Newsfront Online Newsfront Online
By Osondu Ahirika
Friends, Nigerians, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come neither to bury Kenneth Okonkwo nor to praise him. I didn’t want to join issues with Mr Kenneth Okonkwo.
Following his unprovoked diatribe against Governor Umo Eno Over his movement from PDP to APC. My silence was reinforced when Governor Umo Eno uncharacteristically clapped back at him.
I thought the matter had rested. But no. Kenneth Okonkwo has doubled down on his verbiage against Governor Umo Eno. Lured into the fallacious supposition that you earn veneration by making other people look bad. Desperate for public validation of his emergency but feigned political activism.
Kenneth Okonkwo has hit overdrive running amock into the express road. All brawn in his rants packaged to the gullible as brain, he has reiterated his tirade on the Governor. Kenneth Okonkwo was shot into the limelight by his lead role in the movie Living in Bondage, That has been his sole libation for fame.
A trial of politics has seen him hobbling between 3 parties in less than a decade. From PDP to APC and then to the Labour Party. Without leaving a mark on any. Yet such a man, with that inconsistency huffs, puffs and scoffs at another person for moving from PDP to APC.
He justifies his serial crostitution between party’s with an alibi which I paraphrase: None of those party’s gave me anything. I was the one giving to them. But the PDP gave Pastor Umo Eno the Governorship. He adorns himself as having defected between 3 political party’s in principled angst. But lashes out on another as cowardly and reprobate.
Akin to blaming others for sinning differently. What a comical posturing. I feared with hesitation that he was a political disc jockey when he first pounced on Governor Umo Eno Gyrating to the tune of sponsored blackmail
He has finally given ample proof to enable that conspiracy theory. He submerged his rhetoric with uncalibrated rumour. Claiming that three Commissioners resigned and refused to follow Umo Eno. That false alarm bold-facedly spewed was the cock- and- bull story. Then he adds that Governor Umo Eno sacrificed his wife like the Andy he played in Living in Bondage.
Another red herring he latched on to legitimise his busybodying. It’s easy to understand what has energised him. As our people say when an old woman is dancing ‘skelewu’ in the middle of the run. A drummer is lurking somewhere in the bush.
Kenneth Okonkwo should refund the honorarium to whoever bankrolled him as a purveyor of this failed mudslinging. He underperformed in this ungodly yeomanry. By the way Kenneth Okonkwo’s only title to political foothold is his shortlived association with Mr Peter Obi.
The Labour Party Presidential candidate who had spawned public admiration and adulation. Then like the overfed and drunk bird, Nza, in Igbo folklore. Who had grown wise and strong in its own conceit and challenged his god to a single combat.
Okonkwo turned on his political patron saint – Peter Obi Labelled him a coward and effeminate in resolve. He projected himself as the superman of political courage and principles. This alter ego betrayed the farcical routine of his scoffing kind of politics.
To chase political clout, Kenneth Okonkwo is deploying the trickery of the Laws of Power. Espoused by Robert Greenee, Law 41 says: Avoid Stepping into a Great Man’s Shoes. Further distilled, the law advises:
“Do not get lost in their shadow or stuck in a past not of your own making: Establish your own name and identity by changing courses. Slay the overbearing father, disparage his legacy, and gain power by shining in your own way.”
With his habitually melancholic mien. Okonkwo applies the same strategy to spread his dragnet. Making Governor Umo Eno his next victim. He described him as ‘Transgenderic’ A metaphor for trying to unsex the Governor through intellectual thuggery.
Addressing a man old enough to be his father and grandfather to his children. I’m persuaded that his hollow rants are a terminal performance of his self-styled political melodrama on the national stage. He has nothing more to offer than to stoke the flames of crass emotionalism while playing to the gallery.
In the desperate search for relevance and political capital. Kenneth Okonkwo is living in the bondage of his political failure. Which his Nollywood peers like Desmond Elliott, Richard Mofe Damijo and Hilda Dokubo have managed.
Governor Umo Eno has made a decision inspired by enlightened interest and commonsense. If Kenneth Okonkwo and his ilk do not like that, then so be it. All he can aver in fairness is – if I were Governor Umo Eno I would not do this or I would have e done that.
But in this circumstance. I’m not Governor Umo Eno. So I rest. Then he needs to wait and work to become a Governor so that we see how he navigates the political sweepstakes. Until then…Kenneth Okonkwo should refrain from being a motormouth. Before he ends up being a Comedian of the Federal Republic while thinking he is playing political activism.
