Return Ebonyi State’s N30 million, Group tells Fr. Mbaka; Blasts Gov. Umahi for profligacy

A group, the Ebonyi Advocacy for Human Rights Initiative, has called on the controversial Founder of Adoration Ministry, Emene Enugu, Fr. Ejike Mbaka to return the sum of N30 million given to him by the Governor of Ebonyi State, David Umahi, claiming that it amounted to hypocrisy and sycophancy for the Governor to be sharing out money belonging to the state while the people are dying of hunger.

A statement by Abia Onyike, the group’s Chairman/Convener, claimed that Umahi was busy giving out such huge sums of “at a time when the state Government was owing Ebonyi retired civil servants their hard earned and legitimate gratuities since 2015” when he came into office as Governor, stressing that citizens of the state currently “languish in abject poverty, starvation and penury” while the Governor and his family members “live in opulence and ostentatious display of affluence.”
Full text of the statement reads:

After a critical review of the circumstances surrounding the gift of #30M to the Founder of Adoration Ministry, Emene Enugu, Fr. Ejike MBAKA by the Governor of Ebonyi State, David Umahi, the Ebonyi Advocacy for Human Rights Initiative hereby submits as follows:
1. That we are opposed to the handing out of such a staggering sum of #30M, trailer loads of rice and yams by Gov. Umahi to the Adoration Ministry, in Enugu at a time when the state Government was owing Ebonyi retired civil servants their hard earned and legitimate gratuities since 2015 when Umahi came into office as Governor of the state.
2. We consider Umahi’s gestures as hypocritical and sycophantic as the Governor was fond of giving out Ebonyi public funds to Nigerian VIPs and outsiders even as the citizens of the state languish in abject poverty, starvation and penury.
3. Fr. Mbaka should return the money to Gov. Umahi and advice him to stop living a pretentious life as “Charity should always begin at home”.
4. Umahi’s government imposed a slavish salary table on Ebonyi workers in 2015 and has been paying half salaries to workers while Gov. Umahi and his family members live in opulence and ostentatious display of affluence. This has resulted to greater poverty amongst Ebonyi youths who have reappeared in all major roads in Nigeria where they sell wares during gridlocks in the cities.
5. Gov. Umahi’s continuous regime of impunity and selfish grandeur shows him to be a “murderer and genocidist” as his wicked policies have created instalmental deaths amongst civil servants and retirees who live in perpetual agony and regularly give up the ghost since he became Governor six years ago.
6. Gov. Umahi must be compelled to stop his culture of sharing public funds to all kinds of people in Nigeria including distributing lorry loads of rice. Recall that a lorry loads of rice sent by the Governor mistakenly found its way into the premises of Berekete Radio Station in Abuja in 2020 and efforts by the Governor’s aides to recover and retrieve the rice proved abortive.

Abia Onyike,
Chairman/ Convener,
Ebonyi Advocacy for Human Rights Initiative.