The widely publicised 2018 Imo State Budget billed for presentation to the Imo House of Assembly, by the Governor of Imo State, Owelle Rochas Okorocha, ran into an embarrassing hitch on Tuesday December 28, 2017.
Following the development where the State Legislators carefully avoided the Assembly Complex to stop the governor, Owelle Rochas Okorocha from presenting the 2018 Appropriation bill, indications are rife that impeachment of the governor and the Speaker, Rt Hon Acho Ihim is in the offing.
An unexpected scene occurred at the Assembly complex when the advance team of the governor including his aides and appointees both former and present/ stormed the House of Assembly for the presentation.
The development is causing crisis of confidence within the House of Assembly as the members who are poised for a showdown with the Executive arm is threatening to remove the number one Lawmaker, Speaker Acho Ihim and go ahead to impeach governor Okorocha if their grouse is not looked into.
Lawmakers who chose to Speak in strict anonymity disclosed that Speaker Ihim may bid good bye to the Seat if he compromises in the struggle for them to get rid of the executive control of the House, while Okorocha should be set for impeachment procedures.
The House members, who it was learnt met to review the situation, are using the impeachment threat as another option to ensure the governor succumbs to their demand. Even as Okorocha’s Aides are making frantic effort to ensure a truce is reached for peace to reign, the position of Ihim is hanging while Okorocha is the target of the impending power play.
Governor’s Aides, contractors, politicians and other Imo citizens, who trooped into the House of Assembly chamber as early as 8am to witness the event were disappointed and shocked, when they waited the whole day without seeing the governor, nor any member of the House of Assembly, dominated with a majority of Okorocha’s party men, All Progressive Congress APC.
Sources told Trumpeta that the Governor, Owelle Rochas Okorocha thought it was business as usual by treating the Imo Legislature as an extension of the Executive, simply because he has cowed most of the Lawmakers into doing his biding since he sponsored many of them into the Legislature, and still believes he can determine who among them will return in 2019.
Following this wrong belief, Trumpeta learnt that the Governor did not bother much in informing the Legislators, believing that a casual mention of the Budget Presentation date to the Speaker, Rt Hon Acho Ihim was enough information to the entire members to prepare for the occasion.
As a result of this communication break-down between Okorocha and the Imo Lawmakers, most of them only heard on the Radio or read it in the Newspapers like other Imo citizens.
Since the Lawmakers were not properly informed on the Budget Presentation, for the first time, the Lawmakers shocked Imo people and Okorocha by standing their feet on ground as watchdogs over the Executive.
Trumpeta learnt that as ritual, the Executive ought to have sent the appropriation Bill inform of Budget to the Lawmakers for perusal and study, and for them to know what and which sector was captured on the Budget, as the representatives of the people.
Therefore for being treated as “School Boys”, the Imo Legislature shunned Okorocha and his Budget which caused a lot of embarrassment to Imo State to the outside world and to Okorocha who had the erroneously belief that he holds Imo Lawmakers at his whims and caprices.
“We are protesting because the Executive left us in Limbo about the budget presentation.
How can you inform Lawmakers about an important constitutional assignment like budget presentation just through a mere Radio announcement?” an aggrieved lawmaker asked.
Trumpeta was told that the Lawmakers even discovered some errors in the budget, with some paragraphs written with ordinary biro.
“The correction of errors discovered by the Lawmakers is not a House Committee thing. The lawmakers are to do it as individuals” a lawmaker told Trumpeta.
Trumpeta also learnt that Okorocha refused to “Play Ball” by engaging the Legislators in the natural “Lobbying” as done elsewhere.
