In the last couple of weeks, the onslaught by the gang-up of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) against Abia State Governor, Dr. Alex Otti has been coming in a staccato. I never knew that verbal bombs can echo and thunder more than dynamites.
The social media, partucularly Facebook, has seen real earthshaking bombardment by the Remnants and Renegades (RR). Their major arsenal of war is verbal violence, and they are firing with reckless courage, traversing the dangerous landmine of libel and defamation with mindless guts. They are threading without caution to truth, decency and order.
Somebody threatened me that the verbal missiles will be intensified in the days ahead and the Abia State public space will tremble under the sound and tremour of war. Thank God that he did not mention bloodbath, death tolls and genocide.
One good thing about cyber war is that many can be killed severally but there will be no drop of blood. Yet, smear campaigns and campaigns of calumny can be more destructive than wars of bayonets and lethal gunfire. At this firing line currently stands the RR regiment.
Indeed, the army of the coalition are determined and, each day, they fire with determined gusto, not with lethal armoury but with verbal weaponry – abuses, insults, concoctions. attacks, blackmail and outright falsehood. The attacks are unprecedented but they are being resisted by moral force. The people are resisting them with the moral force of truth, justice, equity and fairness. Because the governor has no skeleton in his compoud, the verbal missiles are missing their targets or often neutralised mid-air. Threats and lethal voices are being contained by moral force. Not the moral force of one man, Otti, but the collectivity of the moral force of the masses of the state to whom Otti stands as their symbol of light.
I am a proponent of the media of human building, communication of conciliation and development so I am happy to see Abians resisting PDP/APC coalition with patience; their falsehood with constant clarifications with facts; their profanities and inanities with peace and dialogue.
Abia people have to adopt this measure of pacifism because they realise that Otti is the custodian of the people’s will, custodian of the inherent social value and builder of nationhood. The attacks against the governor do not fall on him as a person, but on Abia people all over the world, for the victory of 2023 was not the victory of one man’s expertise on strategy, not the victory of one man’s courage and resilience but that of the collective will of struggle, collective will of courage and the collective moral force for freedom.
In the days ahead, Abia people will rise again; more Spartan, more determined, more resilent and more daring to defend their mandate of freedom.
Then, they will match the RR word to word, sweat to sweat and the coalition would realise, to their shock and chrgrin, that they have taken the patience of the people for granted; that in them still lie the gallantry of 2023. Then, the legends of electoral wars will put on their amour. They will rise again.
Having seen the difference in governance between the new Abia and the old, the next election is not going to be Otti’s war but a mass uprising by the people to consolidate their freedom.
Adindu writes from Umuahia, Abia State capital
