Mindful of the fact that this piece would dignify a low life, low literate of inconsequential status in the person of Onyebuchi Ememanka, a quack and journalistic misfit who parades as the chief press secretary to the governor of Abia State. One is, therefore, not in doubt of what Abians should expect from such a rabble-rouser full of junks, who is undoubtedly a square peg in a round hole in Gov Okezie Ikpeazu’s government.
If Okezie Ikpeazu could engage such uncouth and ill-trained individual with no background in mass communication, a compound illiterate in journalism, someone who lacks every ethical decency and political rudiments, whose understanding of politics is from the prism of mischief, intolerance, gangsterism, thuggery and brigandage, suddenly catapulted to the exalted position as chief press secretary to the governor, against countless numbers of erudite mass media professionals and prolific journalists of Abia extraction, celebrated nationally and internationally, then Abians need to look no further for the reasons of our woes and the very sad and sorry state of our God’s Own State (Abia). This, of course, is the crux of lack of performance in Okezie Ikpeazu’s government. Information management is key and, of course, the life wire of every responsible government.
The journalistic quackery of Onyebuchi Ememanka, a political vagabond of no electoral repute, a desperado who attained his appointment by spurious, malicious and treacherous manipulations against the erstwhile chief press secretary, thinks that the only way he could prove to his boss of delivering on his job is to assume the ignoble role of a vicious political mad dog to attack perceived opponents as well as every constructive criticism against the present government of Okezie Ikpeazu. Little wonder the image of Governor Okezie Ikpeazu and that of our dear Abia State (God’s Own State) stinks to the skies because of the sycophantic, unprofessional, incompetent, clueless and brash style of media management of the governor by a political imp called Onyebuchi Ememanka.
Using treachery, gossips, eye service and overzealousness as his tools to stampede and edge out credible media experts, it is worthy of note that Onyebuchi Ememanka has emasculated every mass media machinery of the state. Usurping the office and functions of the commissioner for information and strategy, sidelining mass media advisers in the print, electronic, online and social media in order to net in their stipends. Onyebuchi Ememanka, in his greed and desperation, has deliberately usurped the office and functions of the director of protocols, personal assistants to Okezie Ikpeazu as well as assuming the spokesperson of the PDP party in the state. He is also visible as master of ceremonies at state events. This is the height of greed and avarice. Okezie Ikpeazu started faltering in every media outing and Interface since the emergence of Onyebuchi Ememanka as his chief press secretary.
Before assuming this position less than 4 years ago, here was a street urchin, who prior to his emergence as the chief press secretary to Okezie Ikpeazu, was a human personification of a church rat in abject penury. Today, in the Okezie Ikpeazu governorship of Abia state where salaries of civil servants across every ministerial cum departmental agencies are not paid, workers are owed for upwards of 30 months or more, merited allowances of public servants are now a mirage. Pensions and gratuities have become a pre-colonial fairytale. Yet the likes of Onyebuchi Ememanka is netting home a staggering N15m a month of Abia taxpayers’ money. Such a humongous amount that could address the payment of pensions of over 500 senior citizens, most of whom earn a pittance of less than N10,000 in a month. Even in the stipend rarely given, pensioners and senior citizens, who laboured and served the state diligently with high integrity and professional ethical codes, are paid half or at best three quarters of their pensions worth yet made to sign a document of acceptance of full payment. This is the trajectory of civil servants and pensioners in the Okezie Ikpeazu-led government of Abia State.
In spite of the monumental failure across all strata in the Abia State government of Okezie Ikpeazu and Onyebuchi Ememanka, using every indices of performance assessment, Ememanka had the rude temerity as well as unbridled audacity to call out the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Prof. Greg Ikechukwu Ibeh – a man of no mean repute, an erudite professor of entrepreneurship, a national and international colossus, a man of uncommon pedigree, a man who epitomizes charity and philanthropy, a man so rich in milk of human kindness, a doyen of human capacity development, a man who has the greatest entrepreneurial presence and stake in Abia State amongst his peers, the candidate with proven integrity and celebrated antecedents, the only true hope of Abia rescue and redemption from political dungeon of Abia PDP government, the only detribalised and non-segregating candidate, the only candidate amongst the lot that is decorated with the highest and most prestigious title in Abia State (Enyi-Abia).
This great Icon and living legend attracted the crude ire of a bunkum called Onyebuchi Ememanka just for stating the obvious over the charade called PDP campaign flag-off.
It is not surprising that Onyebuchi Ememanka is a political ignoramus who does not understand that it is the responsibility of the chief executive of the party, and in this case the state chairman, to hand over the symbolic party flags to those that emerged victorious at various levels of party primaries and not Gov Nyesom Wike of Rivers State.
The frightening myopic of Onyebuchi Ememanka has deluded every sensory organ in him and taken away every element of reasoning and rationality left of him. Otherwise, does he need a soothsayer to inform him that it is all over with the PDP in the Government House of Abia State.
Abia PDP is nothing but a walking corpse and a white sepulcher whose foundations and structural stability has been grossly eroded. The incurable idiocy in Ememanka has beclouded his vision to the extent that he cannot visualize that his boss has long seen the handwriting on the wall over disastrous calamity that has befallen Abia PDP.
Okezie Ikpeazu has seen the catastrophic sinking of the PDP ship and thought it wise to jump overboard to Gov. Wike for political hibernation and succour, while abandoning the PDP ship to finally wreck. Even when the vegetable sellers at Isi-Gate cajoled and called out Okezie Ikpeazu for incompetence and mis-governance, Ememanka’s boss rented other governors for image-laundry in the political rendezvous tagged PDP flag-off, where Abia taxpayers’ money was squandered.
Is the memory of Onyebuchi Ememanka so short that he forgot that Prof. Greg Ikechukwu Ibeh and all that have to do with that name were the greatest assets that added value to Gov. Okezie Ikpeazu’s government? The three years that Covid-19 pandemic lasted, who was the visible hand of succour, charity and philanthropy in Abia State if not Prof. Greg Ikechukwu Ibeh, even when the state government plundered the billions of naira and millions of dollars donated to the state by the federal government, Western countries as well as international donor agencies?
Has the Abia State government accounted for those monies till date?
Can Onyebuchi Ememanka tell Abians any single individual that has contributed to the growth and advancement of Abia PDP more than Prof. Greg Ikechukwu Ibeh?
On the issue of zoning of governorship candidate, the reasons adduced by Ememanka is grossly infantile and pedestal. I had thought that he would have reasoned and researched better as a lawyer, especially on the issue of Abia charter of equity than publicly exhibiting this magnitude of ignorance.
To a discerning mind, the concept and context of the documents in circulation as Abia Charter of Equity had Afikpo Bloc which is in present day Ebonyi State as an integral part. Afikpo took the first shot at the coveted seat through Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu. Unfortunately, that administration was short-lived because of military interregnum. Then came the creation of new states which excised Afikpo from the arrangement. This accident of state creation automatically vitiated that arrangement since one of the four legs has been politically amputated. This development, of course, implied the invalidation and abrogation of the Charter of Equity and prostrated the blocs or divisional arrangements.
This zero-some status quo remained throughout the Abacha regime until the Abdulsalam Abubakar 1998 transition government that statutorily balkanized every state of the federation into three senatorial zones, thereby creating equal representation of states at the red chambers of our national assembly. Hence introducing and birthing the rotation of power, especially governorship positions via senatorial zones. This situation automatically became a political power rotational tradition across all the states of the federation, Abia inclusive.
Instructively and most significantly, Abia State queued into this new political arrangement /tradition with Gov. Orji Uzor Kalu of Abia North senatorial zone extraction between 1999 – 2007; Abia Central followed suit between 2007 – 2015 with Gov. T. A. Orji. Then came this current administration of Okezie Ikpeazu (from Abia South) 2015 – 2023 in that chronological order.
Given the foregoing narrative, wherein then lies the legality or logical premise and assertions of Abia Charter of Equity or Old-Bende and Ukwa-Ngwa blocs if not for political dichotomy, nepotist mischief and clannishness?
Furthermore, this situation exposes the hypocrisy of Okezie Ikpeazu in his bandied G5 Governors “integrity group’s” agitation of power back to southern Nigeria when he could not replicate same in his kitchen state, Abia.
What moral rectitude does Ikpeazu have to condemn the North’s retention of power when he’s replicating same anomaly here in his Abia State, using the clannish template?
Going by Ememanka’s unreasonable narratives and illogical analogy of Abia Charter of Equity and the blocs arrangements, is Prof. Greg Ikechukwu Ibeh not absolutely right and vindicated to agitate and demand that the only letter “I” in the Abia acronym which represents Isu-ikwuato District should be allowed to take a shot at the coveted seat since it remains the only letter in the “ABIA” acronym that is yet to occupy the seat of the Governor of Abia State?
Political kindergartens like Onyebuchi Ememanka should not attempt to thread this path without circumspection.
If Onyebuchi Ememanka is properly schooled, he shouldn’t be reminded that when scholarly people like his boss Okezie Ikpeazu, PhD; Greg Ikechukwu Ibeh, PhD; and Longman Emeka Nwachukwu Esq, PhD – people who have attained an enviable milestone in academic excellence – are engaged, shadows of low literates like Onyebuchi Ememanka should keep a million kilometres distance.
I’ll further challenge Onyebuchi Ememanka to research on the pedigree and profile of the Abia State governorship candidate of APGA, Prof. Greg Ikechukwu Ibeh and, of course, his campaign council DG – Sir Longman Emeka Nwachukwu Esq, PhD – to the extent that they are conversant with issues in Abia State and of course Sir Longman Emeka Nwachukwu Esq, PhD having served this state in several capacities, spanning various administrations, hence well equipped with statistical data and facts.
Ememanka will be shocked to realize that Longman Emeka Nwachukwu Esq, PhD is a reservoir of information on the leadership of this state from 1999 till date, including dozier on him (Onyebuchi Ememanka). It’ll amount to foolhardiness on Ememanka not to refrain.
However, if I’m dared further, I’ll strike open a pandora box and bare it all.
I want to place it on records that since my defection to APGA and subsequent appointment as Director General, DG, Prof. Greg Ikechukwu Ibeh (APGA) Governorship Campaign Council (Abia State), my phone lines have been inundated with threat calls.
I refuse to be cowed by such death threats. Abia is my beloved state. I’ll remain a strong and unwavering voice in our collective quest to rescue Abia from the fangs of evil and retrogressive forces that have been the bane of Abia socio-political and economic growth and development.
Prof. Greg Ikechukwu Ibeh is here for the rescue.
Sir Longman Emeka Nwachukwu Esq, PhD
(DG Prof. Greg Ikechukwu Ibeh Governorship Campaign Council)
