The 3 vicious musketeers and their mischief in Abia’s decadent narrative
– By Eagle Okoro
Three special characters stand out in Abia’s most challenging moment of inept and perverse leadership, infrastructural decay and economic stagnation, particularly during the eight years of former Governor Okezie Ikpeazu. These men, viz., Obinna Oriaku, John Okiyi Kalu and Eze Chikamnayo, were people that would always be remembered for the mischief and sinister roles they played in the massive corruption, fraud, and bad governance that characterised Ikpeazu’s clueless and resentful administration.
These three vicious and treacherous musketeers held Ikpeazu’s government by the jugular and squeezed it to the point of inactivity, indolence and ineptitude of the alarming dimension.
They constituted the cabal that conspired to ensure that Ikpeazu’s administration ended up becoming a colossal failure ever recorded in Abia’s development narratives, in spite of the huge potentials at his disposal as governor.
For instance, Ikpeazu’s government had no reason to accumulate enormous debt burden for the state, particularly in the payment of salary of civil servants and pensions, following the intervention of the government of the late President Muhammadu Buhari, but for Obinna Oriaku’s insatiable greed and fraudulent tendencies.
No doubt, Buhari’s benevolent spirit would be greatly agitated in the grave to learn that Abia’s erstwhile Gov. Ikpeazu could not judiciously utilise his bailout fund, amounting to a whopping N18.225 billion. The money, referred to as Bridge Financing Facility, totalling N656.112 billion, was approved in July 2015, shortly after the inception of Buhari’s administration.
How Ikpeazu and his “five-and-six” Commissioner for Finance, Obinna Oriaku, expended the staggering bailout fund that came to the state in six tranches, under Oriaku’s watch, and went ahead to incur enormous debt in unpaid salaries, still remains a mystery to date. Like one analyst wrote recently, Oriaku, as the name implies, “ate up” the bailout fund, in complicity with Ikpeazu and the other exclusive signatories to Abia’s finances.
If the Buhari’s huge financial intervention was not fraudulently spent and misappropriated by Ikpeazu and his exchequer, how was it that a humongous N50 billion was accumulated as salary arrears between 2015, when he assumed office, and 2023, when he exited? This critical question is still begging for an answer, which domiciles exclusively with Ikpeazu and his finance commissioner.
See how illogical and intriguing it is: Ikpeazu took over from Sen. Theodore Ahamefula Orji (Ochendo) on May 29, 2015, with merely two months unpaid salary arrears for civil servants. Barely two months later, precisely in July, Buhari approved the bailout fund for payment of salary arrears for states that were declared insolvent, including Abia.
Yet, in 2023, the same administration that received the Federal Government’s financial intervention left behind unpaid arrears of salaries running into more than 35 months. Haba! How can anybody explain this kind of rascality in leadership?
Now, let us move outside the issue of unpaid salary and pension arrears and recall the scandalous story of the phantom Abia Airport and yet untold story of how the N10 billion facility, allegedly procured to build the imaginery airport that only existed in the minds of the fraudulent “leaders”, was utilised under Ikpeazu.
It was the same Oriaku that superintended over the procurement and diversion of the facility, which was retired as having been spent for the construction of the non-existent airport.
The N10 billion was later
discovered, after a forensic audit commissioned by the present administration, to have been diverted to 32 different company accounts for non-existent projects.
Again, the fundamental poser remains, could this mind-blowing fraud have happened without the full connivance of the chief finance officer of the state, Obinna Oriaku?
Could Abians have ever got to know of such a magnitude of fraud, if Dr Alex Otti did not emerge as governor? Imagine where Chief Okey Ahaiwe of the same Peoples Democratic Party had emerged to succeed Ikpeazu?
You can see the criminal reason for the desperation by outgoing governors to ensure they successfully plant their choice and anointed successors, who they trust to cover their filthy tracks!
One, therefore, imagines how Oriaku, who brazenly and scandalously ran the most fraudulent financial transactions in the history of Abia’s Ministry of Finance muster the effrontery and shameless audacity to speak about financial “haemorrhage” under the present administration, where Abians are seeing the outcomes of Gov. Alex Otti’s financial spendings on physical infrastructures across the nooks and crannies of God’s Own State.
Or is he simply and grossly abusing his right to freedom of speech? Agreed, talk is free, but he should be made to learn in a cruel and bitter manner that his right to free speech is not infinite but terminates where another’s right to defend himself against abuse, via malicious defamation, begins!
And while all the dirty, high tech financial shenanigans under the full supervision of Ikpeazu and Oriaku were surreptitiously perpetrated with official seal, the two official parrots of the most inefficient and fraudulent administration were busy lavishly dishing out falsehood and misinformation to hoodwink the unsuspecting, hapless Abians and larger society that Ikpeazu’s government was doing well and on top of his game.
At different times during their separate tenures as Commissioners of Information, John Okiyi Kalu and Eze Chikamnayo, inundated the media space with lies, regarding the suffering Abia civil servants and their unpaid salary arrears that spanned between 20 and 35 months in different Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government.
The heartless duo organised several media briefings as well as radio and television appearances, within and outside the state, where they regularly churned out lies without conscience that Abia civil servants were not owed salary arrears by Ikpeazu’s government. Lies that were further reinforced and sealed by Obinna Oriaku as finance commissioner. They even were swearing by the spirit of their ancestors that the administration was up-to-date in salary and pension payments.
And to further confuse the undiscerning and gullible in the larger society, they drew a distinction between the core and uncore civil servants and defended the unjust and inhuman reasons why the core should be paid and uncore should not.
So, under Ikpeazu’s government, the Abia economy was clearly delineated along two lines – one for the core civil servants, who must be paid to live and live well and another for the uncore, who should be owed and made to starve to die by instalment.
Today, the God-sent governor has benevolently cleared the mountain of unpaid salary and pension arrears bequeathed his administration by the wicked and insensitive Ikpeazu’s administration. He has also cleaned out the dividing line between core and uncore civil servants, which Ikpeazu and Oriaku weaponised to deal with them.
To the glory of God, both the core and uncore civil servants in today’s Abia receive their salaries simultaneously on the same day, usually the 28th day of every month, and with no discrimination.
A government that has achieved this laudable feat with great commitment and sincerity, combining it with equally great accomplishments in infrastructure upgrade and other incredible landmark achievements, deserves nothing but loud accolades and unflinching support to do more and better, than the unguarded and misplaced criticisms by those who collaborated and conspired to destroy the state for their selfish ends.
Glad to know that their excesses, notoriety and sins against God’s Own State and His good people were already documented, hence they would not escape the law of retribution. It certainly awaits them and will definitely haunt them, anytime, anywhere.
– Eagle Okoro is a public affairs commentator and writes from Umuahia