- Eberekpe Ogho
I am sure and so certain so that the Chief Whip of the Nigerian Senate, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu – right now his heart bleeds with tears over the recent happenings in the political setting of his country.
There is no denying the fact, though he may be carrying a bold and determined face. The bull he is and must be. But if he does weep, for whom? Definitely and certainly not for himself-he weeps for all o us, those of us who still have our conscience intact and unsoiled. He weeps for us. He shed tears for the injustice that slaps us all day in and out daily in the face that always gives heed to alternative say and action. He weeps.
He cries for the supposedly equity far yonder, supposedly near but never any near. His heart begs the question for the quest for that particular fairness still in search to unify a country so far apart with all the pretention that it is solidly held together by the best of glues. He weeps.
And the tears from his weeping became ocean full when a respected elder-so much so respected by the Chief Whip himself had the temerity to tag him the betrayer of the century of a region he continues to hold dearest to his heart.
What an accusation that should not have come from him where silence would have been glorified in a situation that tries to be without succeeding.
Chief Orji Uzor Kalu, the betrayer? A tall accusation, indeed! Chief Edwin Clark does not know him well enough, then; Kalu does not betray a cause; he is naturally a loyalist.
We shall come to Edwin Clark in a jiffy, but again, that his accusation. It says something; that Orji Uzor Kalu is the rallying point of a people, indeed he is. If he were not, the like of Edwin Clark and the beehive of comments that continue to greet Kalu’s renouncement of the presidential race of his country would no have hit the roof.
Even Clark saw in him what his feverish believers see in him. He is a reliable force to be reckoned with.
Back to Edwin. Credit should go his way, nevertheless, as one of the voices that campaigned that the presidential slot should go to the southeast. But not enough credit, nonetheless, because his voice count for nothing as an elder who cannot be relied upon as one of those who only speak because they want to be heard and not because their opinions count for anything. True, Edwin’s voice and opinions are the stench of a country.
As a proud son of Uvwie, Chief Edwin Clark would have been excused and pardoned from not been called names, because in Uvwie we do not call our elders names, even when we know they have many names, unfortunately, the art of writing and journalism defy all culture of convention-Chief Edwin Clark only succeeded in making himself a nuisance, which he definitely is. He is a nuisance, has always been.
The simple reason that he simply refused to understand or he has simply forgotten the situational conditions that define his country’s polity. Kalu understands the situations quite well and he has no other choice than to play it instead of violating them to further compound the already chaotic situation Nigeria is.
We just may pardon some youths that it did not go down well with when Kalu opted not to pursue his presidential ambition not to lead the country; we just may understand, but how does one comprehend the outburst of Edwin Clark who should have known better? Did he expect Kalu to go to war with the situations and determinations that hold the country to a political nausea?
Edwin Clark should go to war, not Kalu, certainly. Edwin Clark with all the force of might would have summoned his legions and query the slide of the country, that in the slant makes up the country’s polity, he is a formidable part of the gross betrayal of a people because, he, as the others as he, he only speaks in political parables and allegories, which at the end of the day he and his like stand only to benefit.
No, Kalu did not betray the Southeast by jettisoning his presidential ambition by giving his support to the Senate President, Lawan, who is from the Northeast of the country is; it is just the way it is, the country, the party and the configuration, which he cannot change, because by doing so would amount to the disquiet everywhere in the country, especially the Southeast, the same Kalu is doing everything possible to quieten.
Kalu is sixty-two, and at sixty-two you do not become a bag of noises and confusion where ideas should thrive and prevail.
Back in the day to this instance one thing has always been clear about the Chief Whip of the Senate-ideology must to prevail against the odds and stupidity of violence.
That Kalu is said by Edwin Clark to have betrayed the Southeast is a statement of antagonism to instigate the people of that region to pitch tent against him, but the Southeast people should know better who the betrayers and hypocrites are and they must refused to be hoodwinked into an old man’s acts and failings for himself and country. Edwin Clark remains a hypicritical nuisance.
It was Mario Puzo in The Godfather who posited, Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment. If Edwin Clark is on a mission to create some enemies, forgetting the situational landscape of his country, Kalu would not fall into his trap to start hating to becloud his judgement of serving his people, as he has always done.
It is the twenty-first century, and wars and battles should be executed and won on the turf of ideology and practical understanding on the reality on ground, and not by creating enemies where none should exist.
And Kalu has been in that forefront to date; those who labelled him a betrayer are in a hurry thereby forgetting this fact:
That Kalu has been “involved with the Njiko Igbo Movement, whose purpose is to help secure the presidential seat for a Nigerian citizen of Igbo extraction; an Igbo has only held the position of a head of state for six months since Nigeria’s independence.
That the movement has branches and support groups throughout the diaspora.
That Kalu launched the organization together with former Nigerian Senator Emmanuel Onwe, a human rights advocate and lawyer earlier based in the United Kingdom.”
But they forget too soon.
They forget also too soon that Kalu formed a political party, the PPA; all these for the ideological recognition of the Igbo person of Nigeria in the mainstream politics of the country.
They forget.
The only thing they want to remember is that he goes to war and instigate millions of souls to do battle against the virtue of the benevolence of the beauty of ideology such that at the end of the day more than three million lives would be terminated at their prime and lost creating yet a narrative by some moron to drum it into our ears that there was no Victor no Vanquish.
The lie, because in the long run we would know who the Victors are and who the Vanquished represents.
Or they want to remember him only if he goes the Nnamdi Kanu way-whose gut must be admired nevertheless for pursuing his conviction, that conviction we all know- by setting the turfs on fire.
Kalu would not go either way because he must continue to maintain and equip himself with the words of Sue Monk Kidd, in The Secret Life of Bees that “If you need something from somebody always give that person a way to hand it to you.”
Not through violence but through ideological principles, which Kalu’s path is tailored.
Though people would ask: In the nonsense and madness of rotational and zoning arrangements where the Northeast was chosen why not the Southeast first and later the Northeast?
People would ask also: Would fairness and justice and equity ever go the way of the Southeast when the time eventually arrives, and by then, would Kalu still be interested in his political quest to lead the country, because by then he would have been seventy years?
And people would ask yet again: Why are we so different and apart in this country and we continue to live in fear and distrust of a certain group of people in a country that preaches unity?
Kalu would weep even more and deeply and the tears would form a sword that seemingly tears his heart apart and asunder, but he must always live with and in the conviction that the possibility of being vanquished is foreseeable and it must never be attempted, instead, the path of ideology be toed, because according to Sun Tzu, in The Art of War: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”.
Edwin Clark and those social media rats who call Kalu a betrayer must know these: “Diplomacy is the velvet glove that cloaks the fist of power”. Robin Hobb, and, “Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy”. Isaac Newton.
These are some facts the Southeasterners must recognize while they allow Kalu to weep over the betrayals of the Southwest, the Southsouth, the North and even the Northeast…
