Reminiscences! It ought to have been from politics to governance now, since the last vestiges of the campaign – posters, banners and billboards – have been removed. Gone are the street acrobatic shows, the town hall meetings, the throbbing rallies and the hot beer parlour arguments on the trace and track that got Senator Hope Uzodinma and Hon Emeka Ihedioha legally embattled and attendant broken heads and bloody noses of their respective fanatical supporters. The prize have been won and lost.

But that is not to be with some perfect chameleons of Ihedioha’s extraction. Within and

beyond Imo, they have been throwing brickbats on the government of Imo State, not necessarily attacking any debatable point, but viciously slashing the personality of the governor into shreds and daring anybody to raise a finger of protest against such fiendish acts. Why? Uzodinma caused Ihedioha, their political star to lie doggo in the dust.

The vision and mission of His Excellency, Governor Hope Uzodinma and his dream team are from all indications too cosmic, pursuant on the dawn of “A-New Imo” anchored on Rehabilitation, Reconstruction and Recovery (R3) to be interrupted by trivialities and unnecessary press war. Yet, these mercenary hirelings who refused to, as directed by Uzodinma, hold him by his words and read his lips, have been firing randomly all cylinders. Day-by-day, they get both the social and conventional media awash with excoriations and bitter recriminations, pelting the governor with various epithets in the very negative, by implications distracting him from upholding and propagating a glorious future as against the debasing ghost of our immediate past.

Opposition is a promoter and catalyst of good governance, but let it be within the permissible limits of political decorum. We must refrain from political speeches coded with envenoms, unguided utterances and ghost words that intend to create false impression and generate fabricated fallacies all in the name of justifying the solidarity of followership, if not for the hatchet money paid that ran into hundreds of millions during the Supreme Court battle between Uzodinma and Ihedioha.

As concerned observers, most of us were in the know, how much the man leading the media war through Vanguard Newspaper collected. And when the Supreme Court validated the election of Uzodinma as authentic governor of Imo State, how the said columnist rose from his seat with deliberate slowness to belie his anxiety, filliped his fingers, strained the ears, robbed his palms together and showed them to the firmament of heaven, and got lost in thought. He was in a fix.

Too quickly for the eyes to follow, long streaks of lightening cracked the clouds angrily.

His gestures must have inflamed the wrath of heaven, for his acts barely concealed the spitefulness in his heart. He had no choice than to scamper away.

I captured the scenario from a distance of a closest approach. He never took cognizance of me. Recall, he it was, who lampooned and lambasted the then eight-month old Governor Ihedioha for not appointing him the Information and Strategy Commissioner but, instead, appointed “an illiterate”, in his language.

On the project of the coming of Emeka Ihedioha, figuratively, he has so to speak, gracefully sowed his tears and invested his sorrow and was loaded with money to galvanize some certain degrees of public sympathy for the cause of Ihedioha. Perhaps, he could not evenly distribute the money the expected never came in receipt of any funding, very much known to his principal.

In a bid to curry a pious act as to place his principal in his debt (he forgets his principal rarely forgives any wrong-doing against him, let alone an intentional one at that) with a creeping absence of civility, he has been of irreverent twist, casting aspersions on Imo State Government. Is he providing some spectacular grandeur of crown for his principal or is he suffused in the ideal of personal vain glory? Should a man with a small anus swallow a cherry (udara) seed? It is a mistake bound to leave a major blight on the anus.

My brother in question is not in a frame of mind to learn from proverbs and parables that

conduce to our general mores and values. He is a nightmare to those whose mandates are pilfered. In his write-up of last Thursday in Vanguard, there were moments of flights that left the reader agape in wonderment. Against the matrix, I situate my conviction that his constructs are fabricated concepts for a purpose, and never objective. I advise readers to always go through his write-ups with some caution and within the ambit of applicable limits.

He is not alone in his portal’s fetters of error. They are up to four, consequent upon their legendary principal descent. They are staggered in Vanguard, Sun, The Nation and ThisDay from where now and then, they unleash their fiery darts against the government of Imo State. One of them is from Abia State and writes for Vanguard. In his public twisted and bent journalism, he refrains from bringing to public domain, the events and happenings in Abia State, a remote place at the extreme of east of Niger where up to this moment, his people live in a condition of mindlessness, barbering without laws and morality, worshipping and observing rites of sacrifice for the gods.

No wonder, he supplicates for his head, the central organ of the human anatomy loosely translated to stand guard as the surname depicts. I charge him to rise above pettiness in the discharge of his profession. He should think in the reflexive manner and avoid thoughtless activity, which is the antithesis of the intellect by unjustly picking on Imo State government. If you search arm-deep into their respective bags (Imo State Print snipers) you are bound to encounter murky waters of political emphemerality, which shall soon run dry and the bags flung far into the abyss by the hindering factor of money to finance the professional misconduct against the Imo Government. Has Onwa Oyoko not blocked leakages?

By the way, what do they have against Imo State government? I mean the three of them from Imo and one from Abia State?

(a)They are up to this eleventh hour bemoaning the victory of Uzodinma against Ihedioha at the Supreme Court.

(b) They charge the governor of not being prudent, shrewd, practical and swift in development governance.

(d) That he has refused to look the other way, remain kind, gentle and charitable to his predecessors’ doctrine of mischief (Okorocha and Ihedioha) by accepting sharp practices and corruption as public etiquette.

(e) They challenge him to give a spotlight of his 100 days achievements, etc.

Granted, I am not the governor’s spokesman, but I am in the know. So, here they are, simple but honest answers:

They should stop praising what is lost, otherwise shall be making remembrance so dear. They should brace up, Onwa Oyoko remains the governor till 2023, or is it 2024? When it is said Ihedioha left no money, should Uzodinma be prudent, shrewd and swift over nothingness? Imo Assembly is stable and there is no uncertainty phase of the great protest in the state over Uzodinma’s policies. Has silence ceased being consent? What is the spelling of acceptability?

On Uzodinma, their envy evokes the refrain from American writer H.L Meneken, who wrote: “The haunting fear that someone somewhere may be happy.” Hence, what is left for them is a smear campaign. From mainstreamers, they are now “main screamers.” The rot is deep, according to the governor’s 100 days speech. Imo accounts are in a mess and the treasury leaked damagingly because of grand larceny (stealing). This must be tackled with requisite zestfulness. We charge the governor to recover the loots at his earliest convenience. Much was spent and is being spent to discredit the Imo State government. Confession is good for the soul and forgiveness purifies the heart. Let the media foot-soldiers of Ihedioha convert the accuracy of my facts into figments of imaginations. Meanwhile, our money please, they should be recouped.

On the achievements of the governor’s 100 days in office, for want of space, they should read his address last Monday, a week ago. Solomon’s injunction in Proverb 26: 5 says: “Give a silly answer to a silly question and the one who asked it will realize that he is not as clever as he thinks.”

My questions for readers and critics, because two wrongs cannot make a right, is: How come 100 days in the life of a people, in terms of opposition, we have never learnt from our mistakes and misfortunes, hence each time, we came falling with heavier thud than before? How come, we have given politics ugly name and notion? Is politics now akin to endless bullfighting, a bloody, gladiatorial contest for power and prestige? Could it be the more sinister and darkly the better, hence the only possible way to achieve our purpose in an environment that swarms of all sorts of characters?

Let Uzodinma be!

It is the height of irresponsibility to make snide remarks and crack coarse jokes about

our governor. Let political arrogance and statements that undermine or assault the sensitivity of Imo Government be stopped forthwith. No matter how they prattle and boast of the political gravity of their principal, he is a creature of history and sits in the limbo, till next dispensation.

If you walk the streets of Owerri, the state capital or ply the alleys of Orlu or peer into rooms in Okigwe today, one thing will riff through conversations: How did Ihedioha happen? Yet, eight months ago, if you walked similarl routes and crannies of Imo State, the question would have been cast in a syntactic reverse: Why and how could Ihedioha not happen? That is one of the ironies and lessons of democracy. Ihedioha’s apologists are on their arrogant roll, the blue blood in a developed royalty.

They bask in controversy like reptiles out of water in high noon. It does not matter in what hue or in whose company you find them. (One of them worked for Okorocha). They are ready to square up to the next guy, on behalf of our enduring peacock. They are also the very chameleon of interest. Whether as lackeys, bureaucrats, protégés, master or turncoats, they are not afraid to stake claims and are always smoking for fights like snakes backed into corners. They may strike and may even be stricken. But boredom is the last emotion you feel with these men of Napoleonic ego.

Sometimes, theirs are not about the morality or justice. They are about the fight once the deal is handsomely bankrolled; the theatrics of the brickbat are hurled. They are engaged with the gusto of marksmen. They shoot but do not always hit their targets. Hitting the target is not important, if by merely shooting they set all the birds aflutter and screaming for shelter. As subversive cynics, they ply phases of metamorphoses. Not many crave for an act in their evolving histrionics.

Not that they are so blessed with the thespian assiduity of accomplished beauties. But they do know how to work their target to their own frenzy. Most times they make gaffes, but do not regret them. They are wont to setting the fire on the roof-top, figuratively speaking, and they will jubilate in quiet mischief as everyone in the house scampers like a hare. They are capable of any emotion and, as such, capable of any betrayal of unveiling the seedy underside of even their mentor and godfather.

From their role as lackeys, we know how people moved up in government. From their serial betrayals, we understand that playing the harlot is the way to gains. As masters, they made people work for them and that, ironically, is how you command loyalists even if you are not one yourself.

As known critics and “revolutionaries,” they are trying to come full cycle. They are telling us that they can reveal and revel in the rottenness of our system, they being part of it. They know how to game the system, draw attention to themselves, laugh at us and still sleep well at night. From their ongoing war of attrition with the system, they have shown that you can move from being an establishment mainstay to a nemesis of the system. We need no more of them.

They are perfect chameleons, who forget we know them that we are not all gullible and cannot be duped by falsehood. “Gentlemen,” truthful and fair journalism remain the fad.

To Imo State Government, travel in thought. Capture what mother tick told its children.

According to certain African folklore, mother tick, the wizened matriarch of the the blood-sucking specie of mites is said to have told her little ones: “Stay quiet and lie low my children, whatever is heated up would eventually grow cold.”

Between the governor and his critics, time will tell.

Iyke Ibe writes from Owerri and can be reached on 07030605544

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