Today, I would like to react to an article published by the online news journal www.247ureports.com. The article in question has the aforementioned title which was purportedly authored by one Onwubiko Emmanuel who claimed to be a writer, critic and an activist from Bende LGA of Abia State.

This article which from a very objective interpretation represents a public relations piece meant to praise the current governor of Abia State, Chief Theodore Orji, has attracted my interest particularly because of my strong suspicion that it may have been planted to confuse my readers because of the similarity in byline. Since it started running, I have been inundated by series of disturbing calls from persons who wanted to know if I am the person behind this work which more or less looked like a piece from the Abia State Ministry of Information or from an affiliated organ to the current state administration in Abia State.

I have struggled to distance myself from this piece but callers have persisted that I do a rejoinder to either raise alarm of possible cloning of my byline or to simply disclaim the piece and put it in its proper perspective since the so-called writer made claims of doing virtually the same work that I have done in the past decades.

Following some observations by my admirers, I have therefore decided to put the records straight by disclaiming this so-called article and to state that first of all, I am not from Abia State and secondly I have no reason under the sun to praise the Abia State governor whom by all accounts has failed spectacularly to deliver effective good governance to Abia State in the last seven years plus. It is also my wish to state clearly that I never commissioned any one to clone my byline with the surreptitious intent of confusing my good readers.

•RIGHTSVIEW appears twice a week on Wednesday and Saturdays, in addition to special appearances. The Columnist, popular activist Emmanuel Onwubiko, is a former Federal Commissioner of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission and presently National Coordinator of Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria (HURIWA).

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