By ethelbert okere, 08033360045
Recently, there were reports in some the local media ascribing the following statement to the Speaker of the Imo State House of Assembly, Right Hon. Ben Uwajimogu thus: “Ohakim Will Not Rule Imo Again”. The reports added an adjunct to the main statement: “Despite his (Ohakim) litigations against Governor Rochas Okorocha’s administration in Imo state”. As a free citizen Mr. Uwajimogu is entitled to his views. As a politician, it is not surprising that the Speaker of the Imo State House of Assembly also takes liberty in past time vitriolic that are associated with politics. But even so, there are standards expected of certain categories of politicians or political office holders.
As a keen observer of the affairs of Imo state, Mr. Uwajimogu, by virtue of his position, naturally comes under my radar. As a commentator, I have made several commentaries on the affairs of Imo state, through opinion articles in the media as well as through other public fora but I got to notice that my attention is hardly drawn to the Uwajimogu-led Assembly for the simple reason that I find his leadership style appalling if not bizarre. I have come across several commentaries published in the newspapers and attributed by Hon. Uwajinwogu but I must confess that I have never found them inspiring.
Ordinarily, therefore, I would not personally want to comment on an issue raised by Hon. Uwajimogu, regardless of the high esteem to which I hold his position, for the simple reason that I am aware that Uwajimogu, apart from given to exuberance, is very fixated over a number issues; an attribute which run contrary to my grounding as a journalist and commentator on public affairs, generally.
In the instant case, however, I think it is expedient to draw the attention of Imo people to the banal texture of the statement credit to the Honourable Speaker as aforementioned. When I first came across the publication, the first thing I did was to look at the context in which Hon. Uwajimogu made the statement attributed to him. As other fellow Imolites who read the report might have noticed, that statement had not the least bearing with the public outing the Speaker was engaged in and during which he made the statement under reference. Hon. Uwajimogu’s statement was not in response to any question as to whether or not Governor Ikedi Ohakim will “rule” Imo state again. It just came from the blues. One is, therefore, left with no other option than to conclude that the statement credited to the Honourable Speaker was premeditated and that he was merely looking for an avenue to let it out.
As a keen observer of politicians, I am aware that good politicians look for the appropriate occasion to rub in matters of interest. In the instant case, the occasion did not warrant any allusions to Governor Ohakim. According to reports, the Speaker was addressing members of the Okigwe People Political Movement (OPPM) somewhere in Obowo local government.
To play the devil’s advocate, members of that group, most of whom are highly revered politicians in the state, must have been embarrassed that an occasion as crucial as that was reduced by the Speaker to a mere jibe on an issue that had no bearing with what they had gathered for. The result, of course, was that the media reports on that very important gathering left out the crucial issues raised to focus on Ohakim. Even the least discerning fellow will go home with the conclusion that the only reason Hon. Uwajimogu attended that occasion was to make the statement under reference. Is that what the movement wanted to achieve? I went through the report and I discovered that there were more incisive, politically-motivating statements made by other well meaning citizens of the zone at that occasion but which were buried under the banner of the Ohakim angle.
The Honourable Speaker probably did not know that he merely gave the editors a lead to sale their newspapers because, for reasons we do not need to go into here, Ohakim has continued to make headlines in Imo state over two years after leaving office. It is not for nothing and it does not happen all the time. Playing the devil’s advocate still, I would not, if I were Uwajimogu and others in the anti-Ohakim camp, consciously turn Ohakim into the main issue in Imo politics. Whether they like it or not, that’s what they have succeeded in making the young man, especially as every attempt by that camp to demonize Chief Ohakim has failed. Hon. Uwajimogu should inquire from some keke operators what happened a few weeks ago when Ohakim was sighted at a Super market in Ikenegbu, Owerri. The keke men left their vehicles and swamped on him, chanting eulogies. This is the same fellow millions of money has been spent in mobilizing youths and the same keke people to demonstrate against.
Now let’s leave the circumstances and come to the sense in the statement under review. Yes, there is an on-going court case over the last governorship election in the state. And for this case, Governor Okorocha has engaged some of the best legal minds in the country to represent him on a matter that is currently before the Supreme Court, the highest legal authority in the land. At the moment, the Governor, on whose behalf Hon. Uwajimogu was apparently speaking, is even an appellant against a Court of Appeal ruling that was in favour of Ohakim. Now, if the matter is as simple as Uwajimogu wants Imo people to believe, Governor Okorocha would have stayed back at his country home in Ogboko and tell to judges in Abuja to go to hell.
The issue here is not who will eventually win the case but the point is that a fellow as highly placed as the Speaker should not say things that suggest that a people as sophisticated and enlightened as Imo people do not know the implications of vital issues like this. Mature politicians would not talk the way Uwajumogu did. No matter how much he tries to pretend, the Hon. Speaker knows within his inner most self that the stakes are very high.
It is like him, Uwajimogu, publicly dismissing the current case hanging over his tenure as a legislator. He knows that like the governorship matter, the stakes are so high. Can he, sincerely speaking, come out publicly to beat his chest and dismiss that matter? I mean the one as to whether he should remain on his seat as a member representing his state constituency, following his perfidious cross-carpeting from the PDP to APGA a few minutes before the current Assembly was inaugurated.
Why would the Honourable Speaker leave the log in his own eyes to look for a tiny particle in another person’s eye? The point being made here is that Imo people are knowledgeable and discerning enough to make a reasonable conjecture on what would be the possible outcome of the governorship election case. It does not matter which direction. They should be allowed to carry their own impressions not, the fixation of the likes of Uwajimogu. Agreed, it is legitimate for Uwajimogu and the camp he represents to ward off every aggression against their establishment but they should not in the process assault the collective intelligence of the people.
To buttress the thoughtlessness in Uwajimogu’s outing, he even couched his statement, as reported in the media, in very banal semantics that betray his fixation as well as those he represents, over issues of governance. Whereas in Uwajimogu’s camp, the word “rule” is the thing, the highly sophisticated and articulate camp of Ohakim prefers the word “serve”. Hon. Uwajimogu and others in his camp are “ruling” Imo state. Ohakim did not “rule” Imo state. He served Imo state.
And Imo people know the difference. In an administration that “rules” for instance, road contracts are awarded without papers and yet paid for 100 per cent up front; whereas the job will never be done and the people regaled with tales. Then suddenly, a deputy governor is accused of siphoning money and before he says his name, “Jude”, he is removed from office.
In an administration that “rules”, such as the one currently in Imo state, the Speaker, the head of the legislature that is supposed to oversight the executive arm, is the fellow in charge of contracts. In an administration that “rules” the executive spends money without passing it through the budget and the legislature, headed by Speaker Uwajimogu, does nothing about it. We can go on and on but it is needless because the highly discerning people of Imo state know that today what the state has are “rulers”. The Ohakim the Honourable Speaker was referring to served Imo state. He did not “rule”.
At the risk of sounding immodest, I want to repeat my position that politics in Imo state is the way it is because it lacks intellectual content. Our dear state, Imo, has remained quite unlucky because more often than not, those who get thrown up are those who do not have the least creative energy and as such have to resort to ordinary mechanical idiosyncrasies.
While I was serving in government a few years ago, I came across a good number of people who would say: “Are you a politician? We are the real politicians. We are the people who know how to carry ballot boxes”. That is the refrain of the typical Imo politician. And Honourable Uwajimogu is an Imo politician.
But Jokes apart, once we try to properly situate Uwajimogu’s statement as aforementioned, we would have no difficulty in seeing that he was just on an errand. Although, Imo people have become used to the current bizarre arrangement wherein the head of the state legislature is the spokesman of the executive, the question is, for how long will they continue to live with that type of thing? Are Imo people getting the best of governance under such an arrangement? Is it for nothing that those who fashioned the constitution made it in such a way that the legislature should be on its own, not an appendage of the executive arm?
During the Jude Agbaso saga, a member of the state (Imo) House of Assembly admitted on television that it was the governor himself that appointed the chairman and members of the House Committee that investigated the Agbaso-Jpross contract scan. Even in the least backward states, it is the duty of the Speaker to constitute membership of house committees; not the governor. Up till this moment, that claim by the Honourable member, (I withhold the name) has not be denied or clarified.
Well, the name of the game is “survival” and so errand going has became, in the Imo context, the major means for survival. But it has also proved to be vital as in the Agbaso case. As is well know, Governor Okorocha threw most of his vitriolic to his so-called enemies through his then deputy, Jude Agbaso. While the romance lasted, Agbaso savoured in it, hailed in some quarters as the man.
One day, his boss, Okorocha, took him before television camera where he reeled out fictitious figures in a phantom allegation against Ohakim (yes the same Ohakim). Ohakim, Agbaso said, embezzled N62 billion in four years. Now, less than two months later, the same Agbaso was removed from office on a charge that he took only N450 million (He admitted taking only a bottle of wine). Meanwhile, the Ohakim he accused of N62 billion theft is still going about unscathed. Does that teach Hon Uwajimogu anything? There is a limit to errand going.
