By Ori Martins
We overlapped at Sun newspapers, Lagos. Segun was one of the reporters the editors and managers of the then high flying tabloid had great professional confidence in. At separate times, we left the former King of Tabloid.
Ever since that time, Sege, through the opportunity provided by the social media platforms, has been quite active in bringing his wealth of opinion to bear on national issues, particularly socioeconomic cum political matters.
Today, Sege put up an apparently irrelevant but clearly disingenuous post that suggested that Igbo politicians are shying away from insecurity and ESN challenges in the South East even as they badmouth BAT on Lagos affairs.
Responding, I made it clear that insecurity and ESN were unheard of the South East pre 2015. I correctly maintained that both factors reared thier ugly heads as an aftermath of the APC regime which BAT hugely played significant and leading roles in bringing about.
Like a typical Nigerian politician and thier supporters, my friend and professional soulmate, Sege, scandalously manipulated as well as mis – presented my submission. He brought it out to mean that Ndigbo launched insecurity and promoted ESN just to protest President Jonathan’s ouster which the South East substantially supported. This is an aberration.
You see, this is a part of the reason Nigeria is currently at the crossroads – truth is turned to a caricature just to achieve either personal or tribal interest at the expense of the lager country called Nigeria.
Was BAT not a major player in the calamity called APC? Was he not a party to the grand conspiracy that brought President Buhari to power? So, if these two calamitous infections are traced to him, does it call for a political sophistry as my erudite journalist friend tried hard to portray?
It must be recorded that at no time in our national history has Nigerians been washed with ashes of poverty and coloured in the pangs of penury than now.
At least a litre of fuel has never ever before been sold at N300. A bag of rice has never before been purchased at N35 – N40. Let us stop at this two for want of space. Even the insecurity Sege talked about has ravaged his South West zone than any other region since APC came to power in 2015. I wonder why Sege used South East than his Western axis.
It is all politics to wit: Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu must rule at all costs, regardless of all the vexed issues tainting his image, particularly certificate scandals, age falsification, deteriorating health status and an avalanche of other questionable inclinations.
The fact remains that BAT cannot delete his golden name from the APC abysmal outing since 2015 when Nigeria began this reverse journey to Golgotha. The facts are there and Tinubu himself has made it manifest when he said it was turn because he made Buhari president.
And, why should any Igbo look towards APC that built seven federal universities and none was allotted to South East? Why must Ndigbo think of APC government that for the first time in democratic Nigeria, has no Igbo as president, no Igbo as vice president., no Igbo as president of the senate., none as deputy president of senate., none as speaker or deputy speaker of the house of representatives or even national chairman? The insult is both humiliating and unbearable. Yet, Sege is bringing it forth before us! Just imagine!
This APC federal government has 16 security chiefs and none is South East. About 15 senior workers were promoted to the position of directors in NNPC and no South Easterner was in the list. Judges of the appeal court promoted and all the Okoros and Anyanwus from South East were conspicuously missing! The Second Niger Bridge, Onitsha – Enugu and Enugu – Port Harcourt, even the Akunu Ibiam International Airport projects were all initiated by the PDP federal government.
