The first thing that would strike any person meeting Theodore Ahamefule Orji for the first time – 16 years ago – was his humble personality. I doubt if he still carries himself with the same simplicity and candour, for which I have known him, now he has tasted power as governor. I say so, because power has a way of intoxicating some people, especially those who never dreamed of getting it. I must openly submit that I was taken in by his facial appearance, not knowing that deep inside he was a different person altogether – a chameleon. Subsequent events have since proved me right.

Up till this moment, I still do not believe that it is the same Theodore Orji, whom I met at Chief Mark Uka Ogwo’s house, that is hauling abuses at me on a daily basis and walking the corridors of power like a colossus. He calls me all kinds of names and uses every available medium to castigate my person.

His speech at every public or private event begins and ends with my name, as if he has no other business in governance other than to abuse Orji Kalu. Not only that: he goes about telling all kinds of naked lies in order to soil my reputation. He also goes to gossip to the President and his wife about me, telling them unprintable things, just to disfavour me. He tells anybody he encounters – businessmen and women, politicians, the clergy, traders, farmers, drivers, carpenters, bricklayers, the high and mighty, lowly people, and just anybody – that I am his sworn enemy. He also takes his campaign of hate against me to the Diaspora. The situation is really getting out of hand.

The funny part of it is that some of the people he tells lies about me still come back to find out what exactly I had done to the man to make him hate me so much. When I ask them what reason or reasons he gave them for hating me so much, they would say, none. So, what then have I done to Theodore Orji?

I am certain by now the President and others he had lied to against me would have known the truth – that the man is a pathological liar and a usurper. No God-fearing person would go to the level he has gone in seeking vengeance, if indeed I had done any wrong against him.
I had kept quiet all this while in the hope that commonsense would prevail somewhere along the line. Instead of the man minding his constitutional business of governance and thinking about how to better the lives of our traumatised people, whom he has abandoned chasing shadows, he has spent scarce resources fighting me and everybody related to me. There is no single day that passes that he does not use the state government-owned radio and television to pour invectives on me and my relations. Not only that, he has as well been going about concocting all sorts of tales in order to destroy my reputation and create conflict between me and others. To show how heartless the man is, he has even leveled some grievous allegations against me in order to get at me for no justifiable reason.

Is it not sheer wickedness and the height of meanness for him to station his boys at the gates to my houses in Abuja, Lagos and the village to write names of people who visit me and report back to him? He in turn punishes those people. Is that how governance is done? This is a democracy where people have some freedoms, including freedom of association and movement.

Since May 2010, when he chose to part ways with me and others (so it seems), he has never ceased insulting me and doing things that are unimaginable and repulsive – all in a futile attempt to paint me black. Unfortunately, all his gimmicks are not working. Instead he has succeeded in making a mockery of himself and exposing how callous and vindictive he can be.

Indeed, I have been forced some times to do an introspection, trying to find out what exactly I had done against him to warrant such hatred and malice. But after each exercise, I could not lay my hands on anything. The only sin I know I committed against him was that God used me and the good people of Abia State, who believed in me, to make him governor while he was in prison, contrary to the opposition of some close aides, family relations and confidants against his choice. As I wrote last week, there was no sign at all that he would do any of the wicked things he does these days against my person, because he pretended to be a good man when in essence he was a chameleon. He hid many things about himself from me and put up a very pretentious and false personality for the eight years he served as my Chief of Staff. How he managed to do it without being detected is something only him can tell. All I know is that I trusted him and treated him like an elder brother and confidant.