By IYKE OGBONNAYA

It is no longer news that Governor T. A. Orji of Abia State has since gone back to the ruling Peoples Democratic Party {PDP} on which platform he made a foray into the murky waters of politics way back in 2006. Consequently, this endeavour will not dwell on a belated issue which we are already at home with.

But my restless and journalistic instinct is perfectly at home with bringing to public domain several undercurrents hitherto unknown, and which gave praise worthy credence to what has been touted to mean “liberation from political stranglehold.”

Having dealt a deadly blow to the invisibility of emerging “god fatherism” and political dynasty in Abia State, Orji exposed and eliminated several traits capable of promoting retrogression in the state.

I have always chided the ignorance of those who think the governor went back to PDP to enable him win his second term bid. It will remain an insultive line of thought on the sensibility of Abians who unanimously requested him to return to mainstream politics so as to enable the state a new vista and a measure of financial light, necessary for provision and stepping up of basic and essential infrastructure.

Abians know that politics of opposition has not helped a young state like Abia. And, in corroborating that, you find that our history has become chequered, since the state took that deadly plunge. At the inception of his first tenure, Dr Orji Uzor Kalu, former governor of Abia State, was the cynosure of all eyes, given the effective deployment of his youthful zeal and belonging to the main stream, which earned him the sobriquet “Action Governor of Nigeria’’.

But like a candle in the wind, it vanished and vapourised the moment he decided to test federal might. His hard earned second tenure became fraught with difficulties and financial starvations cum denials. Our oil wells were punitively farmed out to neighbouring Rivers State and every attempt to retrieve them met with brick walls. The high point became the glaring exclusion of the state as a beneficiary of foreign debt forgiveness. Not even the advantage of producing the then minister of finance and economic development, Dr. Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, could earn foreign debt forgiveness, which the state desperately needed.

On assumption of office, Orji quietly inherited these challenges and expertly shouldered the responsibility of dealing with them. One of his first celebrated interventions was the breakthrough of seeing to the recovery of over 43 oil wells from Rivers State. Attitude they say is everything and it was the effective use of this tool that won the governor that administrative milestone.

But since a leopard will always be regarded as one, the opposition Abia under Orji wasn’t spared the harrowing experience of starving from financial royalties accruing from the recovered oil wells. The ultimate intention was to punctuate and derail his perfectly placed desire to positively change the state.

The centripetal government knew it was going to have a devastating effect on the centrifugal owing to the unexpected heat in the country occasioned by the global economic meltdown. But like a cat with nine lives, the governor quickly came up with the harmless and more cost effective option of accessing capital from the bond market. A proposal which hitherto enjoyed smooth passage in other states became a National Assembly affair in the case of Abia. It was butchered, vilified and dubbed fraudulent to satisfy opposition National Assembly members of Abia extraction, who orchestrated its demise.

The governor was compelled to grapple with the onerous task of depending on a paltry monthly federation allocation of 3 billion naira only, when there are no deductions at source. Consequently, capital projects began to experience serious set backs, recurrent expenditures were not also spared, as demonstrated in the sharp drop in revenue accruals. Internally generated revenue could not cushion the effect of financial predicament.

The internally generated revenue has sadly hovered between N250-300m monthly. Not even the introduction of tax consultants, with a mandatory benchmark of hitting at least 1 billion naira monthly has been able to give the state financial succour. This set back, unknown to critics, is largely due to the illusion of confusing buying and selling with productive capacity and the undisputed fact that the two differ significantly in tax paying capacities.

I’m still wondering if the United States based Nevada Oil Corporations proposal of building a refinery in Abia South has not left the pipeline to dwell in the oblivion, owing to all the un-savoury things that were said of it and against the governor all in the name of opposition. But, be that as it may, my persuasion has and will always be that Orji’s movement to the PDP was made possible by the plague which the PPA hierarchy inflicted on itself. I have been battling to make head or tail of what made a party toyed with the only state they had after losing the others.

It was obvious that the party lacked the liver to challenge the distractive tendencies prevalent in the then government. Otherwise commissionership appointments would not have been lopsided in Abia State.

* Ogbonnaya is based in Umuahia, Abia State.