By okey oparaku okeyaoparaku@yahoo.com
The Owelle Rochas Okorocha administration in Imo State rode to power on the slogan of Rescue Mission. Obviously making political capital of the widespread public resentment towards the Ohakim administration, Owelle Rochas Okorocha ingeniously crafted this slogan to which the despairing political public easily connected to as a promised oasis of hope especially given the legendary reputation of its exponent as a man who gave free education to children from poor homes. And so on May 6, 2011, the verdict of Imo people choosing him as their Governor-elect reverberated in every nook and cranny of the state, across the length and breath of Nigeria and even beyond. The jubilation that greeted his election was unprecedented in the annals of the state only because the people of the state were resolved as never before, to remove by the power of their votes, a government they no longer reposed faith in and this time, their votes counted. The rest is now history.
More than two years on since the inauguration of the Okorocha administration however, I have serious reservations about the much vaunted Rescue Mission especially the way and manner this administration is approaching the issue of legacies bequeathed by past administrations. Any percipient observer of Imo State affairs would readily discern a disturbing pattern that is peculiarly characteristic of the administration. The pattern has to do with the destruction of important legacies of erstwhile administrations before and after the creation of the state.
For the sustainable development of societies, progressive and responsible governments put in place critical institutions and establishments that are bequeathed as legacies to successive governments to be managed and improved upon for the overall good of the citizens. Governance being a continuous process, every successive government has a solemn obligation to the generality of the citizenry for whose welfare a government ordinarily exists to keep these things functional and serving the public purposes for which they were established. I would like to believe that it was the necessity to accomplish the aforesaid objective that informed the setting up of establishments like the Imo State Water Corporation, Government Press, the Imo State Library Board, the Government Technical Colleges, to mention just a few. It is rather regrettable that under the present administration, some of these establishments most notably the aforementioned, have come under unrestrained governmental assault with a view to snuffing life out of them and consigning them to the dustbins of history in utter disregard of the public policy objectives that underlay their establishment.
It is now common knowledge that the Imo State Water Corporation is on its way to becoming extinct as the staff were ordered out of their head quarters at Ugwu Orji and some of them huddled together at the Otamiri head works with the corporation’s equipment worth millions of Naira lying in waste. The fate of the large water reservoir at this location which by current estimates is worth hundreds of millions of Naira is anybody’s guess. The reason being adduced for the administration’s action is that it intends to use the premises occupied by the corporation for the building of a school. This reason for whatever it is worth is hardly convincing. Let us face it, the problem of education in the state evidently is not so much the number of schools as of upgrading the facilities in the existing ones, engaging qualified teachers and motivating them so that they could deliver qualitative teaching and most imperatively, instilling discipline and morals in the pupils and students generally. It is axiomatic that the generation and distribution of clean drinking water is a social service obligation a government owes to its citizens and this clearly informed the establishment of Imo State Water Corporation formerly, Imo State Water Board. Granted, water supply in the Owerri metropolis and its environs and indeed in the state in general was somewhat epileptic before the inception of the present administration, but a government on a rescue mission should have restructured the operations of this strategic establishment for effective service delivery, instead of embarking on a move that can only be understood as singing the nunc dimitis of the corporation.
The unfortunate fate of the Water Corporation has also befallen the Government Press which has been relocated from its original premises which the administration now intends to use for a Government House canteen. The place the establishment has been ordered to pack into is owned by the Imo State Library Board and is hardly enough to accommodate its expensive equipment, adjudged some of the best in the South East and majority of which are lying outside deteriorating. The importance of a functional Government Press cannot be overemphasized. There are sensitive government documents that can only be printed by its own press. Besides, statutorily speaking, there are also documents that must only be printed by a government-owned press without which such cannot be tendered in the court of law. Furthermore, a functional and viable Government Press can be a source of huge revenue for the government. The significance of this strategic establishment from all indications seems to be lost on the present administration. Its present status is more like that of an endangered specie.
As if this is not enough, the administration has embarked on a move, the ultimate goal of which will be the abolishing of the Government Technical College along Egbu Road, Owerri built by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) shortly after the Civil War in the early 1970s for the purpose of training technical manpower. This institution was handed over to the defunct East-Central State Government and then to Imo State Government. Presently, the administration has embarked on the balkanization of the institution’s premises, using a large part for the construction of a shopping mall, and of course it is predictable what will happen to the rest. This is sadly coming at a time when the emphasis the world over is on revitalization of technical and vocational education especially in a developing country such as ours, as a panacea for curing the malaise of unemployment. It has been pointed out that the successes in the technological and economic spheres of the Asian Tiger countries including others like Japan, India, china etc, have a lot to do with the abundance of technically skilled manpower in these climes. The Federal Government of Nigeria perhaps has realized and appreciated the imperative of technical education which is why it has earmarked the sum of N6 billion for the upgrading and expansion of technical colleges in Nigeria as indicated in the editorial of Daily Sun Newspaper of Friday, September 27, 2013. One wonders how a Government Technical College which has been mangled and whose fate hangs in the balance could benefit from this largesse from the Federal Government. If the administration goes on with its plans, that means that the state will be left with only one technical college, that is, the one at Orlu.
Currently, the news making the rounds is the plan by the administration to relocate the Imo State Library Board from its present location at the Government House Road/Okigwe Road intersection to a duplex remotely located at the back of Imo Concorde Hotel, New Owerri, obviously for the purpose of converting the premises of the library to a parking lot. The administration’s plans to relocate the library should not come as a surprise because preparatory to this, it had fenced off the relaxation park area of the library and presently, a building of an unknown purpose is being erected in the said area. What beats one’s imagination is the rationale for removing a public library for the purpose of converting it to a parking lot. It will certainly be an arduous yet unrewarding task for the administration to convince the Imo public that it is acting in its best interest by wanting to relocate the library to a place that is remote and inaccessible to those that need its services. Libraries all over the world are located in the centers of cities for easy accessibility. The National library located in New Owerri is only a reference library. Relocating the library to an improvised duplex not originally built to be used as such and knocking down a monumental edifice designed and solidly built to be used as a library, is another way of destroying an important legacy of a past administration. What rather would have been applauded by Imo people was if the administration had decided to upgrade the facilities in the library and stock the shelves with current textbooks, journals and periodicals in all relevant areas of scholarship. Regrettably, the onslaught on the Government Technical College and the public library is coming from an administration that places education on the front burner of its Rescue Mission Agenda.
We seem to have in the state an administration that shies away from or is rather contemptuous of robust and informed public policy debates. Were the contrary to be the case, the blatantly anti-public thrust of the administration’s actions could have been avoided. This established pattern of doing things characteristic of this administration quickly lends itself to the conclusion that the Okorocha administration sees governance as a personal matter and not a public one, to be dictated by the personal whims and caprices of the man at the top regardless of the harm that might be done to the public interest. This mindset could lead to catastrophic consequences. By way of digression, Nazi Germany paid the costly price of its domestic and foreign policies being a reflection of the world view of one man, the Fuhrer, in the person of Adolph Hitler, who himself was influenced by the deeply atheistic writings of Nietzsche. I have a great trepidation that in our own context, what is at play is the mind of the Owelle, serving every conceivable fancy of his without due recourse to what in the long run would serve the interest of Imo citizens and I wager that on the exit of the administration, the state will for a long while reel under the unpalatable consequences of its actions.
In any case, the way and manner the Owelle is going about the business of governance in the state should be understandable to a percipient mind. The Owelle himself time and again has prided himself as a successful businessman and that is true who knows how to turn the fortunes of the state in a business-like manner. But the Owelle needs to be reminded that private business governance is antithetical to public business governance. They are two different streams that run in different directions. The two are diametrically opposed to each other as they are founded and operated on different ethos, philosophies and templates. Private business governance is purely for profit-making regardless of how it is made. Public business governance is purely for public welfare, and anything under any guise that would hurt this overarching purpose is clearly and for emphasis, unacceptably anti-public.
The overwhelming electoral mandate given to the Owelle on May 6, 2011 by the Imo people is sacred and should not be abused. It is never a mandate to serve a personal agenda; rather it is a mandate to serve Imo people in truth, in justice and in good conscience. The resort to destroying important legacies is certainly a paradox of the Rescue Mission.
