REJOINDER: When The House Is Made Of Glass, Don’t Throw Stones: Aguocha’s Handlers Want Us to Name A Brother, Let Us Name the Household Instead – Mandate 27 Group

REJOINDER: When The House Is Made Of Glass, Don’t Throw Stones: Aguocha’s Handlers Want Us to Name A Brother, Let Us Name the Household Instead – Mandate 27 Group

We have read, with a mixture of amusement and pity, the piece circulated by Hon. Obi Aguocha’s media team under the headline “Name the Brother: Chinedum Orji Challenged to Produce Evidence.”

It is a long exercise in selective memory. The writer demands a name, a picture and a ward. Before we get to that, he should look in the mirror, because what he sees there is exactly what he accuses others of.

First, a clarification the writer hopes you will miss. He insists that Hon. Aguocha has “no biological brother” serving as a councillor. Notice the careful wording. It is the escape hatch of a man who knows the real question is not about blood but about who sits where, and who put them there.

Nobody needs a DNA test to understand patronage. Family is not only those who share your mother’s womb. It includes in-laws, allies and the household.

So let us supply the names, starting with his principal.

Hon. Obi Aguocha is today a sitting Member of the Federal House of Representatives. That is the first seat.

Next is Hon. Aham Uko his in-law. Hon. Uko has served Abia State twice as a commissioner. Today he is the Labour Party Campaign Director for Umuahia North (Ohuhu). The congressman’s own in-law commands the party’s campaign in the very local government area whose politics the congressman says is over-concentrated.

Then comes Hon. Uzo Uko, the Councillor representing Hon. Aguocha’s own ward. Not a distant ward. Not a neutral one. The councillor sits in the congressman’s political backyard.

So the question must be put plainly to the writer: what other form of political slavery are you accusing another person of, when your principal holds the federal seat, his in-law has been commissioner twice and now directs the campaign, and a councillor sits in his own ward? If proximity to power is a crime, your principal is the prime suspect. A man who has arranged for his circle, down to those who serve at his table, to be comfortably placed has no standing to lecture anyone on the “concentration of elective positions.”

Now to the famous “24 years.” The writer counts the offices once held by Chinedum Orji’s father with great enthusiasm. Funny how the arithmetic suddenly stops when it reaches his own doorstep. Hon. Aguocha was a staunch member of the PDP until 2022. He did not wander into politics yesterday.

He was part of the very political order he now condemns, and he stayed in it until he lost the primaries for the same seat he is now re-contesting. Only after that defeat did he discover the Labour Party, win the seat on its platform, and begin to preach against “political inheritance.”

So when the writer counts 24 years of “monopoly,” why does he not count the years his principal spent inside the PDP, enjoying its structures and its platform? Why does he not count Hon. Aham Uko, his in-law, who served twice as commissioner in that same political environment? Why is the 24-year ledger so careful to leave out the names closest to the man who commissioned it? A ledger that omits its sponsor is propaganda, not accounting.

On the EFCC matter, the writer waves a charge number as if a charge sheet were a verdict. It is not. In every civilised system, a person facing charges is presumed innocent until a competent court rules otherwise. Those who truly respect “documented legal proceedings” will wait for the court rather than turn a pending case into a campaign chant. “Papa, mama and pikin” is catchy, but it is not a judgment.

On the “family ATM” line, the people can see for themselves who has built a circle of relatives and in-laws around public office. It is not only one family.

My counsel to the writer is simple. Before asking others to name brothers, publish the full list of relatives, in-laws and associates who have benefited from your principal’s proximity to power. Add his years in the PDP. Add the primary he lost. Then let the constituents compare the lists.

Ndi Ikwuano, Umuahia North and Umuahia South can count, and they can read. They noticed who was left out of that press statement.