By Promise UDEH 

The year that Okonkwo took eight hundred seed yams from Nwakibie was the worst year in living memory. Nothing happened at its proper time; it was either too early or too late. It seemed as if the world had gone mad. The first rains were late and when they came, lasted only a brief moment… The drought continued for eight market weeks and the yams were killed. The year had gone mad. When the rains finally returned, they fell as it had never fallen before. Trees were uprooted and deep gorges appeared everywhere. That year, the harvest was sad, like a funeral and many farmers wept as they dug up the miserable and rotting yams.

Like Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Isuikwuato/Umunneochi has been thrown into perpetual grim harvest, similar to Umuofia, since the emergence of Nkiruka Onyejeocha as a Member of the Federal House of Representatives (HoR). In the order of the state political books, Madam Nkiruka Onyejeocha sits ingloriously on top of the pecking order of sit-tightism and misrepresentation.

Having served as Executive Chairman, Umunneochi LGA in 2002 and as Abia State Commissioner for Resource Management and Manpower Development in 2003 before moving to the Green Chambers in 2007 under the flagship of PDP, Nkiru’s venture into politics have been filled with deception coated with sit-tightism, so much that Cameroun’s Paul Biya and Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo may take a refresher course on how to deceive the masses and win them over on election eve.

Recall that prior to the 2019 general elections, the Female Paul Biya (owing to her sit tightism and near zero performance) was part and parcel of Abia State’s ruling PDP squad. Having won election to the Federal HoR under the PDP ticket in 2007-2011, 2011-2015, 2015-2019, and in APC from 2019 till date (4th term of 16years). With the refusal of the State’s PDP to hand her the HoR tickets, Nkiruka Onyejeocha quickly switched allegiance to the National ruling party, APC, few months to election.

Abians vividly recall her numerous and constant trottings around compounds, hamlets and villages in Isuikwuato/Umunneochi constituency on election eves. From Uturu to Isuikwuato and Isuochi, her handouts, often in form of ‘abanaya’ wrappers and noodles which were saved up from 13 years of unproductive sojourn at the HoR were used to cajole indigent Abia women who are ridden by poverty and yearnings for stomach infrastructures, and whose pains are linked to bad governance and shallow representation from her. Portraying a false charitable image of a politician in tune with the grassroot, Nkiruka capitalised on her constituents poverty and stomach infrastructural needs to remain in Abuja for a 4th term.

Like a quadrennial migratory bird, Onyejeocha’s alliance with Abia constituents is seasonal; appearing when she needs votes and thereafter, disappears into thin air after election. What manner of representative visits her constituents only on election eves and disappears for another 4 years, only to visit her constituents on the eve of another election, repeating the cycle of deception during electioneering campaigns. Onyejeocha has never been in touch with the depraving realities and core needs of her constituents. What exactly does she take Abians for?

It’s almost 14 years of Onyejeocha’s sit-tight sojourn at the Green Chambers mainly achieved by weaponising poverty and nepotic empowerment of fewly hand-picked, loyalist youths and praise singers, discriminatorily picked and placed in Federal establishment and thereafter recoiling to her shell for another four years without concrete evidences of expected dividends of democratic representation and seeable constituency projects that cuts across board.

Available data from the RMAFC shows that, a member of the green chambers receives 9,529,038:06 (N9.5m) as annual pay, N704,086:83 monthly allowances and 1,985,212.50 constituency allowances. With this whopping revelation, Isuikwuato/Umunneochi constituents rhetorically ponder on Nkiruka Onyejeocha inability to pinpoint a singular constituency project in a town like Uturu amongst other communities whose magnanimity gave her a ride to the Green Chambers. To say the least, Isuikwuato/Umunneochi Constituency has been starved of good representation and substantiable projects by the federal legislator who never visits, but idles at the Green Chambers of the National Assembly for close to14 years and counting!

As we move into 2021 and another year of Onyejeocha’s sit-tight reign at the National Assembly, it is instructive to inform her that the era of noodles palliative distribution on quadrennial basis is over. Isuikwuato/Umunneochi constituents are fully aware of her pre-election week antics, and awake to their constitutional responsibilities of holding their representative accountable to serious engagement and judicious constituency projects. The days of pilfering and pre-election quadrennial migration bird constituency-visit is over. The days of deception is over. As she whiles away her constituency’s time, constituents and God will always remember her for whom she is – a sit tight, deceptive representative of Isuikwuato/Umunneochi people.

(promiseudeh07@gmail.com)