Obi Aguocha’s Politics & Nnamdi Kanu: “You Cannot Love Ibeku People More Than They love Themselves”-Njoku Tells Obi Aguocha, Says ‘the deliberate unprovoked incitement against Rt. Hon. Chinedum Orji is dead on arrival’ – By Paul Njoku
Member, representing Ikwuano/Umuahia Federal Constituency in the Green – Chamber of the House of Representatives, Hon. Obi Aguocha, is sadly learning his lessons in hard ways by the height of absolute rejection and isolation from the people of his constituency due to his controversial lies, propaganda, unreliability traits and inconsistency. His type of politics is anchored on deceit and manipulation with gross violation of human conscience and dignity.
Our elders say that a man who cannot protect his own compound has no business offering to guard another man’s. It is an old saying, but it fits our present moment well.
Obi Aguocha, the Ibeku people have taken note of your sudden affection. Suddenly there are warm greetings, friendly visits and tender words about a people you barely noticed for three years. Love that appears only when an election draws near is not love. It is a transaction, and the Ibeku are too wise to sell their dignity for a short season of attention. You cannot.
Love Cannot Be Imported
Aguocha, with all due respect, you cannot love the Ibeku people more than they love themselves. They have loved their land, their language, their kindred and their future long before you wore the title of Honourable, and they will continue to love them long after the campaign banners are taken down. Ibeku does not need a stranger to teach it how to value itself. Your deliberate but unprovoked incitement of Ibeku people against Rt. Hon. Chinedum Orji over Nnamdi Kanu’s incarceration is dead on arrival. Chinedum Orji is working underground to ensure that Nnamdi Kanu is released in no longer time.
What the Ibeku people want is not speeches at gatherings. They want roads that last, clinics that work, schools that teach, markets that thrive and a representative who answers when he is called. These cannot be produced by sentiment. They are produced by diligence and by results.
Charity Begins at Home
Under the principle of natural justice, a man owes his first duty to those who raised him and gave him his name. Your Ọhụhụ people, from whose soil you came, should have been the first beneficiaries of whatever you brought from Abuja. They are the ones who knew your father’s compound, who watched you grow, and who handed you their trust.
So we ask plainly: what has the Ọhụhụ clan to show for your time in the House of Representatives? Where are the projects that stand as monuments to that trust? Where are the empowerment programmes, the community interventions and the visible signs that a son of the soil has been at work? If the answers are thin at home, then what should an outsider expect from you?
A person who began failing from home cannot honestly offer success to a stranger. You cannot give what you have not first produced. A man cannot lend out clothes he never owned, and a traveller who sees such a man approaching with a gift would do well to ask where the gift came from.
The Wisdom of the Ibeku
The Ibeku are not simple people. They are hardworking, enterprising and politically alert. They know the difference between a leader who builds and a politician who borrows credit. They have seen generous promises before, and they know that the most eager gift is often the one with the heaviest price attached.
They will weigh your record, not your rhetoric. They will compare what you say today with what you did yesterday. And they will ask what changed between those two moments, other than the calendar.
A Final Word
Hon. Aguocha, there is still time for honesty. Go back to Ọhụhụ and repair what is broken. Face your own people, answer their questions and show them the documents behind your claims. Earn the right to speak of love by first demonstrating service. Only then might the wider constituency listen with open ears.
To the good people of Ibeku, be careful. Admire the gesture if you wish, but inspect the giver. When a naked man offers you clothing, look closely at his own condition before you accept, because charity cannot come from emptiness.
The constituency deserves representation that begins at home and extends outward with proof. Nothing less will do.
- Paul Njoku is a human rights activist, critic, public affairs analyst, author and the political strategist to the APC candidate for the Ikwuano/Umuahia Federal Constituency, Rt. Hon. Chinedum Orji.
