Valentine Obienyem’s recent pieces are not essays; they are infantile opinion, dressed in the cheap clothing of false concern. His attempt to frame the organic, grassroots support for Soludo as a “dangerous precedent” is a desperate lie, concocted by a man terrified by a people who have finally found a Governor that works.
For clarity sake: this is not a “tax of loyalty,” as falsely claim by Obienyem—a man whose own legacy was cemented when he was caught red-handed with N250 million cash, a war chest for his master’s re-election vote-buying. What we are witnessing is a voluntary “thank you” from a people who have seen real governance for the first time.
While this weeping Valentine pretends to care about school fees, he deliberately ignores the revolution Soludo has brought in education: 22 smart schools, 8,115 teachers hired, and public education resurrected from the dead after 3 decades of abandonment. When communities see their roads fixed, their security restored, their mothers delivered for free and children schooled without paying a kobo, they don’t need to be forced to support an intentional leadership. They invest in continuity. Obieyem and his featherweight candidate are terrified of this new reality, where “go and verify” has been replaced by “come and see.”
His comparison of this popular movement to vote-buying is the height of a treacherous irony. This man, a certified agent of the very scourge he pretends to decry, dares to lecture us on political morality. The only “dangerous precedent” here is the one his administration set: the brazen commercialization of votes where same man was caught with N250 million cash on the eve of his master’s re-election, a practice his camp is now desperately trying to fundraise for once again.
Perhaps Valentine Obienyem is correct about one thing. His master’s administration did leave a legacy. Obienyem was caught with a cash of N250 Million meant for vote buying, a monument to the political decay Soludo is erasing.
The true enemy of the people is not the man building schools and roads. It is the man who tries to silence the people’s joyful endorsement of that progress. History will record this moment not as a debate, but as the final, failed attempts of Soludo’s enemies against the unstoppable will of Ndi Anambra. They will be crushed on November 8 by the consensus.
Adichie Izuchukwu
SSA New Media to Governor Soludo