media to tell a story.

THE CPS WILL BE SACKED CHOIR:

Just like the ‘Otti Can Never Be Governor’ Choir, the ‘CPS Will Be Sacked’ Choir is also led by a former TIMAAS Taskforce Member, Mr. Chinonye Mba.

I may not be a trader but I am proud to come from a background of a Successful Trading Parents whose exploits in Business cannot be wished away by a post master to my contemporaries on N20k stipend.

Beyond the CPS job, ‘Shoe Get Size’. I am not sure of too many things but I am very sure and certain that Mr. Chinonye Mba, cannot play in the same league with me not even in the Feeder Team.

The job of the CPS is a political appointment and never a permanent job.

I understood right from the day I assumed duties that a date I would be addressed as former is sacrosanct.

I will remain a nightmare to those ‘The CPS Will Be Sacked’ Choir Members led by the former TIMAAS until my last minute on the job.

Be reminded that Ctz. UKOHA NJOKU UKOHA has a second and third address.

It is your prayers that Governor Otti sacks me today, why are you complaining about my not knowing the job and duties of my office. It makes your prayers easier to answer.

I am from Abiriba in Ohafia LGA of Abia State. Ours is a community known for the practice of apprenticeship and my father had enough of apprentices.

Even when an apprentice understands the primary mission of his sojourn which is to learn trade or skills, an apprentice cannot allow or tolerate anyone insulting or abusing his boss.

The apprentice has a duty to protect and defend his boss just like Mr. Chinonye Mba, as a TIMAAS taskforce member was fighting traffic defaulter who wanted to be rude against his boss, and my friend, Bright Ikokwu.

In the professional discharge of my duties as the Chief Press Secretary to the Executive Governor of Abia, I will not hesitate to reply and address you in the language you understand better especially when you refuse to be civil and respectful in addressing or criticising my boss.

My job is to speak for the Governor and Government of Abia State including providing clarity to those who ask valid questions and seek information from the Government and effectively reply those who bitterly and irrationally resort to insulting, abusing and calling my boss or the Government names.

It is selective outrage to applaud or keep mute when some bitter people insult and call the Governor and Government names only to jump out to blame the Governor’s Spokesperson for reducing his Office to ‘Iko Onu’ when he responds to ‘Iko Onu’.

I will remain professional and civil to those that engage the Governor and the Government professionally.

I have never been an advocate of turning the other cheek. You can ask my friend Chukwunenye Enyinna (Abala).

‘YOUR BELIEFS DON’T MAKE YOU A BETTER PERSON. YOUR BEHAVIOR DOES’.

CITIZEN UKOHA NJOKU UKOHA, is Chief Press Secretary to the Executive Governor of Abia State.

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