BY COLLINS UGHALAA#
It is surprising that after a period of one month, Senator Ifeanyi Araraume, through his spokesman, Awurum Darlington, and one Prince Chinyochaobi, managed to come up with a kindergarten response to my article of August 25, 2017, titled: Araraume’s attack on Okorocha: a joint venture gone sour.
The level of poor writing and use of gutter language in the replies have exposed their crass ignorance on governance processes. Therefore, I am going to offer them brief free tutorial on projects and governance.
Projects don’t spring up from one’s head, unless one is talking about the kind of brick and mortar projects the APC government in Imo State parades. This is the kind of project Araraume understands. But if we must talk about very serious projects that would have great impact on the life of the people, such as the Oguta Wonder Lake project, Araraume ought to have known that such project must first be conceptualized, then the feasibility study follows. This is also followed by the Environmental Impact Assessment study, then getting the community to buy in to the project. And of course, you must source funds for the project. These take some time and they don’t happen by command or wishful thinking.
No matter the kind of story Araraume wants to tell Imo people now, everyone in the state, including the illiterate farmers and petty traders in the rural communities, knows that Araraume is Rochas and Rochas is Araraume. Apart from being in the same APC, they are the same, and the mandate Okorocha is running now belongs to the two of them. Otherwise, all the benefits Araraume has got, including land allocations, his appointment, appointment of his son as Commissioner for Commerce and Industry and two other federal appointment slots, would not have come by. He can, therefore, not extricate himself from Rochas.
Araraume’s replies is part of his fruitless efforts to extricate himself from Rochas, but Imo people are not fools. And bringing Ohakim into their elementary narrative further shows how infantile they have become. This is because, in their first article in August, they had exonerated Ohakim on the Oguta Wonder Lake project, acknowledged that he handed over more than N13b to them in an interest yielding account, and queried Gov Okorocha on the whereabouts of the money. Coming up one month after to describe the same Oguta Wonder Lake project as billboard project shows the level of deception in them and how hard Araraume is working to extricate himself from Rochas.
By the way, the issue of Ohakim’s billboard projects has become an over used cliché and it has become infantile. It shows that while Araraume wants to contest election in the present, he is living in the past. The billboard projects propaganda no longer holds any attraction to Imo people, because they are meaningless.
Those exposed to the workings of the Nigeria Stock Exchange know that the NSE is not a Father Christmas and cannot release fund for any billboard projects.
I hope that Araraume understands the theory of collective responsibility. If he does not know he should make good effort to know, because he needs it.
Imo people know that Okorocha and Araraume are the two kingpins running the state. If you wined and dined with someone, rode in the same vehicles and campaigned together and you begged Imo people to vote for him, if you take benefits from the government, you cannot extricate yourself from that government. Araraume should take 70% blame for whatever Okorocha has done, because anything Okorocha has done will rob off on him and anything he does will rob off on Okorocha.
Imo people have learnt their hard lessons and they cannot be deceived any more. They know that Okorocha’s plan B is Araraume’s plan A and Okorocha’s plan A is Araraume’s plan B. They know that Araraume and Okorocha are working as a team. That is why Araraume does not have the kind of language to oppose Okorocha. He is not like Hon Uche Onyeaguche and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who have been voracious in opposing Okorocha. He cannot deploy the kind of language Hon Onyeagucha and the PDP deploy in opposing Okorocha because he does not have the temerity to deploy such language. That is why they resort to gutter language.
Instead of making fruitless efforts to extricate himself from Okorocha, what Araraume should do now is to admit that he played ignoble roles in denying the people of the state the wonderful opportunity they had and brought upon them the years of locusts. He should also be courageous enough to admit, like many others, that the Ohakim administration was fantastic and one of the best in Nigeria.
Also, it seems that Araraume does not know that Imo people have since discovered those behind the false story of the beating of a Reverend Father. They know it was all propaganda and they have since regretted believing such falsehood. Playing it up now means they are not in tune with reality, especially when Rev Father Ejike Mbaka has put paid to the propaganda and confessed to the whole world that he too was deceived to believe the false story that Ohakim beat a Reverend Father.
Furthermore, let me assume, without conceding, that Ohakim flogged Citizen Samuelson Iwuoha? Can Araraume tell Imo people who sent both Samuelson and his dear wife to prison on trumped up charges. Can he tell Imo people whether he has not abandoned Samuelson and family after he risked his life for him in the ignominious Alliance for Good Governance, his propaganda machine?
It is very important too to point out to Imo people that the claim that Araraume is a bulldozer that can bulldoze anything is never true. If Araraume was a bulldozer, why did he not win the 2011 governorship election when he was the governorship candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN)? Instead he scored a miserly 28,000 votes throughout the 305 wards of Imo State. And in 2007 he got much lesser votes. Why did he not win in 2007 when he became the guber candidate of the PDP? Also, if Ohakim did not perform well as Araraume claimed, why did he join Ohakim and campaigned for him during the 2011 supplementary election?
The story of a bulldozer is whitewash. Imo people know that instead of being a bulldozer, Araraume jumps to where there is food. And for the whole of 10 years, Imo people also know that what he has achieved is making his son a commissioner under Governor Okorocha and getting himself a federal government appointment.
It is sad that the only credential Araraume has is the claim that he is a bulldozer and that he has money. Nobody knows what Araraume is bulldozing, whether he is bulldozing human beings or structures. These are not the leadership credentials Imo people want. But when you look at people that have money in Imo State, you may be shocked to realize that Araraume is not on the 25th position.
Another achievement Araraume recorded after 8 years as Senator was to frustrate Senator Athan from the Senate, despite that he won his election. Araraume went ahead to destroy Lady Joy Mbawuike who comes from the same state constituency with him, because he was chasing the governorship ticket of the APC.
Another false claim is that Araraume joined the APC because he wanted Imo State to belong to the ruling party at the federal level. In 2010 when he left the PDP and joined the ACN and became its governorship candidate, was the PDP not the ruling party both in the state and at federal level? If he had the mind of putting Imo State in a ruling party, why did he want to put Imo State in an opposition party in 2011? Why did he say then that being in a ruling party did not matter?
Is it not true that in this time and age, if after serving for 8 years in the Senate Araraume is talking about building purewater factory, it is rather embarrassing? No one can compare Ohakim’s 10,000 jobs to the purewater factory. The 10,000 jobs programme was putting N450m into Imo families monthly. How may people can Araraume’s purewater factory employ?
What of the 305 councilors and 27 elected local government chairmen that were elected during Ohakim’s tenure? They were all sacked by Araraume’s Man Friday Governor. Clearly, Araraume prefers Imo graduates working in purewater factory than in the state’s civil service where they could become permsecs, directors and judges, etc.
Time has come when Imo people are told how poorly Araraume performed as a Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria with less than 35% sitting for 8 years.
But when Araraume’s spokesman said “Somebody should shut up his unwashed mouth somewhere”, the question I want to ask is: whose mouth? Comments like this smack of inferiority complex. Why is it that anybody under Araraume uses foul language? The foul language used by his spokesman resembles comments made by people whose mother had in their home. Their parentage is unknown to them.
Araraume’s spokesman should look inwards and find out if he is one of such people born at home, because people who are born by accident by morally debased mothers whose “father” rejected their mothers upon realizing the unwanted pregnancy, resort to gutter language because that is what they know about life. They are not polished and cannot stand any serious debate without resorting to violence or foul language; because that is usually the only defence they know.
When people grow up at the mercy of the society and frustrated grandparents, they grow up not mannered enough to understand that life is not all about brutish cruelty. Such people use surnames that are their mother’s maiden names. Their training is complicated because their grandparents did not accept their pregnancy. Out of age and due to shame, their mother left them and they were brought up in the gutter.
Very soon, I am going to unmask them so that all may know their surnames.
