BY M A C ODU
Imo State Elder’s Council was created by Governor Rochas Okorocha midway through his first term in office. It was not clear to members what influenced that decision but meetings to examine issues were held and resolutions were taken but not recorded. Minutes of previous meetings were not read. There was no evidence of reliance on the resolutions of the council in events that took place before and during the visit of General Muhammadu Buhari upon winning election to the presidency of the country in 2015.
Elders had been invited to General Buhari’s reception but were not allowed to make any inputs on the needs of the land of Imo in spite of robust attendance of Elders. Elders have since lost a number of their members. As a member of that defunct body, I wish to give a historical sketch of Imo Condition, past and present.
It is evident that the trajectory of Imo Governance has been afflicted by disregard of ancestral agreements as to how power should rotate, reached by Elders of Imo State in 1991. A copy of the compact is attached herewith.
We have been adrift since then like a rudderless ship, with very little inputs from organised civil society in governance. The apex of civil society should be the elders through Igbo Nation. The neglect or refusal to implement that compact can be called the watershed of problems of leadership in Imo State. The spiritual neglect of elders has its own dose of grief to levy on the living members of community of Ndigbo Imo, living and dead.
Traditional Igbo Society recognised elders as custodians of the will of the people. Governor Rochas Okorocha’s government either recognised the importance of the body himself or was cajoled into creating it. After an initial period of one year Governor Rochas Okorocha broke loose, and neglected the body he created without offering any reason. But we have had life and still have it with or without his support. Elders bear the will of ancestors for transmission to the next generation directly or indirectly.
A meeting of the Concerned Imo Elders chosen from three zones of Imo State have been worried about the anarchical condition of Imo State. They sought an appointment to visit the governor to parley with him on the wrong route taken so far in leadership and how it may be remedied. I was of the opinion that that body will not be given an opportunity to speak with the governor. Only those who hold a promise for illegitimate acts that will accentuate governor’s ego will get his ear.
While the waiting game is on, I have had to put my thoughts across for Ndi-Imo to appreciate where we faltered and where it has landed us. I was among twelve great sons of Imo who thought it was time we raised our voices against the current drift to perdition which is evident from our trajectory thus far with Governor Rochas Okorocha.
Governor Okorocha had mesmerised and hoodwinked and highly patronised and emasculated State Assembly into approving a four-year budget for his unconstitutional expenditure at the onset of his administration. The governor blew this four year budget on white elephant gargantuan schemes that added little social and economic benefits to Ndi-Imo in spite of huge costs in effigies of African leaders some of whom are anathema back home, and denials of salaries and pensions to deserving public servants and retirees.
Industrial infrastructure has now collapsed. Agriculture where I hold sway as chairman of Funding Committee of All Farmers Association of Nigeria, Imo State, has known no help from government for ten thousand farmers listed in over six hundred cooperative societies in Imo State.
Donations have been given to political farmers who have not affected agricultural productivity in any significant way. Royal Fathers in Agriculture dropped into relevance with negligible impact after the first term of the governor. Economic largesse was given to Ndi-Eze to become farmers where All Farmers Association of Nigeria boasts of thousands of registered farmers waiting for capital inputs to stem our drift into poverty. Imo has failed woefully in Agricultural funding.
Adapalm knew multiple patrons under various unclear relationships with government or beneficiaries of government patronage. Avutu Poultry Farm created by Governor Sam Mbakwe of blessed memory is in ruins despite Governor Rochas’ Job-Job-Job chant. The governor has been prodigal with expenditure on projects on his own whims and caprices rather than on carefully studied and established beneficial public social and economic needs.
These are public sector investments that should have clarity in budgeting, policy formulation, implementation and accounting of specific programmes and subsequent annual accounts indicating costs and benefits on an annual basis of projects embarked upon and finished. None has been forthcoming and frequent changes of paradigm have taken place with nothing positive to show the people of Imo State. Elders are not surprised since records are rare in the administration of Governor Rochas Okorocha.
There has been no further approach to the State Assembly to account for his expenditure and none has been published so far. No other budget has been raised that is known to Imo public.
Chief Rochas Okorocha has conducted himself more like a colonist of Imo State without regard to culture, norms in administration and tradition of government enshrined in our constitution. He probably does not know that a constitution exists for Nigeria’s governance. He probably regards Imo as his estate and that is an abomination to the land of Imo and the various spirits that have portions of land over which they govern their heritage from remote ancestry. That is why Concerned Elders now desire to speak out. Disaster looms ahead if we are not heard now.
Local Government Areas show no signs of relevance to people who should benefit from government services at that bottom of our social pyramid where majority of our people live in pretense at farming activities that are not properly funded by government. Monthly visits are conducted by officials for collecting salaries and wages and thereafter disappear in nearly all Local Government Headquarters in the state. Of late elections to positions in local government are unbelievably bizarre listing of loyalists for positions chosen by the Czar himself with some advice from co-rapists of the common will and till.
Apparently, Governor was on a mission to create a god of himself with his chant “My People, My People” and got a response of “My Governor, My Governor.” We have watched with amazement the desecration of the land, rapacious commandeering of private property without constitutionally provided compensation and the personalisation of such property and grant to third parties of interests arising therefrom and generally operating Imo State Government in accordance with his whims and caprices for personal gain for the most part. He now boasts of wealth in public space. This is antithetical to prudence required by a leader among a deprived people. He has become such a lustful power that he has erased the line between state and person in all lexicons.
He rigged his way into a second term for the purpose of enriching himself and setting up a perpetual system of sapping Ndi-Imo of their resources for self and dependants forever while scheming for higher political positions and national relevance largely undeserved. He has prepared his brother-in-law to replace him to hide his transgressions that are too vulgar to be glossed over by the most forgiving of souls in Creation.
He was evidently outrageous in his second term as demagogue and dictator in pretense at democracy. There is a compromised State Assembly. Members do Rochas Okorocha’s bidding for cash and/or bewitchment or fear of skin pain. Tyranny of the powerful has become a norm in our erstwhile safe state as a legacy of our so called leader. He has sowed a legacy of state terrorism when his will is resisted or flouted. Various forcible occupation by private family, clan and community property have resulted in spiraling poverty in Imo State. Markets have been demolished and commodities displayed for sale carted away and auctioned without any records or accounts to the deprived citizenry whose livelihood have flagrantly been violated sometimes beyond recovery of the deprived.
Governor Rochas Okorocha came into leadership on one platform, after his free education gambit and transformed in that first term into a despot, ruling the state with little or no inputs or caveats or even guidance from the legislature and certainly very little knowledge of his constitutional powers and its limits.
He twisted the arm of State Assembly members as mentioned above to receive blanket approval for four-year budget through offering gratification to members, who were sucked into relinquishing their duties to lust for filthy lucre. They have thus earned a pariah status for a mess of pottage. He gloried in his achievements until his second term in spite of the horrendous flaws evident in several unproductive schemes characterising his administration.
He contrived many projects without appropriate studies as to social costs and benefits of such projects prior to embarkation. No one alive has a record of what funds have been spent and on what projects since his assumption of office in 2011. Ndi-Imo as a whole have known an abysmal level of poverty in contradistinction with members and relations-in-law of Governor Rochas Okorocha’s family and dependants.
He had during his second term, become a tyrant of dreadful potency, monstrously bearing on all aspects of lives of citizens with tremendous grief from all four directions of the compass and afflicting productive folks deeply. This attitude has been followed regularly with weeping and wailing of citizens whose rights have been flagrantly assaulted, denied and willfully abused.
To worsen portents of the future of our people, Rochas Okorocha has prepared grounds to perpetually colonise Imo State for his family and relations with greed for personal and family gain, and lawless conversion and sharing of Imo Patrimony among his friends and dependants with very little knowledge of constitution and civil service rules, which have safe-guards for the rights of the electorate. He has become a dictator of a tyrannical and detestable quality. He has no respect for accountability and probity. We doubt there will be any records behind him.
Concerned Elders have watched with trepidation the destruction of the corporate will of Ndi-Imo and have reached the conclusion that ancestors will visit us all with anger if we were to fail to call all citizens of Imo State to awareness of our condition and to motivate them to resist any attempt to perpetuate this horrendous assault on our freedoms enshrined in democratic principles, assaulted and vitiated by Rochas Okorocha for selfish reasons.
No one nominated by a rapist of the will of Ndi-Imo should be presented for election, let alone voted for during the forthcoming General Elections. Our ancestors are already angered by the various assaults on sensibilities of Ndigbo in Nigeria Project and are less tolerant with assaults on our will by citizens of doubtful pedigree in our leadership, as well as dubious objectives in governance.
At the appropriate time we shall assemble to extirpate the vermin that has led us into this calamity with appropriate votive offerings to our ancestors whose lands need be cleansed by appropriate votive offerings for sake of posterity who may be afflicted if we do nothing now.
Concerned Elders of Imo State assure all citizens that nothing will be excluded in our resolve to get rid of the cause of our descent into slavery in the hands of the profane. We will expose the satanic powers that have brought them the bravado to hold us in taciturn slavery all this while.
The elders have decided to speak this late since we anticipated that youth and some elements of enlightened segments of our population should have spoken forth earlier than now. Our resolution is irreversible.
Love and social responsibility for all members of a constituency is the basic desideratum for leadership of any genre. Where lust replaces love, there is no bond between a leader and his constituents. That is the scenario which Imo Citizens have witnessed and have single-heartedly denounced as undesirable. Governor Okorocha’s trajectory has been rejected in the court of public opinion as loaded with selfish interest and so stands as sufficient reason for rejecting his nominee to governorship compelling a return to the formula, devised for a united Imo State by political forebears and elders in 1991.