By Hon Toby Chuks

In recent times a certain two-time former Commissioner for Information in Abia State, Eze Chikamnayo, has created for himself an image of one who is in perpetual need of political rehabilitation and financial refurbishment following his ill-advised and snide remarks on political leaders in the current Abia State government which he diligently served until the eve of the recently concluded elections.

For the gullible and the Internally Displaced Politicians (IDPs) in the State, Chikamnayo is already sounding like a clanging cymbal emitting gibberish veiled in saintly music that they revel in without knowing that the fellow is only seeking to draw attention from political leaders in the State in order to be “settled” and further feather his own nest at the expense of his cheerleaders.

Sadly, he is drawing a tiny group of vulnerable supporters who have suddenly seen in him a prodigal son whose years of personal waste, debauchery, lasciviousness, sedition and the likes he thrived in while he held political office, must be overlooked rather than accounted for. To such people, as long as one joins their banal choir of crucifixion against current political leaders in Abia State, the person’s sins, no matter how grievous, immediately become non-existent. Such people, just like Chikamnayo himself, prove by their inconsistencies, that they stand for nothing, therefore, fall for anything, even cheap lies and blackmails as the ones told by the Chikamnayos of this world who have suddenly discovered their mastery of sophistry and must deploy it to their own selfish end.

It is sad that a neophyte lawyer like Chikamnayo, a two-time Commissioner, who until the eve of the 2019 general elections, had been in the sanctum sanctorum of power since 1999, will take on a flimsy medium like the social media to peddle his lies and infantile threats against those who have repeatedly rehabilitated him and rescued him severally from political oblivion and financial asphyxiation.

For his calamitous reputation for fickleness, he was once described among other unprintable words as “the worst information commissioner in Nigeria” by Ndubuisi in an article that appeared in “The Nigerian Voice” of July 14, 2014. His inconsistencies and political somersaults are so bad that in an interview he had with a Lagos-based magazine, Insider Weekly edition of July 14, 2014, Eze Chikamnayo had described a former governor who led the State between 1999 and 2007 as an “animal in human skin” but when in 2016, he was out in the cold politically and in need of urgent resuscitation, he recanted rather shamelessly and went back to his vomit, shortly returning to the other camp again once he had sucked the monetary juice of his victim to its dryness.

Having left the PDP to join the APC, Chikamnayo further proved that he is a man without scruples who would do anything to betray his own people and party as long as that would serve the interest of his stomach. While in APC, he betrayed them by brazenly working for the PPA Senatorial candidate, Orji Uzor Kalu, as the Director of Media and Publicity of his campaign organization in the build up to the March 5, 2016 rerun election for Abia North Senatorial zone, appaearing on radio and granting interviews as PPA campaign spokesman but with the staff of APC just because of what he could get for his languid tummy. Hear him: “We (Chikamnayo and Kalu) met and decided that we should forget our differences and support him… I am not in the same party with him, but I am working for him, because we have common interest (Sun Newspaper, February 23, 2016). Who does this and still flaunts it if not one who is a serial backbiter, cheap sophist, without any modicum of shame, sense of responsibility and or commitment to a cause for the long haul? After Orji Uzor Kalu lost that senatorial election, Chikamnayo, in his usual character, quickly abandoned him, PPA and the APC and returned to the PDP in continued search for those to fleece. Has anyone seen that portion of the Scriptures which says that “For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways” (James 1:7-8)?

From the foregoing, it is obvious that it is not only Chikamnayo that is unstable in all his ways, even those he has been able to gather for himself as virtual followers on social media having known his manipulative antecedents are also unstable in all their ways, the consequences of which are very disastrous because the blind cannot lead the blind.

When the Governor refused to be a victim of his antics, Chikamnayo quickly left the PDP again shortly before the 2019 elections and was parading himself as a member of the SDP even when he had no membership card. Of course, no responsible Party would issue their card to a renowned flimflammer after his odious antecedents.

Ibe Uko captured the scenario succinctly when he wrote: “It is only a dog that goes back to its vomit, not a human being. But a man like Eze Chikamnayo who still parades himself as the Commissioner for Information Abia State, having been booted out by… Governor T.A Orji, has gone back to his several vomits and is still going. Such is common to a man who has sold shame to the winds for the lucre of money.” – (26th June, 2013).

The dates of these events and the verdicts that followed are instructive. The implication is that Eze Chikamnayo’s antecedents of using blackmail, insult, crass abuse, malicious publications, seditious speeches and outright sophistry are nothing but mere instruments which he has always deployed for decades now whenever he needs his badly dilapidated stomach infrastructure to be revamped while he masquerades his blackmail in the saintly garb of activism to deceive the impressionable. Little wonder he has used these antics of his to remain in the corridors of power from 1999 till the eve of the 2019 elections when he was sacked by the current Governor of the State. Surprisingly, just barely three months after the elections, the man is broke again and seeks the attention of government officials through his infantile rants on the social media.

It is not surprising that the man gets easily broke. His inordinate lifestyle which is well documented cannot be sustained by what he manages to squeeze out from government officials with falsehood. I will not dwell on such lifestyle in this article but Eze has to caution himself on this warped, vacuous and ultimately villainous path he has chosen. If it worked in the past, it can never ever work again. He has sufficiently proved to be both a moral and political burden to all those he has worked for in government. If he continues, then this writer might be left with no other option but to expose his monumental moral and political deficits. He should remember that equity does not favour those with soiled hands no matter how much they apologise for their misdeeds. Apologies do not confer on them the status of a saint. If Chikamnayo is serious about his apologies for his past misdeeds, let him make restitution and return to Abia State all that which he had earned by subterfuge and falsehood. Then, we can begin to take him serious.

Eze Chikamnayo cannot build a different moral pedestal for himself and a morally deficient fortress from which he thinks he can throw stones unrestrainedly to his benefactors who have maintained a far higher standard in their own dealings. Discerning Abians have seen through his deceit over the years, and they are saying enough is enough!