“Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?” — Matthew 7:16
That question, posed on a Galilean hillside two millennia ago, was not really about agriculture. It was about evidence, it was a warning against taking claims at face value, against mistaking foliage for harvest, and against the human weakness of judging by appearance what can only be settled by concrete evidence.
It is a warning the people of
Isuikwuato/Umunneochi
need to hear again. And it is the standard by which every candidate who comes before them in 2027 ought to be measured.
Hon. Barr. Nkeiruka Onyejeocha, would not disagree. At her country home in Umunneochi on Wednesday, where she inaugurated her Campaign Council for the Isuikwuato/Umunneochi Federal Constituency seat, the four-term lawmaker made the fruit test her own defence.
“My record is in the public domain. We are not here to do name-calling with amateurs who do not know what representation entails. In 2007 when I campaigned, I never insulted any of my opponents because I have always believed in issue-based campaign,” she said.
That refusal to trade insults carries something of the Aristotelian spirit —the idea, as the philosopher put it, that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Onyejeocha is asking, in effect, that her political life be examined rather than caricatured. That is a fair request, and it is one that her record can withstand.
She listed her fruits: bills on workers’ welfare, health, gender equality and social justice; classroom blocks, erosion control works, rural roads, solar-powered street lights and health centres; skills acquisition, start-up grants, agricultural inputs and job placements. Her claim is that these are verifiable — not what she called “political audio promises.”
“Representation is not about noise but about tangible results,” she said.
The record bears her out. The Oguduasa Erosion Control Project stands as one of the interventions attributed to her tenure, cited by community leaders across the constituency as evidence of her commitment to protecting farmlands and communities from environmental degradation.
The Abia State Skill Acquisition Centre at Uvim community in Isuikwuato, for which she performed the foundation-laying ceremony, is designed to expand access to practical skills training and improve employability for young people across the state. Her annual free medical outreach, sustained for nineteen consecutive years, has provided free surgeries, medications, and post-operative care to thousands of indigent residents, including cataract surgeries, hernia operations, and cervical cancer screening.
At the national level, her legislative footprint is equally concrete. The Compulsory Treatment and Care for Victims of Gunshot Act of 2017 ensured that hospitals across Nigeria must treat gunshot victims without demanding police clearance first, a law that has saved countless lives in emergency situations.
The Anti-Torture Act of the same year criminalised torture by public officials, protecting suspects and detainees from physical abuse. The National Senior Citizens Centre Act of 2018 created a framework for addressing the needs of Nigeria’s elderly population. These are not abstractions. They are laws that protect the vulnerable and will outlast any single political cycle.
Here, the old philosophers would nod. Francis Bacon observed that “men’s thoughts are much according to their inclination; their discourse and speeches according to their learning and infused opinions; but their deeds are after as they have been accustomed.” Deeds, Bacon understood, are the truest biography. Words can be borrowed. Deeds cannot.
And Shakespeare, that great anatomist of human motive, gave us the caution in Hamlet: “Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not ‘seems.'” Onyejeocha, to her credit, is asking to be judged by what is rather than what seems.
The traditional rulers of Umunneochi did not need to be convinced. The Umunneochi Traditional Rulers Council conferred on her the title “Anyanwu Na Enye Ihie 1” — the sun that gives light — describing her as an illustrious daughter and a woman of proven capacity. Traditional institutions do not give such titles lightly. They give them after watching, for years, what a person’s presence has meant for their people.
And that is where the matter becomes more than a local campaign. Because what Onyejeocha is really arguing is a case for continuity over experiment.
“Isuikwuato/Umunneochi cannot afford to go back to political oblivion. We need a voice that will be heard from day one and bring home the dividends of democracy. We built the foundation together; let me go back and complete the building,” she stated.
It is a familiar argument, and not a dishonourable one. Edmund Burke, the father of conservatism, held that society is “a partnership… between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” Continuity, in that view, is not stagnation; it is stewardship. Ranking in the National Assembly, like seniority in any institution, confers leverage that a freshman simply does not have. A constituency that sends a first-term member to Abuja in 2027 will spend the next four years learning what Isuikwuato/Umunneochi already knows.
What is left, then, when the drums of 2027 begin to beat? Simply this: the fruits, and the examination of them. Onyejeocha has invited scrutiny. Her record — the roads, the classrooms, the surgeries, the laws, the skill centres, the jobs facilitated — is there to be inspected.
The tree will be known by what it bears. That is the promise she has made to Isuikwuato/Umunneochi. And the people who have lived among these trees for nearly two decades already know what harvest looks like.
They are the ones who will decide. They will vote her again.
By Emameh Gabriel
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