John Nwaigwe
SILENCE IS ALSO A DECISION
A Response to Hon. Uchenna Okoro Kalu’s “Setting the Record Straight”
Some statements are written to inform. This one was written to end a conversation before it could really begin. It will not work. Read it once, and you hear a man defending himself. Read it twice, and you hear everything he left out.
Nobody accused Hon Uchenna Okoro Kalu of signing anything for PRESCO Plc. That is a fight he invented so he could win it. The real question the one his nine paragraphs tiptoe around like a crack in the floor is this: when Abam needed a voice, where was his?
He tells us, solemnly, that legislation, representation and oversight are his duties. Good. Then let him be judged by them. On the single most consequential land question to face our people in a generation, which of those three has he exercised? Not one. Not one sentence in his entire statement commits him to defend Abam land. Not one line says PRESCO must obtain the free, prior and informed consent of the true owners before a single hectare changes hands. When a man will not say that in the middle of a land war involving his own people, he has told you which side he is on. Believe him.
He Was Not Alone in That Room
“I was not at that meeting,” he offers, as if that settles it. It does not. The room was not empty, and it was not full of strangers. When Abia State officials sat with Abam diaspora leaders on that Zoom call, the people watching were the custodians of this land themselves: the EzeOgo’s of Abam. Jame Ogbuka Umekwe. HRH Robert Nwankwo. Mrs Chinyere Nkele. Dr Emmanuel Onyeani. Hon. Lukeman Ukara. Chief Okechukwu Chukwu. Names that carry generations. Names that do not casually condemn a land deal and yet several of them did, plainly, on that call.
Into that room, Hon. Uchenna Okoro Kalu did not say “this is not my matter.” He said it was already decided. “This is the state government decision… that was all.” Not my words. His. Preserved. Timestamped. Sitting untouched on a recording held by people who were actually in the room, while he asks Arochukwu to trust a statement drafted weeks later, under pressure, by people who were not.
Release the recording. If it says what he claims it says, this costs him nothing but five minutes and a phone. A man who trusts his own words does not need a communications team and three weeks of silence to remember what he said. He plays the tape. Every day it stays locked in a drawer is itself a confession.
Do the Arithmetic With Us
Here is the number nobody in his nine paragraphs mentions. In a meeting with the Abia State government, PRESCO’s own chairman is said to have put a figure on the table: roughly $200 million to acquire the land against an estimated $2.25 trillion the company stands to extract from it over the next 25 years. If those are the numbers PRESCO itself is comfortable stating in a room full of government officials, sit with what that means. That is not a purchase. That is not a partnership. That is a company telling the state, to its face, what our land is actually worth to them and the price being discussed for our inheritance is a rounding error against it.
$200 million buys 100 years of extraction. It does not buy back what our people spent generations building, and it does not buy back what earlier generations of Abam sons bled to defend. Land is not inventory. It does not depreciate, and it does not expire when the lease does. What PRESCO is offering is temporary. What we would be giving away is forever.
That is the trade Hon. Uchenna Okoro Kalu has stayed silent about. Not a technicality. Not a matter of legislative jurisdiction. A permanent transfer of Abam’s future for a payment that will be spent and forgotten while PRESCO’s shareholders are still collecting returns on our soil 100 years from now and our grandchildren are asking why nobody who had a voice used it.
A leader who will not defend his people against a trade this lopsided is not neutral. He is choosing the side that pays out now over the side that has to live with the consequences forever. That is not statesmanship. That is a man optimizing for the news cycle he is in, not the century his constituents have to live through.
A Second Silence That Deserves Its Own Answer
While Hon Uchenna Okoro Kalu measures his words about a meeting he claims not to remember, there is a second silence sitting on his desk right now: why is the Ministry of Lands refusing to register land for Abam sons and daughters their own inherited land on the claim that PRESCO has already acquired it?
Sons of this soil, trying to formalize title to what their fathers and grandfathers held before any of us were born, are being turned away at the counter because a foreign-linked company says the land is already spoken for. Not proven. Not adjudicated. Not consented to by a single Abam family. Simply “claimed” and that claim alone is apparently enough to lock our own people out of their own registry. If the Majority Leader has oversight over land matters affecting his constituency, this is the moment oversight means something. His silence on it is not an oversight. It is a choice.
Four Questions Arochukwu Deserves Answered Now, Not After the Election
1. If he had no role in that meeting, why did the EzeOgo’s, our traditional custodians, and diaspora leaders leave it believing the matter was closed closed enough that several of them pushed back against him in the moment, on the record?
2. If PRESCO’s own numbers are real, why has he never once stood up to say a $200 million payment against a $2.25 trillion extraction is not a deal Abam should accept?
3. Why does a statement built around what he is “not” responsible for contain zero sentences defending what he is the land, the future, and the trust that put him in that seat?
4. Why is the Ministry of Lands turning away Abam sons at the registry on PRESCO’s word alone and why has Hon Uchenna Okoro Kalu said nothing about it?
Silence, at a moment like this, is not neutrality. It is arithmetic. Add it up.
Abam Is Not For Sale Neither Is the Truth
Arochukwu does not need another statement polished by an aide at midnight. It needs Hon Uchenna Okoro Kalu to stand in daylight, in front of the people who elected him, and say plainly, publicly, without a lawyer’s hedge that Abam ancestral land will not be transferred without the free, prior and informed consent of its rightful owners, that no Abam son will be turned away from registering his own inheritance, and that a permanent loss for a temporary payment is not a trade he will let stand in his name.
Until he says that, out loud, on the record, every disclaimer he issues means exactly what this one means: a man guarding his seat for now, at the cost of what his people will carry forever.
The challenge stands. The recording exists. PRESCO has already told the state government what our land is worth to them. The only thing missing is his voice.
