On 24th March 2012, Chief Rochas Okorocha, then less than a year in office as Imo State Governor, was in Kosovo where he signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for an independent power plant, an agro processing plant and several other industries that he promised would be established in his state. There were neither feasibility studies nor any clear ideas as to where the money to finance these projects would come from but those sorts of things never really worry the ebullient governor.
A few weeks before the trip to the Balkan Peninsular, Okorocha had declared a four-day holiday for workers in Imo State so they could partake in the take-off of the Community Council Government (CCG) he instituted. And for this extra-constitutional fourth-tier of government, the governor approved the disbursement of N5 million to each of the communities in the 27 local councils from a subvention of N3 billion that was not captured in the 2012 Imo State Appropriation Bill. He also declared free education at all levels in the state after announcing that he would be paying salaries to all the primary school pupils (yes, pupils, not teachers alone). And to be sure, Okorocha actually went to some primary schools where the pupils were lined up for him to hand them N100 each!
In the course of the bilateral session, Okorocha’s host, the Deputy Prime Minister of Kosovo, Mr Behgdey Pacconi, spoke in Albanian, the main official language of his country thus necessitating having an English interpreter. When it was his turn to respond, Okorocha decided to speak Igbo. With that, a former senator on his delegation had to be translating what the governor was saying into English before the Kosovo interpreter now translated it into Albanian for his host.
It is difficult to believe that this is the same Okorocha who boasted less than a month ago not only that he would contest for the Imo West Senatorial seat in 2019 so as to “brighten the chances of President Muhammadu Buhari” and prevent “bad people from taking the position” but also that his son-in-law, Uche Nwosu will be the next governor of Imo State because “favour has found the young man. It is God and not me. There is no place in the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria that says that an in-law cannot be governor.”
Now that he has been dealt a fatal political blow, Okorocha has been running from Daura to Abuja though from available reports, there was indeed no credible APC ward congress in Imo State as he argues. But I also understand that what transpired was no different from what the governor himself had perfected only that this time, he was at the receiving end. The lesson of course is that when desperate politicians, especially those who know each other so well, engage in an intricate power dance, it is usually a zero sum game. Okorocha made the job easy for Izunaso and others with the arrogance of power that united all the opposition forces in Imo State against him.
Before I continue, let me say very quickly that I admire Okorocha, a very charming politician with an extraordinary sense of humour. But he has refused to imbibe the wisdom in the Igbo adage that you do not sell a chicken with broken legs in a nearby market. Besides, it is also common for dictatorial tendencies to be hidden behind a mask of charisma by leaders who deploy such disguise to cover up for their intolerance. Since people like Okorocha believe they are the center of the universe and that everything revolves around them, it is difficult for anybody to offer any reasonable advice that could help them in avoiding tragic pitfalls while those who do are most often taken as enemies to be crushed.
That perhaps explains why two months ago, the Archbishop of Owerri Catholic Archdiocese, Anthony Obinna, was harassed and almost attacked while presiding over a funeral service for describing the attempt to foist a son-in-law as Governor of Imo State as unacceptable. “Not the governor, not his deputy, not even me can handpick and determine who governs Imo without recourse to the will and votes of Imo people” said the Archbishop. Interested readers can Google for the account of what transpired after that statement right inside the church premises.
Meanwhile, the issue is not that Uche Nwosu lacks the qualification to be governor or that he should be excluded from seeking the office just because he is married to the incumbent’s daughter. It is also not wrong for Okorocha to take interest in who succeeds him just as he has a right to support whomsoever he chooses to back. The point the Archbishop was trying to underscore, which many from Imo State have also harped upon, is the manner in which the governor has been going about the endorsement of his son-in-law, as if the people do not matter aside foreclosing the aspiration of other APC members in the state, including that of his deputy, Prince Eze Madumere.
