ORJI UZOR KALU'S POLITICAL NUNC DIMITIS AND REQUIEM
Posted by Onyebuchi Ememanka | 8 years ago | 3,054 times
The latest defeat of former Abia State Governor Orji Uzor Kalu in the Abia North Senatorial elections conducted last Saturday is a clear pointer that his political career is effectively over.
This is his third consecutive failure in his bid to go to the Senate.
Political scientists and close political watchers will be interested in finding out how a man who held so much promise and commanded immense goodwill, just some years back, has fallen so pitifully from the Olympian and dizzying height of political prominence down to the mundane nadir of incremental political irrelevance.
By 1999, OUK was the new face of democracy both in Abia and beyond. I personally fell in love with him. He waltzed through political terrains with incredible glitz and an almost incomprehensible wave of razzmatazz.
OUK was the man of the people.
And he actually started well.
I saw him then as the next symbol of the emerging Igbo political establishment...the face of the new Igbo politics. I saw him then as the Moses who would lead from the front in the new political resurgimento of the Igbo nation.
He was young.
He was bold.
He was daring.
The world was at his feet!
But OUK lost focus.
He derailed and dangerously too.
From foisting on Abians a strange and utterly rapacious system of family oligarchy in the governance of our state, picking absolutely needless fights with federal authorities to holding his lieutenants by the balls, OUK's political comeuppance was a forgone conclusion.
OUK gathered a team of young and bright minds, which he managed to balance with some old hands but instead of inspiring hope and confidence in his men, OUK invoked fear in his men. Instead of love and respect, his associates feared him...and slowly and steadily, he began to lose ground.
It is interesting that the same team he gathered and built is the same set of guys who have supervised the nailing of his political coffin.
Every person who finds himself in a position of leadership must take this lesson home...that your greatest assets are the men and women who work with you and look up to you. The moment you stop inspiring confidence in your people, your end is near. The moment you deviate from the original road map and delve into irrelevancies and seek to transmogrify yourself into an Empero whose words are law without a corresponding scheme to carry your people along, that moment will mark the beginning of your end.
It is a huge embarrassment that OUK after ruling Abia for eight years and producing a successor as governor was unable to manage his team and has become the very embodiment of political failure to the point that he is unable to win elections in his own senatorial zone and defeated by people who hitherto genuflected before his majestic throne....people who hitherto caught cold when he sneezed.
Three times he has contested elections to go to the senate. Three times he has lost!
OUK should embark on a journey of self immolation...of self assessment and rediscovery.
He should ask himself how his colleague Governor, Bola Tinubu has managed to waltz his way from being the only Governor in his party in 2003 to becoming the single most powerful politician in Nigeria who was given the singular honor of nominating the nation's Vice President.
Tinubu was not more popular than OUK in their first tenures. How come their fortunes took different turns years after?
How come that while Tinubu sits in his mansion to determine who gets what, how and when in most of the South West, OUK is gasping for political oxygen?
How come that while Tinubu "dashes" out senatorial seats to his cronies including his own wife, OUK is unable to win in his own district?
This is what happens when a man is consumed by greed for power and begins to see his associates, not as partners in progress but as pawns in his political chess game of the promotion of an agenda for self.
This is what happens when a leader abandons his core mandate of making the lives of his people better and chooses to embark on a wild goose chase and frolic of self promotion.
Great political leaders usually have a two pronged strategy. They first deliver on governance which is the easiest way to win the masses over.
Then they carefully build a strong team. They inspire confidence and hope in their team members, not fear. They understand that for them to remain relevant, their "boys" must grow too. They understand clearly that the progress of the team depends largely on the growth of the individual members.
This is where OUK lost it.
Can OUK bounce back?
I don't think so. The people of Abia State have moved on long ago. The people cannot afford the high risk of trusting him again with political power.
Never toy with the trust of the people. Once it's lost, it's lost forever.
But it's not a hopeless situation for OUK though...
He has an option.
He can return fully to his business of buying and selling....a business that threw him up in the first place.
I wish OUK well as he hibernates in his new political abode....what the Great Zik once described as the "garbage heap of forgotten tyrants".
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