By Oguwike Nwachuku
Writing on, “Together we can reclaim and redeem Nigeria” in the introduction to the book: Remaking Nigeria: Sixty Years, Sixty Voices, which he edited, Chido Onumah, journalist, author and rights activist summed up his view with a thought-provoking advice that is not only instructive, but reminds us all that nation building is a collective responsibility.
“We must end the blame game and get involved in the quest to reclaim and remake Nigeria,” writes Onumah.
Often times, commentaries that have the greatest impact on the audience are delivered in lucid words devoid of hate innuendos. Unfortunately, not every commentator has that gift, because many are called but few are chosen.
Onumah demonstrates mastery of commentary with that pay-off summary and needless to say that whether contained in a book, newspaper or magazine as essay, pieces delivered in such manner make much impact on the readership.
Could it be because Onumah holds a PhD in Communication and Journalism and so understands clearly how to better weave together people’s thoughts and grievances, no matter how delicate, to achieve commensurate result for a better society?
If you have seen the book in question, you would be convinced that Onumah set the tone on how the rest 60 contributors, plus Dr. Kayode Fayemi, the Ekiti State Governor who wrote the Forward, “Unfinished Greatness: Towards More Perfect Union in Nigeria” espoused their ideas.
The reference to Onumah is instructive here if the essay by Obi Nwakanma in his column: The Orbit in Sunday Vanguard, September 19, 2021, is anything to go by.
For those who do not know, Nwakanma teaches English and Creative writing at the University of Central Florida as a professor. Like Onumah, he is also a journalist and poet and has used his works to “influence” many people.
Yours sincerely reads him often. But in all my years of reading Nwakanma’s writings, I have not been as disappointed as I was going through his piece – Buhari Commissions a gutter in Owerri – published a fortnight ago
From all intents and purposes, the piece was not only written with malice and hate, but completely lacking in any good intention by the author. It oozed emotions, sentiments, fiction, politics and outright disrespect for the Number one citizen of our country and that of Imo State.
Nwakanma simply sat down to deliberately castigate, deride and denigrate the reputation of the Governor of Imo State, Dist. Senator Hope Uzodimma and that of President Muhammadu Buhari.
If you read the essay in question, you would not need anyone to tell you Nwakanma’s passion to use the space for his column to discredit Governor Uzodimma and President Buhari on the Presidential working visit to Imo State regardless of the gains recorded. And there are many of them as many well-meaning Nigerians have acknowledged, except those who are blind and delighted in propagating hate speech like Nwakanma.
Nobody says Nwakanma should not comment on issues, but when he willfully comments from where he appears, feeding his unsuspecting audience with disinformation and outright falsehood the way he did recently, then the credibility of his column becomes suspicious.
Let us do a minor evaluation of the propaganda that preceded President Buhari’s visit to Imo.
First was the heightened insinuation engineered by the opposition that President Buhari won’t come to Imo because the place was not conducive, security wise, for him to do so.
To achieve that ill- conceive purpose, they invested resources in disseminating information on all available media platform at their disposal, using adherents of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) to threaten Imolites and other visitors who were desirous of being part of the historic presidential visit.
On realising that the propaganda had died on arrival, they resorted to yet another devilish scheme; that President Buhari was visiting Imo to give teeth to the RUGA programme. Again, it turned out to be a barefaced lie that lacked the potency to drown the reality of the reason President Buhari actually came to Imo.
The second propaganda was that there were no projects to commission. We heard it on good authority that proponents of this propaganda spent huge money on acclaimed rain makers in Imo to cause the heavens to open on the eve and day President Buhari was to visit.
But God, the Architect of the universe, the one who sends and retains rain at will put them to shame. Today, they are at loggerheads with the so-called rain makers trying to retrieve, howbeit in futility, the money they spent on them to embarrass President Buhari and Governor Uzodimma.
To their shame, the President successfully landed at the Sam Mbakwe International Cargo Airport to a rousing reception meant for only Presidents and from there proceeded to commission the Naze/ Ihiagwa/Nekede/Obinze link road abandoned for more than 20 years.
The road links two foremost tertiary institutions in the state – Federal University of Technology, Owerri and Federal Polytechnic, Nekede as well as four large communities spanning two local government areas.
President Buhari also beheld the 2.5km underground balloon driven tunnel at Dick Tiger road conceived to check flooding in Owerri metropolis before proceeding to the Egbeada By-pass road (now Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu Way) to also commission it.
“I am here to see what the governor is doing and from what I have seen, he has been working very hard. I believe in what he has been doing because his vision is in tandem with my own vision which is to provide infrastructure and safe environment for economic development,” the President said at Egbeada.
The fourth critical project President Buhari commissioned before he departed Imo unscathed contrary to the wish of the opponents and their agents like Nwakanma was the Imo State Executive Chambers, a brand new state of the art edifice to replace a 40 year old dilapidated, outdated structure that lacks modern gadgets.
The third propaganda that also failed was that President Buhari would not be received by anyone (that is, those who matter in Igbo land). But lo and behold, the crème la de crème in the South East, who Nwakanma would describe as geriatric gathering, were on hand to put a lie to all that.
A critical examination of Nwakanma’s piece revealed a magnification of the opposition orchestrated propaganda as enunciated above.
In knocking President Buhari and Governor Uzodimma for defying the premeditated stay-at-home order to achieve the aim of the presidential visit, Nwakanma also descended too low to describe the projects that were commissioned as a “scam” and the technology that produced the underground balloon tunnel in particular, as “a worthless piece of engineering.”
His conjured mindset led him to what the President adorned to Imo forgetting, unfortunately, that if today he approaches his kinsmen at Umuhu Okwuato in Aboh Mbaise Local Government Area of Imo State with his dreadlocks looks, there is the likelihood many of them would scamper for safety since that is not their culture. But we all know that the hood does not make the monk.
From every indication, Nwakanma appears far detached from the reality and from the people he claims to be writing in their interest.
Many Imolites are in agreement that only a leader like Governor Uzodimma with political will could have embarked on the ambitious project like underground balloon tunnel given the amount of money required to execute it when juxtaposed with the meager resources that is available to the state.
If Nwakanma had taken his time to ask informed persons in his community the proper questions rather than relying on hearsay and the figment of his own imagination, he would have been told that even the most rabid opposition critics in Imo have applauded the underground balloon tunnel project as a big relief from the menace of flood in Owerri.
A tunnel that is 2.5km long, 1.8m diameter and 0.9- 11.5m deep and takes flood water on the Dick Tiger/ Chukwuma Nwoha/Ihechiowa/Aladimma/Relief Market roads, into Otanmiri River cannot be a scam.
Like the others commissioned by President Buhari, the tunnel is not a project embarked on by Governor Uzodimma for fun. All are well thought out for their utmost impact on the state’s economy and on the people.
In no time, the second tunnel to discharge flood waters from the Akwakuma/Egbeada/Alvan Ikoku axis into the Nworie River would be in place. The idea being to rid the Imo State capital, Owerri, completely of perennial flooding that adversely affects commerce and real estate.
These are the kind of facilities Nwakanma enjoys in far away Orlando, Florida in the United States of America, where he resides and feels good to ply his trade, but would knowingly condemn them because he does not like the face of Governor Uzodimma and President Buhari.
Nwakanma called the core of Igbo leadership (including the intelligentsia) who sat in audience with the President as old, worn-out, ancient lots without followers.
Obviously, he was referring to the likes of Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, Gen. Roland Ogbonna, Gen. Ike Nwachukwu, Gen. Azubuike Ihejirika, Prof. George Obiozor, Prof. Anya O. Anya, His Royal Majesty, the Obi of Onitsha, Alfred Nnaemeka Achebe, among numerous others.
None of them is as old as Pa Ayo Adebanjo, the leader of the pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organization, Afenifere, who is above 90 years and yet is respected by his kinsmen, including the highly lettered, to provide direction for the Yoruba nation. To Nwakanma, the old men in Igboland are worthless for meeting with President Buhari. Sad indeed!
If it is not sacrilegious for him to describe the gathering of such Igbo leadership drawn from the best of professions and vocations to interface with President Buhari on his visit with regard to the position of the Igbo in the project Nigeria, then I don’t know what is.
To also say that Nwakanma has consistently demeaned the Supreme Court of Nigeria whose landmark ruling brought Governor Uzodimma into office is to say the least about how he hides behind his finger to do mischief.
He finds it convenient to condemn Nigeria’s Supreme Court, an institution in his home country that works to deepen democracy and foster rule of law, but respects the same institution that does virtually the same thing in the U.S. where he resides.
Everybody craves for institutional and infrastructural development in Nigeria as key to achieving part of the socio-economic and political stability we find in the organised societies like the U.S. where Nwakanma checked out in the 1990s to take cover in the name of green pasture. I am sure he also craves for such.
But it rankles that his own sermon for institutional and infrastructural development back home is more in lip service than in reality going by his blanket condemnation of critical projects built with Imo tax-payers money by Governor Uzodimma as a way of taking the people out of abject poverty.
No doubt, President Buhari is not in the mould of leaders who junket from one place to another. He hardly does. But because Governor Uzodimma was involved, the President did. He had expressed overwhelming joy over the galaxy of Igbo leaders who turned up to receive him despite covert and overt attempts to scuttle the trip with IPOB sit-at-home order.
Describing the President’s hosts so pejoratively with the stroke of pen does not make Nwakanma more Igbo than any of us. His views are also not better cherished than theirs. Again, it reminds one of Onumah’s: “We must end the blame game and get involved in the quest to reclaim and remake Nigeria.”
Like the legendry Fela Anukulapo Kuti would say: “Teacher don’t teach me nonsense.”
– Oguwike Nwachuku, Chief Press Secretary/ Media Adviser to Governor Uzodimma writes from Owerri.