Gov Okorocha’s Corrupt Free Policy
Could it be said that Gov. Okorocha was mincing words when he campaigned on an anti-corruption or better still zero corruption policy early in 2011 when he was sworn in? Gov. Okorocha expressly told Imolites in unexpurgated language that his administration has come to liberate and rescue Imo from the shackles of bad governance and corruption occasioned by Ohakim’s government. He was quick in condemning his predecessor on why he should spend a certain huge amount on foods and drinks in government house, inflate contract figures, failure to supervise contracts awarded before payment, embezzling local government funds and a whole lot of them.
However, he started by hoodwinking Imo people by slashing his security vote as we were meant to believe, paid stipends, visited schools, ministries, governments offices to spot out late comers ,unserious/ ghosts workers, ate akara and corn in unethical manner, maintained a good working relationship with his 2nd in command. All these were aimed at deceiving the entire Imo people.
Nevertheless and watching Okorocha on how he started, one would certainly infer that he started well. He commenced the award of road contracts even to the remotest village in Imo State that I had no qualms with. He seriously supervised them then in line with his ignoble philosophy of make-believe.
But then, he lost the zeal to transform Imo because little did he know that a wise man will never claim that he is the best for it is the person with limited experience of life that thinks there is none as wise as he seems to appear. In the middle of the hob-hob that ensued, we witnessed a lot of roads being feasted upon by standard and sub-standard construction companies.
The state of majority of urban and rural roads that were awarded and never got to the second stage became a strong affirmation that a great chunk of politics was involved in these awards contrary to the doctrine that was preached. A large percentage of the house of assembly members and government aides had turned contractors overnight and thus giving contracts without anyone scrutinizing them.
In the course of their unfruitful venture, a lot of roads were hospitalized with no hope of revival. Residents of such areas were put into deep confusion and agony. Particularly roads in Ikenegbu extension such as Iwuanyanwu quarters or fish island junction, Ohaji street, Sir F. Obioma Duruaku crescents, Eze Osuji street, Amajirionwu lane were all victims. I never understood the politics behind this marginalization until last month when I overheard a clergyman (who resides in Uruatta) whose street was newly tarred telling his friend who resides in Duruaku crescent that they suffered such because they do not have anyone at the Imo Government House who can influence the contracts.
Following the above discussion, I interjected and made them realize that Gov. Okorocha’s administration is born out of deceit and evil manipulation. Though they agreed with me but one among us insisted that it was because no government appointee resides in their street that has caused them such misfortune. I had to interrupt by dismissing such claims. But I later gave up when he reiterated that the only two street roads wearing new look in Ikenegbu extension are just those leading to the special assistant on media to the IMHA Speaker and the commissioner for community government and chieftaincy affairs.
“Are these roads federal roads or were they awarded to Juluis Berger?” he asked, this time he was more assertive in his view and sounded more incisive. It was on that note that I said to myself “this man could be speaking the truth. Are contracts really influenced in this administration that has stressed on zero corruption? The question has lingered without an answer until the story of embattled former deputy governor emanated. Nonetheless, my mind was cast aback! What good is it for administrators to say they have sound leadership qualities and their actions do not prove it?
What has prompted Gov. Okorocha’s staying mute and washing off his hands like Pontius Pilate over the undue impeachment of his former 2nd in command without concrete evidence and fair hearing in the allegation of N458m contract scandal knowing the full details of the matter? Is there any hidden agenda to this? Why is he aiding and abating prejudice? Is he hiding something from Imolites? Doesn’t he think we deserve apologies?
Like the helpless residents of the aforementioned areas in Ikenegbu extention, Sir Jude is also a victim of rejection and injustice. Undoubtedly, Gov. Okorocha knows the pranks he is playing at the moment and the right thing to do. Agonizingly, he has bluntly refused to do the right thing but I wish to remind him by unequivocally stating that he should beware of his limits and always remember that a person who lacks the strength to kill an ant but rushes forward to lift an elephant ends in disgrace. Kudos to MTN and EFFC for enlightening us as regards our money that has just been laundered.
My brother Jude Agbaso since the deed has already been done i consciously imbue you to live henceforth by the admonitions of our elder brother James in the holy book who must have seen this coming before he made it clear to us that “my brothers and sisters consider yourselves fortunate when all kinds of trial come your way, for you know that when your faith succeeds in facing such trials, the result is the ability to endure. Make sure that your endurance carries you all the way without falling, so that you may be perfect and complete lacking nothing”. And to Gov. Okorocha, there is a reward for anything you do more especially as a Governor.
Freedom Day Or Lamentation Day
Freedom as we know it is the position of a person from any inhibition or restriction of whatever description. Freedom is a highly multiplicity word that carries a lot of meanings and interpretations. Some discerning minds can interpret it to mean so many things; but a non-discerning mind can see it just from one perspective freedom to move around.
Anybody who loves this society and state of our called Imo would have been shocked after reading an article which appeared on the back page of The Sun Newspaper of Friday 10th May by one Femi, a Yoruba writer. It has become fashionable for some Yoruba professionals to be smiling to the bank following their interactions with Owelle Administration. The only painful aspect of it is that we the Igbo have the same caliber of professionals to render to the government the same type of services even better.
It is now a common knowledge that AIT the so-called Independent Television Station that is neither independent nor universally unbiased owned by a Yoruba High Chief has completely appropriated every airing of every occassion of Imo State Government. The result of this highly favourable disposition in AIT sees nothing wrong in everything the Administration does. Even striking a line between objectivity and truth, the television would eschew such information in such a way that it appears to every low minded viewer to be a blessing from Owelle to the people of Imo State.
The most annoying thing was the recently celebrated and over dramatized freedom day. It has been alleged that of the reporters invited to come and cover the event, twelve out of the fifteen were of non-Igbo while eight of them were Yorubas. Could this be accidental? Of course, they were adequately quartered and taken care of to the exclusion of Igbo chaps among them hence, one of them; Femi Adesina has the audacity to write the nonsense he wrote in the Sun Newspaper already cited above. If only to justify the payment. But he fails to understand that as he wrote down falsehood to deceive the reading public, his pen and conscience troubled him.
As a worthy Ambassador of falsehood, Femi Adesina, the writer, began his article with what looked like objectivity. Midway that as a literary hired hatchetman, he was to justify the terms of the agreement with Owelle. He began on the escapade of falsehood and misrepresentation.
Firstly, he alluded that the crowd at the heroes square was not a rented crowd. Poor Femi, of what measurement did he use to determine that it was not a hired crowd? Of course, he did not know why and how Okorocha won the election. He did not know the military dimension; the Catholic dimension; the Orlu last minute conspiracy and fixing of results in five of the Orlu LGAs at a number not far from 7,000 etc. If he knew all these, he would not have written, “Okorocha rode into power on the wings of popular appeal.” What of the supplementary election which Okorocha is trying uptill now to block a constitutional interpretation of that election? He should go and read Democracy by Military Tank by Elthelbert Okere.
Furthermore, he deceived himself into believing that because of what the Commissioners and Okorocha reported in addition to the mammoth crowd on Tuesday the 7th May, the passion is on. That is to say that, Okorocha still enjoys a popular appeal.
Nobody can fault the hired writer on this. But suffice it to ask, what is the cumulative quantum of such popular appeal? There is no doubt that there are some people who still salvour Okorocha’s government but they have no choice because those who virtually went to the shrine and altar to ensure that Ohakim was removed now have no courage to swallow the futility of their dislike for Ohakim not because of his non-performance but because of his “too open mouth and that of his wife.”
But now, they have been silenced by Okorocha’s abarakataba style or too many styles without substance. May be these are the people whose behaviours tended to convince Femi that Okorocha is still popular. Poor reporter.
Some posers are for him here to ponder over. What of some of the traditional rulers he has been treating as scout boys and his errand? What of the 10,000 sacked Imo workers? What of the kangore panel set by Imo House to skillfully remove an Owerri son from the Deputy governorship position? What of the hundreds of people whose houses and means of livelihood have been demolished, some political, others on flimsy reasons? What of the blatant and awful falsehood that Okorocha is giving free education when we know that free education is given by the Federal Government to all primary and junior secondary schools in Nigeria? What of the so called claims of road constructions that cannot withstand the test of first rainfall? What of the concessioning of hospitals to the Arabs? What of the concessioning of several publicly owned institutions to Roche whose real identity has remained a mystery? What of the saga of 1.2 billion naira paid to a Lebanese company without digging one shovel on the ground? Were all these part of those things from where Okorocha draws his perpetual popularity? On reading this, Femi will scratch his head in shame to say, “I wish I have not been so partial in my conclusion.” Because Imo people are silent punishers. They say a little but deal a heavy reckless and non-performing public officer.
There is no way Owelle could carry ill feelings from those people he has offended and still remain popular.
Such popularity is the figment of Femi’s and Owelle’s imagination. Even when Owelle tried to play Christ by narrating how he thought of shading his blood for the people of Imo State and suddenly, he had an offer earlier refusing to walk on a wrapper spread on the ground by a fanatic woman. Is this not playing Christ and indeed blasphemous for Owelle a Christian to dramatize?
The truth remains that today in Imo, there is a widespread improvement by Owelle’s one-line style of governance where many are suffering only members of his family, those of his wife are enjoying, people are groaning in hardship, poverty and languishing in total impoverishment. Even among Owelle’s cabinet members are those who expressed frustration, anguish and silent resentment to the arbitrary way Owelle is running the government.
Thus, the so-called freedom day which was remembered on its second anniversary was merely staged for remote political reason which will soon manifest. Owelle is both fast and a smart politician who thinks and calculates ahead of many. But to say that was a freedom day in Imo is to say the least, pouring cold water on somebody during harmattan. But for Femi, indeed a labourer is worth of his wage.
For sure, it was a lamentation day in Imo and not a freedom day.
Asari Dokubo’s Rantings
Recall what the late Robert Nestea Marley said in one of his melodious reggae beats that keeps the world alive today with unrivalled musical company and I quote; “you can fool some people sometime, but you cannot fool all the people all the time” (unquote). Recall also that in the days of the 2011 presidential campaign, President Goodluck Jonathan took up two deceptive Igbo names and sand-witched them into his real names to arrive at what falsely gave him out as an Igbo man to the rest of the nation as follows:- Goodluck Azikiwe Ebele Jonathan. It will be equally recalled that certain foresighted Igbo political elite dissociated themselves from such perfidy by moving a campaign against it as a group. That group was almost frustrated by the then government of Imo State under the helmsman-ship of Chief Ikedi Godson Ohakim who blatantly refused them the legitimate right of using the facility in the prestigious but much-politicized Imo Concorde Hotel Owerri, quite unfortunate and regrettable.
The act of refusing that group access to the Concorde Hotel facilities was quite strange and inexplicable, apparently parochial in that the obvious reason leaned so much on sycophancy played by Ohakim in his erroneous believe that President Goodluck Jonathan will earn him express voters support for a second tenure in the much-sought-for Douglas House now an in illusion. Incredibly, yours sincerely was an eye-witness as that group fraught with what rightly goes for the crème de’lacreme of Igbo land gathered in utter disappointment but resorted to discharging their message with the aid of an improvised public address system in the lawn right in front of Imo Concorde hotel to a bewildered mammoth crowd of mixed indigenes of Igbo and other tribes; warning the audience that a Presidential ticket to President Goodluck Jonathan is not in the best interest of the Igbo agenda to clinch the presidency by 2015, and that he (President Goodluck Jonathan) is not and will never be an Igbo man. In the company of that team were men of timber and caliber like; Dr. Alex Ekwueme, Chief Jim Nwobodo, Chief Achike Udenwa, Sen. Ken Nnamani, Dr. Chris Ngige, Dr. Ezeife (Okwadike Igboukwu), etc, yet the former governor Ikedi Ohakim treated them with ignominy and many other Ilgbo politicians took them and their mission for granted. Any way that is history now. But in reminiscence of the President Goodluck administration’s track records vis-à-vis the perfidious romance with Ndigbo and the constituents and contents of his government as it affects the Igbos, that group was fore-sighted and quite speculative too. Besides the general impression of non-performance of the government of President Goodluck Jonathan, the Igbos is particularly short changed in his administration. Glaringly, the manifestation of the designed marginalization of the south east still in the pursuit of the British and Northern agenda masterminded earlier on prior to the amalgamation of the protectorates of southern and northern Nigeria in 1914 by the British Lord Lugard was depicted in the soporific somnambulist approach towards the long expected execution of the construction of the second Niger bridge by the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN). The former President Olusegu Obasanjo campaigned with the construction of that bridge without fulfillment, his predecessor, late president Umoru Musa Yar’Adua toadied the South East with the promise to accomplish that project to no avail. At present, President Goodluck Jonathan adopted very tardy approach towards its implementation out of an undeclared hatred for the south easterners, It is obvious that part of the British agenda to be religiously pursued by the North is to ensure that the Igbos eat from the crumbs in this country. This government of President Goodluck Jonathan has sustained that objective of ensuring that the Igbos eat from the crumbs in this country. This has kept alive the gambits of the British in all facets as reflected by the cabinet of this President Goodluck Jonathan’s led FGN. In the count down, the Vice President is Arch. Nnamdi Sambo (a Northerner), the Senate President, Senator David Mark (a Northerner), the speaker of House of Representatives, Alhaji Aminu Tambuwal, the P.D.P Chairman, Aihaji Bamanga Tukur, the Head of Services of the federation, Aihaji Buka Goni, the INEC boss, Professor Attahiru Jega, the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, the CBN Governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi the Chief Justice of Nigeria. Justice Alooma Muktar, President of Appeal Court, Justice Zainab Bukachuwa, the National Security Adviser, Col. (Rtd) Muhammed Sambo Dasuki, comptroller General of Customs, Alhaji Dikko Imbe Abdullahi, the comptroller General of immigrations, Aihaji R. D. Musa, the comptroller general of Prisons, Zakari Ohinoyi Ibrahim, the president of Federal High Court (a Northern) and even the Chief of Defence staff, Ahmed J. Omaku is of the Northern extraction. The Federal Ministers at most of the key ministries are from the North; from the Information Ministry, Mr. Labaran Maku, the ministry of Education, Prof. Riqqiatu Ahmed, the FCT Minister Mallam Bala Mohammed, Minister of National planning, Samshudeen Usman, the minister of Water Resources Mrs. Ochekpe etc.
The irony of the whole thing is that the South South man Goodluck Jonathan cajoled the Igbos into perceiving him as a fellow Igboman by injecting spurious names like Ebele and Azikiwe into his names and immediately after his due election they were sifted out alongside every vestiges that are capable of entangling him with the Igbo tribe. The unanswered question remains; where has the Azikwe and Ebele inserted into the names of the President disappeared after his election? Every Igboman nourished and nursed from mother’s breast milk aught to brood over this and our predicament today. Taking this treachery for granted a Lilliputian war Lord of Asari Dokugbo’s standing is confronting us yet with another propaganda and idiosyncratic political gimmickry. In his recent ranting just like an ant, the Niger-Delta militant Chief Crusader while campaigning for President Goodluck’s second tenure attempted at tickling the psyche of the Igbos by a pretentious expression of regrets over their owned up sabotage of the Biafran Nigeria civil war against Biafra. In his jocular tips an Igbo President will be certainly supported come 2019 should the second term be given to his ethnic man President Good Jonathan less Ebele and Azikiwe. Apart from taunting the Joe public of Nigeria such statement denoted jocularity much as it falsely betrays Asari as the gnome he claims to be over the Nigeria’s anathemic black gold naturally deposited in his region. This recent outburst from the creek man, Asari Dokugbo in the guise to endear the Igbos is none the least unctuous, uncouth, vacuous and quite uncanny. For the umpteenth times these guys from creeks have challenged our integrity in this country with feigned fraternity that eventually ends up in treachery. Recently, one of them named Tompolo now compensated by the FGN with the monitoring of oil pipelines insulted us by abducting one of our illustrious sons, captain Iheanacho a former minister of Internal Affairs for some unjustified and unfounded reasons. In the past, the likes of Isaac Boro, Ken Saro Wiwa, and Dieta Spiff wallowed in ignorance that sabotaging the Biafran struggle for liberation from this parody of a National called Nigeria will earned them unwarranted relevance in the Federal Parlance. What they got in pay-back for their traitor-roles was the on-going despoliation and deprivation metted out for them as part of the Northern agenda. As a fall out of their atrocity, the Northerners own 85% of the oil wells in their Dermot or domain.
Imagine that Gen. (rtd) . T. Y. Danjuma confessed that he was embarrassed with money when one of such oil wells in his possession was sold out to expatriate explorers at the cost of about N77 billion (or U.S.D. $ 500 million). As if that was not enough, the recent vicious Boko Haram holds their brother (President Goodluck Jonathan) to ransom to give the gander what was given the goose. The crumbs left in the palms of the Niger-Delta people as amnesty package elicited envy and jealousy that the Northern elders pushed their youths into atrocious insurgence that rendered almost the entire Northern region restive only to attract amnesty with concomitant package. It is really a pity that the FGN capitulated to the whims and caprices of criminals to dole out a whooping sum of about N54 billion as largesse by coercion. What an arrant non-sense! The likes of Alhaji Asari Dokugbo should realize that there is a wisdom in the saying that goes; “once beaten, twice shy” The Igbos will not be fooled a second time to succumb recklessly to such an old tricks of promise and fail. Worthy of note is that this well over fourth (40) years of post-civil war experience of marginalization, intimidation, annihilation and humiliation (i.e 1967-1970 civil war is now 43 years) in our memories. A fool at fourty is a fool for ever. Should the Igbos accord any iota of hearing ears to such perfidious entreaties once again, bitter pills assure them of the worst calamity, they will be ensnared forever. And those apologists of a pretentious brotherhood that have taken us for granted must hear it loud and clear that any vote from an Igboman to support president Goodluck Jonathan for a second shot at Aso Rock Villa is like water caste on a stone
