If a truth, aside President Muhammadu Buhari, Atiku Abubakar and Nasir el-Rufai, no other politician has been so unfairly maligned like Senator Andy Uba. This suave, debonair and gentleman politician has been so misconstrued and misrepresented to people and Nigerians, in general, that you would simply think that the man is an Idi Amin, Jean Bokassa and Sani Abacha in one person.

Uba, who happened  to have served President Obasanjo as a Personal Assistant and senator for eight years, has been cast in many scandals and controversies, many the making of beer parlour story rendi-tions, a few the evil machinations of a number of his fellow politicians who see Uba as their joint neme-sis. For the beer parlour genres, I shall not waste my time as a majority of us ought to understand the overreaching effects of liquor on the thought processes of a drinkard.

I shall rather focus on the propaganda churned out by some rival politicians.

One prevailing rumour is the story that Uba made his money through practices deemed as fraudulent. An-other is centred on his role in the state and her share of crisis, mostly during the Ngige/ Chris Uba era. The third is the talk of Uba as being mentally unfit for any kind of leadership.

Naturally, particularly in this part of the world’s climactic politics where everything is overheated and a number of falsehoods are made to largely pass for truth, an Uba would largely not be bothered by such manifest maliciousness, but for the fact that sometimes when falsehood is allowed to remain alone on the pedestal meant for truth, it may be mistaken for truth.Yes, Uba is a wealthy man! There’s no disputing that, but to label his wealth as shady and as proceeds of fraud is, indeed, unfair to the man who through the dint of hard work and business savvy made the most of his opportunities. Some say that he made his wealth through his connections, now,  how that becomes  a crime against the state is indeed baffling.  In the course of using such connections to advance his business empire, were there unethical practices? This is a man who acquired his businesses through loans painstakingly taken from banks and successfully repaid each loan without being harried by the banks as is the custom here. This is a man that has striven to be very transparent in his dealings with fellow businessmen and the public. Until any-one is able to pinpoint to me a shred of fact linking Uba to any fraudulent dealing as regards his busi-ness, I want to urge all to disregard all stories regarding such.

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Let us travel back to the troubled era between 2003 and 2006, where former Governor Chris Ngige was engaged in a supremacy battle with Uba’s younger brother, the enfant terrible of Anambra’s politics, Chris Uba. Each episode within that sad chapter of our history naturally cast Chris Uba as the villain and Ngige as the saint or the protagonist. This is true and I do not intend to be a revisionist on that matter.

However, the attempt to blame Andy for the sins of Chris is, indeed, unfair and sickening. Is it fair to blame the brother for the sins of his brother? Should Andy Uba, who informed Obasanjo about the sins of his brother in the kidnapping of Ngige, prompting Obasanjo to immediately act and direct that Ngige be restored to power, be blamed for the crisis – the kidnap or the criminal height where the state’s prop-erties were vandalised by supporters of Chris Uba? Will Andy Uba’s detractors and pull him down signa-tories not stop to think that had Andy Uba wanted, that is if he was neck deep in the plot to oust Ngige, he would not have handed President Obasanjo the phone in faraway Maputo, Mozambique?

The third issue is the trite talk of an Uba not being intelligent enough to aspire for any elective govern-ment. Trust me, I have read this and heard it from a few simpletons, persons, I myself regard as intellec-tual midgets, a case of the proven outcast labelling another as an outcast. For Pete’s sake, would it have been possible for a perceived “dullard” in Andy Uba to serve a president with tremendous personality as Obasanjo? This largely reminds me of a story I heard of the former Governor of Imo State, Sam Mbakwe, who we know was “fearfully  made.” Tired of hearing that he was fearfully made, the man known as the ‘weeping governor’ one day blurted out to the amusement of all and posterity thereafter, “You that is beautiful or handsome, how many in your family have been governor!” These “professors” who are all-knowing but with nothing much to show for it, who cannot be trusted even with the leadership of their own bedrooms, who are nine out of 10 proven failures will look at an Andy Uba and call him dull?