Who is Afraid of Onyejeocha?

By Emameh Gabriel 

It fits perfectly to start this piece by saying double congratulations to Hon. Nkeiruka Onyejeocha on her well-deserved appointment as a minister of the Federal Republic and on her last week’s outright victory at the National Assembly Election Petition Tribunal, sitting in Umuahia, the Abia State capital. 

The tribunal sacked the member representing the minister’s Isuikwuato/Umunneochi Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives, Amaobi Ogah, who ran on the ticket of the Labour Party (LP) and ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to withdraw the certificate of return given to him and issue same to Onyejeocha of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

As expected, not everyone has been happy for her and with her for her appointment and court victory to boot. The griping and anger have been all too clear and a few days ago, became vicious in expression. But on the sunnyside is that those having sleeping disorders over the clout and stature of this amazon can barely mask their faces in their burning resolve to whittle her.

Who said she did not see this coming? Not for a politician of her ilk who is familiar with her territory. Truth is that, the tide came in and swept their evil imagination down the sea. Clearly, the affliction of this angry rump has more to do with Onyejeocha’s victory at the election tribunal than with her ministerial appointment. She is a quintessential lawmaker. And with her victory, those whom her presence dwarfs in the parliament and their lackeys were understandably thrown into a fit of dread and crippling panic; fearing that she as their nemesis may choose to return to Green Chamber.

Unreasonable as the fear and the knee-jerk reactions of this fearful lot are; they can be excused because they speak loudly of their sense of insecurity before Onyejeocha’s amazon stature. No better approach expresses fright and unsure footedness in a politician than a resort to politics of primordial survival instincts and desperate self-preservation, as currently being deployed in the media against the minister by those who cringe at her sight. 

But these frightful detractors should be advised to get productive in whatever responsibility that has been confided in their hands presently. The minister is focused and has no respect for those whose only bargain chip for positions and good things of life is their sense of entitlement. Unbeknownst to the sneak attackers, the voice of Jacob and the hand of Esau in their machinations are all well noted. For this reason, creatures like one Abidemi Johnson, a self-styled convener of a nebulous ‘Coalition of Asiwaju Progressive Woman (CAPW)’ ought to be properly guided and not to have made herself available as a willing tool of proxy campaign of hate and calumny against Onyejeocha in the hands of her jittery detractors.

The recent media rant of the said Johnson against the minister was over the top to the extent that she branded the minister unappreciative of President Bola Tinubu for her ministerial appointment. Who is doing this to this woman? The claim begs the question as to how Johnson the puppet and her puppeteers came about such a moonshine since no one in the country except them have complained?  While anyone is at liberty to fantasize with any manner of conjectures, they should be restrained in parading their illusions in the public space as outcomes of reasonableness. The public is discerning and cannot be sold a golden foil for gold.

What constituted Onyejeocha’s ingratitude to the president in the eye of her grieving detractors is no more than their obsessive fear that the minister may choose to return to the parliament following her victory at the election tribunal. But they almost unmasked themselves bare with the claim that Onyejeocha was coming back to the parliament just to rupture the peace and tranquility at the leadership hierarchy of the House of Representatives. They went further to accuse her of plotting a coup to overthrow the Speaker of the House, Hon. Tajudeen Abbas, a position zoned to the North by her party. This clearly explains how petty frustration and anxiety could imprison the mind of some persons.

With this cleared out, it now again begs the question: who’s afraid of Nkiruka Onyejeocha? These scringing merchants of falsehood need to be told that the minister is of elevated wavelength and cannot be distracted by puerile mind games. While I have grudgingly given attention to most of the deception and blackmail, the hogwash that the minister has raised a dollar war chest for a media campaign to unseat Abbas as the Speaker of House Representatives is too low and nonsensical to deserve a response.

Indeed, besides the need to fill the public in with accurate perspectives, my first best option was to ignore and allow these hollow claims to peter out like the hot air they are.

The darts coming the way of the minister would have been a trifle surprising to her if she had not had an advance intel that some political detractors had mobilized to irritate her if the judgment from the National Assembly Election Petition Tribunal goes her way. 

But as the phrase goes “the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on”. While Onyejeocha is currently dedicated to the national assignments given to her by the president in the Ministry of Labour and Employment and the additional from the APC leadership as a co-chairman of the party’s national council for the upcoming off-circle governorship elections in the country, it needs to be stated that she ought to be commended for fighting and regaining the ruling party’s stolen mandate in Abia’s Isuikwuato/Umunneochi Federal Constituency and not to be irritated by the emptiness from some politicians’ sense of entitlement.

Let the sponsors of the attacks be reminded that it didn’t go unnoticed that their fangs were bared at the minister just a few hours after a pro-APC group sent a congratulatory message to her on her victory at the tribunal and urged her to return to the National Assembly. While such congratulatory messages and nudge on her to return to the parliament had continued to come in a deluge from well-meaning members of the society, the minister has since day one of her victory at the tribunal not shifted ground on her resolve to focus on her new national assignment. What is important is that, Nne is still on duty! 

* Mr. Gabriel is the Chief Press Secretary to the Minister of States for Labour and Employment.