Abia Onyike: Why I Criticise Umahi
Chief Abia Onyike, a former Commissioner for Information and Social Orientation in Ebonyi State has been a critic of Governor David Umahi. The former Deputy National President of Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), is also the Chairman and Convener of the Ebonyi Advocacy for Human Rights Initiative-an organization that works to defend the rights of Ebonyi citizens against political impunity, tyranny and oppression. In this interview with select journalist, including Olaoluwakitan Babatunde, Onyike bares his mind on the governance of Ebonyi, insecurity in the South-east and other burning issues
You have been in the news of late for criticizing Governor David Umahi of Ebonyi State. What actually is the problem?
Well, the problem is Umahi’s mediocre leadership style which is a combination of autocracy and anarchism. Umahi is far from being a democrat. He came into governance with a totalitarian mindset. He has uprooted and destroyed all the legacy institutions he inherited from his predecessor in 2015. He has retarded the progress of the state. The first quarter report released by the National Bureau of Statistics showed that Ebonyi State has been on the table as one of the ten poorest states in Nigeria. The state also came third in food inflation in Nigeria. Ebonyi is the only state in Southern Nigeria falling into such dangerous poverty levels in recent times because of Umahi’s vicious anti-people’s policies. His definition of development is extremely dubious.
He worked for four years (2015-2019) without Permanent Secretaries in order to deliberately destroy all forms of checks and balances in the governance of the state. It was only in his second tenure which started in 2019 that he reluctantly appointed Permanent Secretaries. Ebonyians have witnessed a lawless and oppressive government. For the first time in the history of the state, the civil service and local government service have been submerged and destroyed. Communal disturbances have reached abnormal levels with attendant destruction of lives and property, because of Umahi’s divide and rule tactics.
The Ebonyi State University, rated as one of the best state universities has been ruined and relegated because the Governor has no respect for University autonomy. He constantly invites the university authorities and lecturers to his office to intimidate them. Workers are paid half salary in the state and he has banned new employments into the civil service. He also banned the payment of retirement benefits to retired
civil servants since 2015. People are dying instalmentally in the state because of Umahi’s evil policies.The state is getting poorer while Umahi and his trading/construction companies are getting richer.
It was reported in the news that you gave Gov. Umahi a two-week ultimatum or you will drag him to Court. What was the problem?
On the 2nd of September, 2021, Gov. Umahi announced that he had issued an Executive Order withdrawing all Certificates of Occupancy in the state. Which meant that he was embarking upon the total revocation of all C of Os in Abakaliki and Afikpo. That was the height of Executive recklessness unbecoming of an elected public officer. We gave him the ultimatum calling on him to withdraw the punitive order or we shall deploy all legal and legitimate instruments to compel him to step down his threat. We appreciate that a responsible government may have a genuine reason based on overriding public interest to revoke one or two C of Os but never to revoke all the C of Os in the state. That is anarchism. Umahi is an uncontrollable land grabber and we suspect that he was embarking on the exercise as a selfish and self-serving land grabbing strategy to confiscate landed properties belonging to his critics and political opponents who own property in Abakaliki. He had done the same thing when he closed the old meat market and opened the new Abakaliki International Market. Most of the traders who owned shops in the old market were subjected to fulfilling impossible conditions before they could get stalls in the new market. Many of them developed hypertension and died. We cannot allow Umahi to continue to experiment with the lives of Ebonyi citizens.
But some people hold the view that Umahi has transformed Ebonyi State?
Umahi is a propagandist. He is not a humanist. Anything he does, he blows out of proportion. Moreover, like I said before, he came into government not to render service. He was a contractor even though he was just struggling to make ends meet. He became governor and felt that the opportunity to make it had arrived. Umahi came into office and decided to embark on some white elephant projects, such as the new Government House at Ochudo city, the Ecumenical Centre, the Shopping Mall, the 10 over-head bridges. Unfortunately, the bridges are being built in places without any atom of traffic congestion. Umahi is merely experimenting with the lives of the people. How can someone spend billions of naira building flyovers when he has cancelled scholarships and re-introduced extortionate levies in primary and secondary schools? How can you be so fixated to certain useless projects such as the Ecumenical Centre which gulped about N7 billion?