Adeyemi: ‘A mad man looking for rags to pick’ – Abia governor

In apparent reaction to Senator Smart Adeyemi’s outburst against him, Abia State governor, Dr Okezie Ikpeazu has described Senator Smart Adeyemi as a mad man looking for rags to pick.

The governor said, he wouldn’t like to join issues with the Senator representing Kogi West Senatorial district, so that he will be mistaken for a madman too.

CAPITAL POST had last week reported that, Senator Smart Adeyemi refferred to the Governor as a champagne guzzling Governor.

But the governor who spoke during a book launch quoted Chinua Achebe’s narrative in one of his books that said, “If a madman picks your cloth while you are in the bathroom and takes off and you go after him naked nobody will know who is mad between you and him”, insisting that he would not joins issues with Adeyemi.

Senator Adeyemi who had been under intense rebuke form all over the places since last week, veered off while contributing to a motion on the Urgent Need for the Restoration and Revalidation of the Safe School initiative in Nigeria when he described Abia State Governor Okezie Ikpeazu as a drunkard.

The Kogi lawmaker expressed sympathy for Abia people for being governed by a champagne drinking Governor.

Ikpeazu who was special guest of honor at a book presentation by Senator Eyinnaya Abaribe titled: ‘Made in Aba’ described Senator Adeyemi as someone that is not serious minded who goes about discussing other people instead of issues on development that would move the country forward.

“I want to end my speech by volunteering for the first time, for those who might think that the man coming behind the microphone as the Governor of Abia State is a drunkard.

“Permit me to say that I don’t drink at all and I don’t begrudge those who drink.

“In order places, even countries that have lesser problems, they discuss big issues of economic development, infrastructure and development, they don’t talk about what people do and what they do not.

“So for us as leaders, it is a calling, if you are called to lead, you are also called to be a mentor to the younger ones and what you say and how you carry yourself, and the things you say and the times you say them will tell about how serious you are as a person.

“That will be the size of my response and I will end by borrowing what Chinua Achebe said in his book, ‘If a madman picks your cloth while you are in the bathroom and takes off and you go after him naked nobody will know who is mad between you and him.”

On the book which he said he has not read, he expressed his belief in the resilience and the can do spirit of the Aba people as what Abaribe must have captured.

He said, “For others it is going to be how to be a good deputy Governor and how to be a good Governor to your deputy, so all of these are perhaps the aspects of the various lessons we are all about to learn.

“If Sen. Abaribe fails to tell his story like somebody said earlier by the time others tell the story, he will not be able to recognise himself anymore.

“But in this book though, I have not seen or read it, I think that the caption points to something and that is the tenacity and never dying spirit that Aba, exudes, represents and reflects and that encapsulates the personality of Distinguished Senator Eyinnaya Abaribe.

“Aba does not bother about taking a fall because Aba is sure it will rise all the time it falls. And Aba is not deterred by anything in size, whatever.

“That is the African traders and the Lebanese, and we produce everything that China can produce.

“I am particularly happy and also, I’m proud of accomplishments especially on this book because I have been trying to write a book which is about seven years. Some day I pray that I can be like him by the time my book is ready.”