Typical of a political party that does nothing right and gets everything wrong, the All Progressives Congress, APC, finally announces its readiness to hold what it terms a “mega rally” in Abia state after postponing the said rally several times in the past due to unending internal wrangling and a fear of embarrassment it might suffer from the poor attendance that was obvious to be the lot of such a rally.
The same display of crass lack of ability to think things through is what has given APC the temerity to organize a political rally without gauging the mood of Ndi Abia in particular and that of Nigerians in general.
Pray, what manner of a political party is one which embarks on a rally to promote itself in a State where its leader sanctioned the round of tears, sorrow and blood visited on the good people of Abia only a few months ago under the guise of a wicked operation code-named Operation Python Dance II!
It is the height of insensitivity to the plight of Ndi Abia who are still traumatized by the unwarranted heavy movement of military hardware and use of highly sophisticated weapons deployed by the military under the APC-led federal government as if we were in a full scale war situation.
Many of the people affected by that exercise are yet to recover from its devastating effects, and the APC has not deemed it fit to either apologise for subjecting the people to such a tortuous path or even done anything to show remorse for it.
Rather, what they have chosen to do is to rub salt into the people’s injury by planning a carnival-like rally as if to tell Ndi Abia to go to blazes, and to remind them that they are a people conquered and eternally subjugated to the tyranny which the APC government has become everywhere they hold sway whether at the State or Federal level.
The situation was so bad that even the hypocritical and facile attempt to administer drugs on the people under a doubtful medical outreach got even children, youth and parents running helter skelter for safety as they saw the military under the APC led-federal government as a poisonous outfit from whom nothing good could come. All because the federal government unleashed official terror on the people!
Ndi Abia cannot forget in a hurry how schools were hurriedly closed not only in Abia but also in other States just to avoid any contact with the Commander-in-Chief’s servants who came in the name of a suspicious medical programme just shortly after attempting to obliterate the people.
Instead of APC to be humble and seek the people’s forgiveness, what they are doing is to boast so irresponsibly of how they would take over Abia at the next election as if Ndi Abia are their slaves who they can lord it over and dictate to whimsically and capriciously.
To further prove the callousness of the APC and the federal government, they do not give a hoot about the untold suffering which the people are passing through due to the lingering fuel scarcity that has refused to abate in Abia State. The queues at the filling stations are still so long that people waste useful man-hour trying to buy petrol.
By the time Buhari and his team would be dancing and making merry at their so called mega rally, a lot of Ndi Abia would be closing their businesses as they sweat it out at the petrol station while others would be undergoing therapy at different hospitals for Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) caused by the effects of Operation Python Dance II.
The question in all these circumstances is; are the APC goons going to Abia to mock them? Are they going in order to confirm if the hardship they created has finished off the people or not so they could inflict more? Or they are going to confirm if the indefatigable spirit of Ndi Abia has finally been conquered?
Whatever their true mission is, APC has proven to be wicked for contemplating such a fun-like rally at a time like this when the nation is yet to come to terms with the incessant killings of the innocent by Fulani herdsmen terrorists since the turn of the new year as has been more frequent and daring since the APC assumed power at the federal level.
A more sensitive and empathetic party would have used the time of the rally more productively if they truly love Nigerians by visiting the affected places and working to apprehend those behind the continued killing of fellow citizens without any hindrance.
Just on Thursday, January 4, women from Bende and Ahaba Imenyi in Isuikwuato local government area trooped in protest to the Abia State government house over the invasion of their farmlands by Fulani herdsmen who also sexually harass them without end.
Sadly, the APC-led federal government that has total and full control of all security apparatus of State has deliberately refused, neglected and or failed to apprehend the criminals or even challenge them at all be it in Abia, Enugu, Benue, Ekiti, Ondo, Adamawa, Taraba etc.
There are tears in the land; there is sorrow in the land; there is blood in the land, but what APC find fitting for such a time as this is a banal rally to remind all of us of all we are fighting strongly to forget.
It is obvious that this rally is taking place because the general elections are just around the corner, questions would be asked. This rally is meant to deflect those questions, albeit vainly.
But then, seeing the calibre of those who steer the wheels of APC in Abia State, one should not be surprised that the party is heading for the precipice starting with the planned rally. There is no party or association that would have characters like Orji Uzor Kalu, Uche Ogah and Chineye Ike and not self-destruct.
Orji Uzor Kalu laid the foundation for Abia’s political backwardness, economic impoverishment, social dysfunction and moral decadence of monumental proportion that successive administrations have battled to reposition the State to the path of progress and prosperity. Even the Bible says in Psalm 11:3 that “When the foundation is destroyed what can the righteous do?” Kalu destroyed Abia’s foundation but with God’s help, it shall be rebuilt. And that is what Okezie Victor Ikpeazu is doing!
Ndi Abia will not allow themselves to be taken for granted! They will not allow a man who has lost all his electoral value to impose a party of vindictiveness and sheer wickedness on them. Since he was given the rare privilege of leading them as governor and he frittered away that goodwill, Ndi Abia will never allow themselves to be dragged back to Egypt by Kalu and his band of choristers even if they are promised gold and diamond in one.
A man who lacks principles, Orji Kalu holds the unenviable record of jumping from one party to the other the highest number of times without achieving anything from the ‘jumpological’ exercise. Even the Progressive Peoples Alliance, PPA, which he founded, had to suspend him for the same reasons Ndi Abia have come to distrust him. He also holds the record of being the first founder of a party to be suspended by the same party!
It is a taboo that after all the hardship the APC has brought upon Ndi Abia, they would attend the rally. They will never! The plan of APC is to “import” thugs and miscreants from a neighbouring APC-led State to fill the rally ground and make it look like Ndi Abia attended it. They are good at such cosmetic arrangement but the message is clear: Abia is not for sale! Ndi Abia will not go back to Egypt!
No matter how much APC tries, it has lost its goodwill among the people of Abia and Abia will remain a PDP State. When APC wean themselves of those characters, then we can begin to consider them fit for a contest.
But for now, that planned rally of APC in the State is an exercise in mockery, ridicule, therefore preposterous and eventually futile!
By Jude Ndukwe
