SERIES OF QUESTIONS & LEADERSHIP. Part 3 The senseless distribution of Abia state budget You were elected Governor and subsequently re-elected. The governorship is a full time job. But that was not the way you saw it. For you, it was a part time job, a platform to expand your fledging business empire, SLOK, using the time and resources of Abia State. So while the fortunes of Abia state were dwindling under you, the fortunes of your SLOK business empire was expanding exponentially. While in office, you set up an airline, SLOK AIRLINE. You set up a bank, First International Bank, Gambia. When you attended board meetings of the bank in the Gambia, Abia state government usually paid your bills and the ecstacode of the officials in your entourage. You set up a shipping line. You set up an insurance company, while a plethora of companies fronted for you in the construction business. You increased your equity in the defunct Hallmark Bank Plc. You set up a newspaper, The Sun and also applied for a license to set up a bank in Nigeria. Meanwhile, the State owned Newspaper, the Ambassador, was deliberately allowed to vegetate. You didn’t build any housing estate. Meanwhile the only one which the military government had established, the Ehimiri Housing Estate, you acquired a lot of units for your personal use. For 8 years, you built virtually nothing in Abia state, not even an office to work from or a residence to live in: And yet you built a palatial mansion, fit for a Saudi King, in your village, just 20 kilometres from Government House! It has guest chalets, 72 rooms, the large lecture hall, larger than the main hall of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), the tennis courts, the various swimming pools, the 22-hole golf course, the land you mapped out for the proposed aerodrome (to land small gulf stream jets) the orchard, e.t.c, One question that kept ringing in my mind that day was not where you got the money from (the answer was quiet obvious) rather it was, “so you know how to build befitting structures and you didn’t build even a lodge for the governor of Abia State?” OUK, I am still curious: why? Was it an act of wickedness or plain selfishness? Did you nurse a psychological hatred for Abia and her people? What did our people do wrong by you? How could you, a young man – given such a wonderful opportunity – so crassly abuse it? How could you have treated Abia as war booty? A)All the contracts in many of the Ministries were executed by the companies belonging to your brother and your mother. B) She nominated all the commissioners and managed all the contracts. C) Choice real estate in Umuahia and Aba, were allocated to your family or interests representing them. D) And yet, when Governor T.A took over, you wanted that regime to continue. You asked him to cede the Abia State Government-owned General Hospital in Umunanto, the only one in the zone, to you to serve as the teaching hospital of your proposed SLOK University of Technology. E) A judicial panel of inquiry recently concluded an inquiry into the disappearance of the Goss Printing Machine purchased by your predecessor, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu for The Ambassador newspaper. It is alleged that a former top Govt. official spirited it out of government warehouse in Ahiaeke to Lagos, where it is being used to print a certain tabloid. I remember that the panel summoned you, but you declined to appear. I ask: do you know anything about the missing printing press? I also understand that it is part of the charges the EFCC arraigned you for. G) One of your last projects was to become a Papal knight. Well, you are allegedly a Catholic and know the rules. So which wife will you present? Ifeoma.....your mother? I am concerned. H)ouk has houses in Lagos, Aba, Umuahia, Igbere, Abuja, Dubai, Charlotte (USA), Maryland, (USA) London and South Africa; all of them residential! Yet he sleeps in one room! I) this smacks of a trend of a serial looter, an abuser of public office and an aggrandizer! J) One of your many pRoblems you have is that you don’t make a distinction between the public and private. As governor, you abdicated the duties for which Abia people hired you, and instead leveraged on the position to build your personal financial empire. K) Ouk, you set up The Sun Newspaper in 2001 and you shamelessly and recklessly used your office to market the newspaper. You forced all state Government owned ministries, parastatals, institutions, locagovernments, e.t.c to place regular advertisements in it. You harassed government agents, contractors, counter parties, banks and other institutions, to patronize it. L) In 2003 after your re-election, You were angry and queried anyone who didn’t place their congratulatory adverts in The Sun. M) you once aspired to contest for the Presidency. It was a general consensus that as President of Nigeria, you would convert NNPC into a subsidiary of SLOK Group! N) recall the early years of the Babangida administration when a certain “upstart” presented a letter allegedly signed by Gen Sani Abacha to Governor Amadi Ikwechegh on the strength of which he was appointed the chairman of the Cooperative and Commerce Bank (CCB). Subsequently, it emerged that the letter was a forgery. DHQ tongue-lashed Ikwechegh who promptly nullified the appointment thereby making you the shortest serving Chairman of a bank in the world. O) remember a certain youngster who was surreptitiously admitted into Government College Umuahia in the 70′s as the alleged son of the famous Nnanna Kalu P)remember The story of the pugnacious Maiduguri-based businessman who cut pieces of paper and mixed them up with naira notes and announced a huge donation at the Borno State Public Appeal Fund Lunch. Q) You are angry with Abia State University for withdrawing your B.Sc (Hons) Political Science certificate. Please tell me, what would a reasonable institution do regarding that odious episode? Is it right that a Visitor to a University would enrol in the final year class of the same University, more than a decade after dropping out from another university, write exams and expect to be examined objectively by the same lecturers who depend on him for their salaries and career advancement? R) there have been intense speculations in Abia over who actually wrote that exam, including the final year project. S) It is wrong and unconscionable for you to set up newspapers to launder your image, turning a national newspaper into a personal album and turning otherwise respectable professionals into attack dogs. No Publisher has done that in the history of the media in Nigeria. A friend of man keeps count of how many times your agenda makes the THE SUN and the ailing NEW TELEGRAPH. No other publisher so abuses his newspaper. Indeed, you have no sense of propriety. How can you devote two newspapers to attack your successor in office regularly? T) In normal circumstances, no editor would accept what you are doing, especially this idea of a column being ghosted in your name weekly. What is that! You have corrupted the profession. Now you want to be President of NPAN? U) Your first son (the one outside wedlock) will soon marry and you will become a grand pa. All these gra gra, what is it in aid of? You will soon be a grand father... Act like one! No government in Abia State, now or in the future, should so indulge you again. You have made enough from the system. Something should be left for the people of Abia State. Abia is not a vassal of the Kalu family! Keep a look out for part 4. You blood will congeal....
Posted on: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 07:06:54 +0000
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