To watch the meltdown at the ‘Ochendo’ camp ahead of the governorship election in Abia State, has been pitiful and fascinating all at once. For the uninitiated, ‘Ochendo’ is the moniker of the self-styled, underperforming Governor of Abia State, Theodore Ahamefule Orji.
The wheels have long come off the candidate Okezie Ikpeazu campaign faster than anyone would have envisaged. To stem the slide of their flailing campaign, ‘Ochendo Global’ and his lackey (Okezie Ikpeazu) have resorted to desperate measures ahead of the vote. These men deserve our pity.
The Ochendo camp had first vehemently denied that Ikpeazu was their anointed governorship candidate even though everything pointed to the contrary. When that lie was laid bare for all to see, the Governor’s whirlwind of a son took over the Ikpeazu campaign throttle, dishing out body slaps to their governorship candidate when he deemed it necessary to. The next step was to commission hack writers to go after the APGA governorship candidate and man of the moment, Alex Otti. When that didn’t yield any results, they went for physically attacking Alex Otti, members of his team and vandalizing buses belonging to the Otti campaign. But the hack writers have been handed a new brief: after failing with impugning Otti’s character and having come short with smear campaigns targeted at the candidate, why not turn the screw some more and smear the personalities of those working on the Otti campaign team—anything just to slow down Otti’s momentum?
Enter hack writers Franklin Nwankwo and Madubuko Hart. Franklin’s piece which was published in several online forums recently, will be the focus of this essay.
Franklin Nwankwo’s piece which was erroneously titled ‘What Alex Otti told me’, ended up a sham, as you would expect from pieces written by hack writers and commissioned by a campaign team in disarray. He started off by accusing Otti of behaving like a Spartan Warrior who “hires thugs, cloning security agencies and unfortunately ordering some of the overzealous ones among them to maim and even kill people from the other side”. The sheer irony of this accusation could leave the keen observer of events in Abia State, perplexed. The camp guilty of “hiring thugs and ordering overzealous security agencies to maim and kill” has been the Ikpeazu/Ochendo camp. Ochendo’s eight year reign as Abia State Governor has been a morass of maiming, killing and thuggery, as anyone familiar with Abia State would sadly tell you. Every son and daughter of Abia State is familiar with the dare-devilry of Governor Orji and the reign of terror and violence that has sadly become the hallmark of his administration. The thugs who recently beat up everyone in Ikwuano at an Alex Otti town hall event were Franklin’s people and they looked every bit like “Spartan warriors” of the desperate variety.
Franklin must be the only person in the universe who is of the opinion that Otti “is a poor risk manager who paused the growth of Diamond Bank”. In an official statement released by Diamond Bank’s Corporate Communications department in the wake of Otti’s resignation as GMD/CEO of the bank, the Chairman of the Board of Directors, HRM Igwe Nnaemeka Alfred Achebe (the Obi of Onitsha) described Alex Otti’s stint at the helm of Diamond Bank as “the brightest years of Diamond Bank’s 24 year-history”.
“Under Dr. Alex Otti’s stewardship, Diamond Bank made a remarkable return to profitability and has continued to record impressive growth across all performance indicators year-on-year. After writing off toxic risk assets which resulted in the loss of N16 billion in 2011, the Bank posted a profit before tax of N28.36 billion in 2012 and N32.5 billion Naira in 2013. The Bank also saw its total assets rise from N564.9 billion in February 2011 to N1.18 trillion by December 31, 2012 and N1.52 trillion on December 31, 2013”, a statement from the Bank’s website reads. Otti has received similar plaudits from within and outside of Nigeria for his strides at Diamond Bank. Hardly the stuff that “poor risk managers” are made of.
Franklin gives himself away as out of depth when he queries Alex Otti’s remuneration as GMD/CEO of Diamond Bank vis-à-vis the “opulence of the Alex Otti campaign”. He wonders why Otti would have to hire planes on the campaign trail and wonders where the money is coming from. He rambles about working in a bank himself and compares Alex Otti to Chelsea—an apposite analogy if ever there was one. Every well run campaign team has a campaign purse where friends and well-wishers of the candidate funnel funds to take care of logistics, transportation and miscellaneous expenses. Candidates with enormous goodwill like Alex Otti attract funds from the man on the street to the savvy business executive. If comfort was Otti’s ambition in life, he wouldn’t have plunged headlong into the Abia Governorship race because as GMD/CEO of Diamond Bank he had one of the most plum jobs in the country. Banking was his comfort zone having put in a better part of his life in the financial and private sector.
As for the Chelsea analogy, it is sad that Franklin’s knowledge of football is just as poor as his writing. For Franklin, Chelsea qualify as “noisy neighbours” for the simple reason that they wouldn’t be carting home the Champions League diadem this season or every other season for that matter. Chelsea has won the Champions League and the Europa trophy in the past. At the time Franklin was putting his tripe together, the London based soccer team was top of the English League and is in pole position to win the much coveted trophy by season’s end. Franklin considers Chelsea a “media hype” because in his warped reasoning, to be top of the league with nine games to spare has to be adduced to the media. Poor, insecure fellow. Chelsea is top of the league by dint of hard work just the same way Otti is working his socks off to win the Abia election by traversing the entire landscape to solicit for votes; at the same time his opponents are banking on rigging the polls like they’ve always done.
Franklin says Otti is “poor in ideation, origination and below average in consolidation”, but the reader can see that Franklin’s vaunted sense of ideation is as hollow as his origination and consolidation. Aware he is as classless as his pay masters, Franklin confesses: “for those who think I glory in vain stories, those who think I am not a great subjective writer…” Franklin Nwankwo’s self-indictment is fine by me because his stories are as vain as they are subjective.
One of Franklin’s vainglorious stories tumbled out towards the end of his claptrap of a piece. In the hare-brained manner of the Ochendo campaign, he attacks the person of Mary Ikoku, casting aspersions on her and her “dalliance” with Alex Otti. It is in the manner of losing campaign teams to pick on characters in the opposing team. It is called clutching at straws. This often happens when the attack team has nothing else to offer by way of ideas. Mary Ikoku has distinguished herself as a media strategist of some repute for years now and every campaign team worth its onions would love to sign her on. But she wouldn’t work for a team as classless as Ikpeazu’s, that’s for sure.
Franklin has a problem with Ms. Ikoku moving from “NIKE LAKE to UNIVERSAL HOTELS Enugu with Alex Otti at such unholy hours and in hotel suites”. While the fixation on the lives of persons is the stuff small minds and jobless voyeurs are made of, I am determined to put Franklin out of his misery. Ikoku’s organization (working Moms Africa) had convened the first ever ‘South East Mums Summit’ whose aim was to help tackle the menace of baby factories in the region. The event was hosted by Mary Ikoku and was co-sponsored by Vlisco Netherlands (makers of Hollandaise wrapper). The venue for this summit was Franklin’s “Nike Lake hotel”. Alex Otti was still at Diamond Bank at the time this event occurred. Franklin and his band of voyeurs can quit snooping now.
One of Ochendo’s hatchet persons, a lady called Chioma Nelda whose wedding was sponsored by John Okeiyi Kalu , had told Ms. Ikoku that one Cosmos Ndukwe wanted her phone number. Ever the transparent persona with no bones to pick with anyone, Ikoku handed her mobile phone numbers away. Of course the said Cosmos never called. Two days later, Ms. Okoku would see her mobile numbers on the pages of newspapers as part of a new low in smear campaigning. The Ochendo camp had taken Ikoku’s mobile numbers to the media as proof that they know her and Franklin had been hired to spearhead the online attacks on Ms. Ikoku’s person.
This is the mindset of the jokers who want to keep running Abia State—perfidious minds in search of salacious stories to burnish their nefarious agenda with.
The Alex Otti camp in contrast has been running a wholly issue-based campaign and would not be distracted by the small mindedness of the Ikpeazu/Ochendo/Ikuku camp. While they keep running from one hotel to another to spy on who has been allegedly sleeping with whom, Otti has been winning more support from ordinary folks on the ground by the day as latest opinion polls have confirmed.
The task of rescuing Abia from poor leadership is a huge one which will require the best of brains at this time. Franklin and his band of hack writers would be best served if they channeled their energies to meaningful endeavors. Snitches aren’t welcome in Abia at this time.
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Ifeanyi Amanze wrote from Umuahia
CREDIT: EKEKEEE
