Gov Okorocha’s Unending Charade In Imo

By Clement Udegbe

Last December , Imo State built and commissioned a Christmas Tree at a whopping cost of over 600 Million Naira, and in 2016, teachers, government workers, pensioners were owed over eight months salary and pension arrears respectively. Life in Imo State is so rough and tough, yet many wear smiles around the place, hoping that all will be well soon, and some even say it is well.

 

*Gov Okorocha 

One then begins to wonder what has happened to most of  my people who follow the followers? Could it be as a result of  a resolution that they will deal with situation when the time comes, or that they have a clear plan to handle things at the appropriate time, or could something else be responsible?

Could it be the result of beer drinking? Yes, beer drinking. Imo State won the best beer drinking state award this year, and the monument is standing tall in their stadium. Meanwhile Montreal University scientists have revealed that beer contains female hormones called estrogen, and when men consume quite a lot of beer, they turn into women!

All of 100 men that drank large drafts of beer within one hour displayed the following behaviours:

They all argued over nothing, refused to apologise when obviously wrong, gained weight, talked excessively without making sense, became overtly emotional, couldn’t drive, failed to think rationally, and had to sit down while urinating! Drink on these brothers.

I do not mean to insult any beloved Imo man or any beer drinker for that matter, what borders me here is that page 15 of Vanguard of Friday, December 15, carried three very disturbing reports, concerning Imo State. While Anambra State was reported as spending N25 Million to de-worm their children, Imo Governor, Mr. Rochas Okorocha, was  accusing the Catholic Archbishop of Owerri Ecclesiastical Province, Dr. Anthony .J. V. Obinna of  partisanship, and urging him to face his religious duties, for asking him to give governance a human face. Who does not know that it was a direct affront against the Catholic Church in Imo State, to mind their business?

Imo is  majorly a Catholic State. This same Governor recently produced documents for pensioners to sign forfeiting 40 % of their earned pension! Earlier this year he had forced health workers to sign off part of their salaries, paid civil servants for three days of the week, and asked them to go to the farm for the rest two days. When he won the elections for his first term in 2010, he and his followers trouped to the church for thanksgiving; perhaps they thought all the church cared for was their presence, and not their conscience.

 Now, six years after, and in his second term, they want the church to keep quiet and be consigned to religious duties only, while the majority of the people groan, and suffer in poverty and penury. The humanity in the Archbishop will become meaningless the day he fails to speak up for the poor, hapless, voiceless, helpless, sick, denied and hungry citizens of Imo State.

This is one fact Okorocha has failed to grasp, and to confirm this, while Pastor Mike Agbahiwe the husband of 70 years old Bridget who was killed by some Muslims in Kano recently was crying out on the same page of Vanguard that his life was in danger because the killers of his wife had been set free by a Magistrate Court in Kano, Okorocha was explaining why APC must catch Anambra state next year. For Okorocha, APC will leave no stone unturned in capturing the South East! How successful they can be with this bad plan to deface and destroy the only standing political platform for Ndigbo now, is a matter left for Anambra people.

If Anambrarians  chose to betray the spirit of Ndigbo, like Okorocha and some his likes who have flocked into APC, so be it ! For many Imolites, the wind has blown, and they have all seen the rump of the hen. In Imo, the Governor’s wife controls four ministries, she does not belong to the kitchen and ‘the other room’ only, and she is not a member of the State Executive Council. Wonderful! Yet, same Governor was reported as confirming that there is hunger in Imo on page 15, of Vanguard of December 19.

His end of year package includes a thanksgiving day, and as I write, they are in Imo Carnival  Day. Poor imolites in carnival? Who is fooling who? Igbo Groups are rooting for a sincere restructuring of Nigeria along lines of regional autonomy, tasking the north to stop killing Igbos like fowls in the north, Okorocha is leading Igbo Governors into integration with APC, with all sorts of Crocodile Smile, and Python Dance military operations in the South South and South East respectively, and he wishes the Church to keep quiet, as poverty ravages the people, and Igbo youths are targeted for killing under different guises.

The Church will not keep quiet, no matter what. In America, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, Rev. Jesse Jackson and many others did not keep quiet and their society changed for the better. Bishop Desmond Tutu, late Bishop Abel Muzerewa and many others did not keep quiet when Apartheid reigned in South Africa till their society changed for the better. Arch Bishop Emeritus, Anthony Cardinal Okogie, did not keep quiet when the military was turning Nigeria upside down, Bishop Peter Awelawa Adebiyi, did not keep quiet in the South West of Nigeria during the days of the Military Dictatorship in Nigeria. 

In his book Let The Nations Hear, in 2012, he lamented various government bad policies speaking as the good conscience of the people. The Church in Igbo land will continue to speak against bad leadership, tyranny,  poverty, and deliberate plans by Igbo new generation political leaders to kill Igbo unity, smother the Igbo spirit, through pollution with strange cultures and ways of life. If that is what Okorocha calls partisanship by the church, then that’s what we need now in Imo State.

*Mr.Clement Udegbe, a lawyer, writes from Lagos (ceeaai@yahoo.com).