- By Jude Ndukwe
Great People of Ngwaland, I bring you greetings!
I hear there are conspiracies by some people from other parts of the State to deny you your inalienable right to equity in the political arrangements of Abia State particularly as it concerns the governorship position. As one from the Old Bende political bloc, I admit, regrettably, that this is a very sad development.
I am even more saddened, that the anti-equity army in the State have very active and aggressive collaborators among you. This is also most unfortunate!
What the anti-equity promoters are not telling you is that the rest of Abia are watching you with keen interest, hoping that you would fall into the trap being deliberately set against you and your people by those belligerently opposing the Abia Charter of Equity, from your zone and outside it. In fact, they cannot wait for you to commit this error at the governorship election of the State, and perpetually use it against you, your children and children’s children in a way that neither you nor your posterity will ever recover from.
If, as Ngwa people, you don’t rally round one of your own at the forthcoming election, in respect and continued fulfilment of the Equity Charter, we will ask you the pertinent questions that will come back to haunt you for the rest of your lives: “When we acceded the governorship to you in the name of equity, were you able to defend it?”
Based on that, we will NEVER agree for power to come to you because when it did in 2015, you were so weak that you couldn’t defend and sustain it in 2019 as did Abia North and Abia Central when it was their turn.
Power is not given to weaklings. The Ngwa nation would have proved to be weaklings, the weakest, among other power blocs in the State, if you cannot rally yourselves to vote for your own son, your own very son, Dr Okezie Ikpeazu, for a second tenure, as did others for their own sons in 1999 & 2007, for Abia North, and in 2007 & 2011, for Abia Central, especially as it has become an unassailable fact that Governor Okezie Ikpeazu, as we have always prayed that successive governments should do better than the preceding ones, has performed and achieved far more than his two predecessors.
As one from Abia Central, Umuahia particularly, I am super proud of that singular achievement by Senator T. A. Orji, wherein, despite all pressures from powerful quarters to scuttle that Charter of Equity, as a brave and uncompromising Ibeku man, unwaivering in his beliefs and committed to his cause, he stood his ground and insisted that the right things must be done, and that is, continuing in the spirit of Equity as laid down by our founding fathers.
That achievement with its attendant numerous benefits to the State, makes Ochendo shine like a million star even beyond tomorrow.
To show their appreciation to him, the Ngwa axis of Abia Central voted massively for him at the last Senatorial election.
Is it then not disheartening that after showing him appreciation for his insistence on Equity, the same Ngwa people are allowing themselves to be swayed against the very fruit of 2015 Equity, the emergence of Dr Okezie Ikpeazu and his second tenure?
Without sounding too offish, if the Ngwa people cannot man up, stand their ground and prove that they are not weaklings, by ensuring they, as a nation, return Ikpeazu to office on Saturday, we will forever keep hushing them down and tell them to “shut up”, first learn to be ‘men’ and warriors in any sociopolitical and traditional gatherings of the State.
Sincerely, a people that can’t defend themselves and their rights neither deserve to be seen nor even heard when ‘men’ gather to discuss Abia State because if they fail to support Ikpeazu as a people, they end up discharging the rest of Abians from the enormous responsibilities and burdens of considering them for anything in the State, in the future, even if it is their right. Self survival is the first law of nature. Even in the animal kingdom, once a lion has been chased away from his marked and rightful territory, it is banished and can NEVER regain that territory until death. That is nothing selfish of other Abians to adopt should people of Ngwa fail to protect their “territory” on Saturday, it is just a natural phenomenon.
Before I’m accused of preaching ethnic politics, let me quickly say that this is not about ethnicity but equity, it is not about pettiness but fairness. What is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander. If 8 years each was good for Abia North and Abia Central, why should the case be different for Abia South?
O, great people, of Ngwaland, people of high intellectual capacity and enviable entrepreneurial spirit, who has bewitched you to believe that Equity no longer matters because it is your turn to enjoy its benefits for the greater good of the State?
Why do you listen to harbingers of falsehood and confusion who lampoon the federal government for not applying equity in its policies and actions only for them to turn around in Abia State to say equity doesn’t matter simply because they are afraid that by the time Ilpeazu finishes his second tenure with the way he is going, the Ngwa man would become and seen as Abia’s undisputable champion of good governance, growth and development for a very long time to come.
The choice to remain relevant in the scheme of things or become a perpetual object of ridicule in Abia State lies entirely in the hands of Ndi Ngwa. What they do with that choice will be known on Saturday.
While those of us from other zones of the State will keep working for the entrenchment of the State’s Charter of Equity in the spirit of fairness and justice, Ngwa people must know that it is the owner of the load who must first bend down to carry his load before expecting others to join in lifting it up for him.
Ndi Ngwa, oge eruola! It is time to prove that the convenient label of your people as pushovers belong in the distant past!
Saturday beckons!
– Chief Sir Jude Ndukwe KSJI, Ochomma Oha 1 of Okwulaga Afaraukwu
