Many narratives evolved from persecution of the Jews by the Nazi, under the world’s most known brutal Adolf Hitler who never hid his pathological hatred against the Jews, during the Second World War, 1939-45.
As in every human occurrence, in one of the narratives during the invasion of Poland by the Nazi during the Second World War, a Professor of Jewish origin, Professor Marceli Handelsman, believing he had been ‘polonized and assimilated to the Polish culture’, felt that the invading Nazi Army would treat him the way it would treat polish Scholars. But he was wrong! The hitlerian Army still distinguished him as a Jew and dealt with him very brutally.
In relationship, it is important to always have it at the back of one’s mind that he who never liked one’s father will never like his offspring. Hatred is contagious, spreads dangerously fast, and sticks deeply rooted.
It is nothing other than hatred that could make a government divide a State it is supposed to govern on a two-strange parallel lines of ‘New and Old Abia’. What is that division suppose to achieve? What psychological effect is that division expected to serve?
The Ngwa are passing through their most humiliating period of life in Abia State, a State in which they should ordinarily be the majority clan that should dictate and determine it’s political pendulum, like the people of Orlu have continued to do in Imo State. It is not that there is no internal grievance amongst the people of Orlu, it is, rather, that the Orlu Political Class and Intelligentia have overgrown the pettiness of allowing internal squabbles to determine their collective political interest. This is where the difference lies between the organized effective majority Orlu in Imo State , and the apparently unorganised ineffective majority Ngwa in Abia State.
To start with, it has severally been reported that most of the thirteen thousand workers, in both Civil and Public Services of Abia State that were sacked by the Labour Government of the State in 2023, were mainly Ngwa. Those so sacked have been undergoing very discomforting experiences of deprivation, poverty, hunger, and dejection.
Believing that the top echelon of Abia Civil and Public Services, Permanent-Secretaries, was highly populated by the Ngwa, the Labour Government quickly swept them off by retiring them abruptly, relying only on an inhuman consideration. Those retired Permanent-Secretaries today encounter the worst form of hardship, as the Government has allegedly refused to pay them their gratuities. Even some Permanent-Secretaries of Ngwa extraction who worked against the emergence of an Ngwa Man as a successor to Governor Okezie Ikpeazu were not spared, and are now regretting.
Since the Labour Party Government of Abia State came into power in May 2023, it is reported that the Government has made three sets of appointment of Permanent-Secretaries, the first being Twenty-four, second about Eight, and a third one, Eleven. The Ngwa, with Seven Local Government Areas, should ask themselves, how many did they get in a situation where the least they should have gotten is Fourteen Slots.
It is not necessary mentioning Ukwa-West here because, as long as the present State Government is concerned, the only interest the State has in her is the huge revenue that accrues to her from Oil Wells in the area. That is why the worst roads in Nigeria are found in Ukwa-West. Of course, out of the Forty-three Permanent-Secretaries so far appointed by the current Abia State Government, no Director from Ukwa-West was considered qualified to be so appointed.
Roads in the rural areas of Ngwa land are conspicuously neglected, and that has badly affected the economy of the Ngwa, as most of their Markets have become inaccessible.
Two additional Development Authorities were created in the State by the Labour Party Government, Greater Aba Development Authority (GADA), and Greater Ohafia Development Authority (GODA). Already, Umuahia had an existing Capital Development Authority (UCDA).
Of course, in line with the unwritten policy of the State Government, neither Ukwa-East nor Ukwa-West was, in any way, captured in the Development Authorities. The Government deliberately treats Ukwa Peoples as completely insignificant. Unfortunately, no voices are raised from Ukwa. They are so timid that even when few courageous indigenes of the area protest against visible marginalization being meted to their people, they would almost literally let out a loud stream of invective against the few.
As a deliberate plot to ridicule, humiliate, and degrade the Ngwa, while Professor Awa Kalu, SAN, being an indigene of Ohafia, is Chairman of Greater Ohafia Development Authority, and having Engr Obinna Odum as the Director-General, Barr Emeka Uwakolam, an indigene of Umuahia, is Chairman of Umuahia Capital Development Authority, and having Mr Kingsley Agomoh, also from Umuahia, as General Manager but believing that ‘the Ngwa have no brain’, which I strongly think that time will soon prove the government wrong, no Ngwa Man or Woman is either the Chairman or Director-General of Greater Aba Development Authority. In their places, Ide John Udeagbala from Anambra, and Arc Uche Ukeje, from outside Ukwa/Ngwa, are Chairman and Director-General, respectively. What an open way of disgracing and humiliating a sub-ethnic Nationality as large and populated as the Ngwa!
If a Government could be openly mindlessly brutal to Ngwa Peaple in its first tenure, what would be their fate if the Government is reelected into power for a second time?
In 2022, just before the elections of 2023 when I noticed that some Ngwa Politicians had decided to work against the then ruling Party in the State, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, I wrote severally advising them not to shoot themselves in the foot. They did not listen to me. Today, many of them are regretting. I have observed those signs of self-destruction approaching again towards 2027 elections. If the Ngwa repeat what a good number of them did in 2023, their name would be sorry. I have read some young Ngwa indigenes writing in defence of the Labour Party Government in Abia State. No person should blame them. They are only being selfishly protective of their access to crumbs but at the end, traitors, they must be called.
It should be noted clearly that someone who openly rejected being a member of Ngwa Federated Students’ Association while he was in the University can not, except for selfish reasons, sincerely claim to be Ngwa.
A stitch in time saves nine.
Sir Don Ubani is Okene Ukwu Nde Ngwa, former Commissioner for Information and Strategy in Abia State, and Publisher of Equity Global Reporters Ltd.
