Dear Uche Ogah,
THERE’S NOTHING DIVINE ABOUT SCOUTING FOR VOTES
Let me address you as ‘Pastor’ Uche Ogah for being a Gubernatorial candidate (whether factional or authentic) whose mandate is DIVINE. I have always advocated that people with such divine calling should do well as Ministers of the gospel. You may have also discovered that there’s nothing DIVINE about scouting for votes, inventing periodic lies to sway opinion or disingenuously describing a DEPUTY GOVERNOR as a SPARE TYRE. Trust me, this is not the crux of the matter.
I will keep this one as short as possible. For the first time, I listened to you speak at the ABIA FACTS AWARDS held in Umuahia on the 21st of December 2018. At the end of your speech, the first thing that crossed my mind was “Ikpeazu has no business contesting with this one”. Do not misunderstand me. You may be a successful business man but you did not demonstrate sufficient articulation, governorship behaviour and soundness required of office of the Governor. I noticed you were either public shy or didn’t muster sufficient boldness. People like that are predictably other – directed. Again, this is not the major reason I am writing you.
I feel a genuine compulsion to urge you to find time to concentrate on your business. I have looked around all sources, I cannot find any program of action emanating from you that has a clear cut strategy of doing better than Ikpeazu. Rather, I have read phantom wishes, those that melt faster than expired butter, like clearing arrears of debts just few weeks in office as Governor. I have not read anywhere what enduring formula you had proposed that would do things differently with a promise of getting different, yet better results. You will only end up validating the demystification of Uche Ogah.
You may not like my verdict on your business strategy. However, it seems to be my strongest point on why I think at this time, you cannot be a better Governor than the Scholar in Governance Elder Okezie Victor Ikpeazu Ph.D. I have seen what you did at Onuaku. My secondary school Commerce teacher would still have scored you low. Why? By establishing that industry in Onuaku, you showed very remarkable poor sense of judgment and could not prove your understanding of FACTORS TO CONSIDER BEFORE SITING AN INDUSTRY. As a school boy, I would have recommended you double check nearness and proximity to the market or perhaps primary source of production. In one fell swoop, you established a factory that manufactures everything, with no market, no raw materials. If you think I am being hard on you, would you say in all honesty that the conglomerate at Onuaku has performed very well by standard best practice? Can’t you see that in order to court showmanship, you ended up creating brand and identity confusion, meaning that the products are not performing anywhere within its catchment areas. What this means is that, in the unlikely event that you become the Governor of Abia State, you will definitely establish a CRUSHING PLANT at Ukwa East neglecting Umunneochi that is nearest to materials to run such plant. What that means is that you will pepertually seek to score cheap political points at the deteriment of development. What that means is that your meaningful deployment of scarce resources will be suspect.
I have always said you appeal to me as a growing business man with the potentials to do better. We want to see you nurture the noodle section to success, the spare parts and several other brands sited in a village with the least prospect (yet) of steady power supply, petroleum products for plants,machineries and vehicles. May be, just may be, you would start redeeming your name to take the shape of what we knew during the days of petroleum subsidy.
Politics has a way of demystifying people. I am afraid, your venturing into this race has unveiled you. That is not so much of a problem. What you will find very challenging is that at the end of the 2019 Gubernatorial elections in Abia which Okezie will win clean and clear, you may have inadvertently dumped your political name in the gallery of antiquities.
I remain your friend, committed to an Abia of our dream
Ben Udechukwu
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