Let Orji Kalu cry (Part 1)
A man’s self-worth is inviolable. He will sacrifice anything to preserve it. Bruise it and watch him act like a bull in a china shop.
This complexion probably bestows traction to the old wives’ tale that men do not or seldom cry. Do not be misled by their prodigiousness in smothering emotion. Men screech and dolorously too.
Though it spawned mixed reactions, sarcasm and commiseration, Senator Orji Kalu’s plangent shriek during the senate valedictory fortnight gave my outlook some verisimilitude.
No matter how we grasped his emotionalism (altruistic or egotistical), it defines the passengers to bystanders’ political status quo of the Igbo nation in present-day Nigeria.
Every right-thinking Igbo man should be grief-stricken watching Kalu weeping and beating his breast at the Red Chambers about inequity and conspiratorial contrivances against him by unnamed cabals that confined him to prison custody.
His show of defeatism portrays a bad omen for the Igbo nation. It indicates that our leaders have surrendered the initiative to their Northern/Southern counterparts and consequently lost political significance.
It is rightly so because virtually all Igbo political leaders owe their ascendancy and aristocracy to the northern oligarchy.
Senator Orji Kalu and President Bola Tinubu were elected governors of Abia and Lagos States on January 09, 1999, under the platforms of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) and Alliance for Democracy (AD) correspondingly.
Both showed political wittiness to wither the raging force of the Obasanjo-led Federal Government and Afenifere leaders to form their political parties, the Progressive Peoples’ Alliance (PPA) and Action Congress (AC) and enthroned their legatees to advance their political supremacies.
Whereas Tinubu was battling to keep Lagos under his clutch, Kalu’s PPA won the Abia and Imo States gubernatorial elections.
Before the 2003 general election, Senator Kalu wielded an enormous political influence enough for former President Obasanjo to ‘prostrate’ before him and some PDM colossuses to solicit re-election.
While Tinubu conquered and dominated the Southwest political landscape and eventually emerged as the President of Nigeria, Senator Kalu endured 12 years of doldrums and political oblivion to work his fingers to the bone to the Senate, thanks to Senator Mao Ohuabunwa’s insipid representation.
The distinction between these two politicians is their political ideologies. Whereas the former placed a premium on political egalitarianism, i.e., rewarding/investing in loyalty and granting autonomy to his associates, the latter fancied elitism, i.e., sentencing his allies to political servitude ad infinitum.
While the likes of former President Buhari, former Vice President Osinbajo, former governors/ministers, Babatunde Fashola, Rauf Aragbesola, Adams Oshiomole, and Fayemi, to mention a few, owe their political ascendancy and apogee to President Tinubu, OUK’s ended as commissioners and LG chairpersons that more often than not culminated in bitterness.
As customary to our Southeast governors, President Tinubu did not seek political superannuation at the Senate at the end of his tenure. He let it all hang out to prepare a formidable political dynasty that became a cynosure.
Tinubu’s dynasty has produced politicians of repute before whom our almighty OUK, revered as political Iroko, wailed like an inconsolable bereaved.
Stay in the know on Abia politics. Grab a copy of Don Norman Obinna’s ‘Raped & Enslaved: Era of Kleptocracy’.
