By Odimegwu Onwumere
It is good to live in harmony and happiness. These were the words coming from an
ex-Governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, when a select of journalists approached him on his return from Zimbabwe, where he had gone to observe that country’s election under the patronage of African Union’s (AU) observer team.
Dr. Kalu regretted that Nigeria has become a place where individualism plays a lot of roles in lieu of collectivism. He bemoaned that he was away from home when reports went rampant that his kinsmen were deported from Lagos State, by the Governor Babatunde Fashola administration. Although, he had sent in his comments from the faraway country, and condemned the action in its entirety and threatened to go to court with the government in the event that it refused to apologise to Ndigbo.
Speaking, Kalu said that after his press statement condemning the act, a lot of dignitaries, especially of the Yoruba descent, sent in messages and beseeched him not to take action yet, pending when they must have investigated the matter to its root cause, as any action he took would further the heating up of the country that is in dire need of peace. It was a matter that Kalu said he has listened to them since he is a man of peace, but has not swept the matter under the carpet.
In his sermon, Kalu said that Nigerians should know that they can’t continue to live with sentiments. He advised the citizens to always see peace and the rule of law as the hallmarks for coexistence for the common good of the country, which the forebears lived to protect, even to the detriment of many of them.
Such a matter like the deportation, according to Kalu, needed everybody’s intervention, because if one did not chase out a fowl that was feeding on feaces, no one knew who was going to eat the fowl’s legs one day. If it was Igbo today and the rest Nigerians think that it was an Igbo matter, tommorrow it might be another tribe’s case and before it could be known, it has escalated to anarchy.
The ex-Governor condemned any forms of brickbats among Nigerians and advised any Nigerian who is not engaged in any meaningful job to so in order to curtail nuisance that some persons have seen and taken as a way of life and living with it. He said that such persons are stabbing Nigeria’s image by making the country to look like a country of lazy people, which she is not.
Kalu did not support any fight to crop-up between the Lagos State Government and Ndigbo in that state, but said that every misunderstanding has to be re-dressed through the due process instead of confrontational way. He said that the latter has never helped in such a situation. He, however, said that the country belongs to all Nigerians and, no part of the country should claim or see itself as hegemonic before others. He decried any types of imposition, describing it as barbaric and gobbledygook.
It was convincing to Kalu that Ndigbo have to unite and be prepaid to scrap their challenge, whenever such arises. Kalu said that having money alone cannot win in a war of political extirpation of a people like Ndigbo in Nigeria. Unity wins.
It’s obvious that begging and always crying were not in the character of Ndigbo, but these are somewhat happening today, because of the Capitalistic theory that majority of Nigerians have embraced. So, whenever a section of Nigeria is attacked, the affected begins to cry foul, because such a people had erroneously thought that any self-serving purposes were superior to Communalism. Kalu said that it was the power in Communalism (not Capitalism) that the forebears, even walked on waters, because they had the support of people, not the volume of money in their different banks.
Kalu, conversely, called on Governor Fashola to see Ndigbo in his state as Nigerians, and not as a people of different tribe from his. He admonished Fashola that it would be inappropriate in the case that there was an accident, say, involving a person from Igbo and Yoruba, and the Igbo is deported to his home town for the state government to take care, while the Yoruba is immediately taken to the hospital, because the person is Yoruba. He condemned this, should it happen, and ascribed bias and ineffective to it.
Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu thanked all, who have so far, have expressed their concern in the deportation imbroglio and were suing for peace and did not allow it to degenerate to lawlessness before he returned. Nonetheless, Kalu said that his threat of going to court with Fashola over the deportation was not just merely, but that he is waiting for the findings of the people who have implored him not to take further action on the matter following their vow to handle it and get back to him.