By Obi Nwakanma

Many years ago, when Public Radio was well run, there was a program on the old Imo Broadcasting Service – the IBS – called “Chi boo Anu Ozo.” Literally, it means, another day brings strange stories. The programme had a satirical twist that highlighted the absurdities of daily life and in its own ways mocked the irrational and the immoderate acts of men.

In its better days, the recent order to sack “non-indigenes” from the Abia State government Service by the Abia State governor, Mr. Theodore Orji would have been the fit subject for the satirical knife of “Chi boo Anu Ozo.” The homuncular Mr. Orji has once again done it: he has proved again, the axiom that small men do not make long and artful pisses.

Their best efforts are always short of the mark. Orji is one of the most ineffective governors in Nigeria. From his first term he has done the littlest in changing the circumstance and the quality of life of the people in Abia State with a sustained program of development. His run of office has been marred, first by what was known to be his desperate obeisance to the former governor Orji Uzo Kalu on whose aegis he arrived to power.

He broke free of the claw of vultures, to put it in flowery terms, but has to my mind, even after, remained in the clutches of the law of diminishing returns. Two words – “colorless” and “clueless” have been surprisingly recurrent in describing Orji by those in Abia I’d interviewed for a fuller view of the Abia state governor’s recent policy statement about “non-indigenes.”

The governor’s order to “evacuate” so called non-indigenes from the civil service of the Abia State government is without doubt a very narrow and small minded response to the real challenge of resettling displaced people returning to Abia from the dangerous situation in the north.

A small, almost innocuous piece published in the Opinion section of the Vanguard just this past week by a reader who goes by the name “Mrs. Agnes Udorji – a retired Headmistress” writing from an obscure or perhaps in fact a non-existent address on the Aba-Owerri road in Aba, to my mind, is the only public defence of Theodore Orji’s fissiparous orders.

And it is a wishy-washy defence. The piece itself, by its tone and demeanor, reveals the work of a “black hand,” a fictional, invisible and hybrid character invented by the fecund mind of some publicist retained to airbrush Mr. Theodore Orji.

I daresay that such inventive efforts should be turned to more creative and less disquieting methods of creating jobs for displaced people in Abia rather than engaging in dangerous acts of population cleansing. In any case, a few things struck me about the piece by the fictional Mrs. Udorji, defender of Orji’s order to remove “non-indigenes” from the Abia State Civil Service. The first is the rationale: it is tied to the implementation of the minimum wage “optimally,” of course, “considering the scarce resource” at the disposal of the Abia state government.

A target area of such plans to optimally displace “non-indigenes” is in the education sector where the governor’s statement claims a high proportion of non-indigenes in a service which he claims to have more Teacher than Students. Let us be clear: the Abia State governor’s claims are bogus and surprising for a state that has not been doing too well in the educational sector compared to other states in the South East.

What the Abia State government possibly means is “teacher overcrowding” because the Abia State government has been unable to develop new, modern infrastructure for schools or attract new students to programs in extremely decayed public educational infrastructure. T.A. Orji’s policy is therefore a bit clever by half: its aim is certainly, not to absorb new entrants given that his administration claims that there are too many teachers already, but sounds like a backroom attempt to drastically triage and reduce the Abia state public work force and its payroll.

The victim of such a move is often the “non-indigene” – that perpetual victim of the latent xenophobic inclinations of even Nigeria’s public officials, who routinely find the alien “other” the convenient sacrificial offering to the immoderate god of the crossroads.

But thanks to Bishop Lucius Ugorji, Catholic Bishop of Umuahia, who has reacted by reminding Theodore Orji of the illegality of his order. That the governor and the Abia State governor risks a serious contravention of Section 42 (1), (2), (3), of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which protects every Nigerian citizen from discrimination.

Bishop Ugorji’s reaction is the first articulate response to the conundrum of indigeneship, a disingenuous and unconstitutional insertion that has frequently been used to discriminate against other Nigerians who cross the borders of their natal homes into the larger space of nation. Governor Theodore Orji’s defender accuses the Catholic Bishop’s reaction as “hasty, inciting and uncalled for.”

I would rather think not, especially considering the frankly unconvincing arguments which the Orji defence make to wit in justification of the governors orders: there is no “true federalism” otherwise the federal government with 55% of the national resource should not force states to pay a minimum wage which they can hardly afford.

This is false of course. Nigeria operates a federal system – however the limitations of that system – and the minimum wage is a federal prerogative and the result of wide consultations under the Federal Labor Laws. But the issue at stake is far weightier than the minimum wage: it is about the rights of every Nigerian to be protected wherever they live. That is what Theodore Orji and his administration have failed to realize.

It is also about whether a state governor has the power to issue an extra-parliamentary order to the Civil Service Commission to engage in acts of discrimination against legal residents and citizens of Nigeria in his state who have established long term residency, who have paid their taxes and are by their choices to live in that state equal stakeholders in the affairs of the state.

But more importantly, Theodore Orji’s action is directed mostly against other Igbo from neighboring places. Orji shows a remarkable lack of insight and a lack of historical consciousness. Nigeria’s national crisis is mostly marked by what we now call its “Igbo problem” many of who in choosing to live across Nigeria are frequent victims of ethnic cleansing and official as well as unofficial acts of discrimination.

T.A. Orji’s illegal orders – and I hope the Abia State Civil Service Commission will assert its independence and call Orji’s bluff by ignoring it – gives powder to the muskets of those who will now have greater excuse for discriminating against the Igbo outside of the South-East.

If an Igbo governor can do it, what stops the others? Here therefore is where Dr. Lucius Orji’s principled stance should be taken a notch further. I call the Bishop to use his good offices and raise the momentum, and raise the funds to help provide legal services to potential victims of T.A. Orji’s inebriate policy of discrimination. Let us use the courts now to defend the rights of the vulnerable citizen – and yes, we can.