And so they gathered, like supercilious vultures, gathered around a rotting corpse. They
made all the noise of that gathering. They hooted and fretted and hoisted the
totem of that ritual like their lives depended on it. Yes, of course, their
lives, their much vaunted but empty political lives, rest on such empty and
hollow ritual as they did in Imo State on February22. Sure, the Imo State
PDP, badly in need of relief from the shellacking of April and May 2011, which
freed the Imo treasury from their predatory grips, needed such ritual to hang on to
life. For a party with the notorious pseudonym of ‘share the money’,
it is probable that tons of Ghana must go bags must have made rounds to purchase
the present migration and possibly satiate the burning hunger of the past three
years. That is in consonance with the credo and belief and operating template
of the PDP, even as it holds nothing but fear of regression into the dreaded
years of locusts for Imo people. The characters behind Imo PDP needed the
kind of revelry they enacted in Imo State on February 22 when they said they were
welcoming their straying members back to their fold, to assure themselves
they were not dead, to vest some spectre of life to their dying club. With
predictable enthusiasm, they gathered in their numbers to welcome their
leader, who as President of Nigeria has been an underachieving one, with tales of
massive plundering of state treasury, incompetent handling of statecraft
and a dead infrastructural base to tell of his commission as president for the past
four years. There was nothing innovative of that gathering, as Imo people had
them aplenty as the PDP locust years lasted.
Few days to the event, Governor RochasOkorocha was to deliver a well-targeted jab on the
PDP when he mocked that they were congregating in Imo to commission people
while his government was commissioning projects. He further said the PDP
would have gladly commissioned federal projects if there was any but because the
PDP do not believe in engaging in life enhancing projects, they were rather
congregating to commission people. He laughed out against the art of making a
huge but empty show of descending on Imo State to welcome past governors and
public officers who cannot mend the roads to their villages while in power
but who are today savouringthe network of good rural and urban roads he had built
in the past three years. I don’t know if the members of PDP knew the
astuteness of Okorocha’s delivery but chances are that they mist have pretended to be
ignorant of the hefty message here. Imo people, who suffered the
pestilence of the twelve horrible years the PDP ran down Imo and swore to ensure that they
would never have such terrible fate, knew. They knew because in the numerous
projects the Okorocha government had embarked upon, they see the clear
difference between the nearly three years he had been in power and the twelve
the PDP wasted. In the numerous life enhancing projects the Okorocha
government had embarked on, Imo people see the barrenness of PDP politics of godfathers,
stakeholders, apex leaders, renters, share reapers, free loaders and all
which ensured that state resources are free meals for all manners of rent
collectors for the twelve awful years of PDP governance in Imo State.
The same resources that were hitherto purloined by the congregating political
godfathers are the same that are being used to open all the rural areas through massive
road construction. It is the same fund that is being used to build twenty
seven model hospitals in the 27 local councils in the state. It is the same fund
that is being used to finance a historic free primary, secondary and tertiary
education in such an educationally advanced state as Imo. It is the fund that
is used to finance the massive rejuvenation of the three urban cities of
Owerri, Orlu and Okigwe. It is the same fund that is being ingested in all
the communities in Imo State to run a grassroots, model community government.
It is the fund used to finance the construction of modern schools in each of the
electoral wards in Imo State, purchase desks, uniforms, sandals, and books
for Imo pupils in secondary and primary schools. Yes, this is the fund the share
reapers hitherto shared out using the platform of amorphous groups and the
lack of which for the past three years has sparked the kind of hunger behind the
present movement of some politicians who have been on life support since the
resources of the state were deployed to serving the people and not their
pristine needs.
Perhaps, in the days of yore when PDP was swimming in the aura of its overwhelming
invincible strength in the murky Nigerian political waters, such grand act of
revelry would have had some great meaning, as Imo politics used to be more
and more of such empty shows and nothing more. Perhaps, such movement of
unproductive political mandarins would have had some political impact when
Imo people were still under the suzerain thumb of political phantoms, with their
penchant for flaunting power without responsibility and shackling the people
with it. But thanks to the redemptive events of May 2011, Imo people have
seen the light. Rather than con the people with such empty shows, the PDP is
living in the past, especially in Imo where it merely existed as a vote swerving
cabal before its rustication. The Imo people have mastered the arts of
disappointing those that employ them as herds towards making their cut of the state
resources. Courtesy of the lofty achievements of the Okorocha government, Imo
people now know that there are enough funds to attend to the multifarious
deficits and decay the PDP sat on for twelve years while attending to the
financial needs of buccaneers and shibboleths who predicate their political
strength on how deep they dig their fangs into the state treasury and
employing their respective shares to overwhelm and sheepishly herd the masses to
approve of the cannibalistic vocations in politics.
With the benefits of the past three years of Rochas Okorocha government, an average
Imo man reads nothing about the congregation of February 22. To him, it was as
empty and unproductive as the various failed politicians for which that
parody was set proved to Imo for the twelve years they were in overwhelming hold of
the state. It was vacant, bland, empty, space-less and unproductive and is
merely a rehash of the kind of political grandstanding that set Imo State
several years back. Sure, PDP today is a flailing ship that needs all such
empty and vacuous shows to keep the sagging faith of its members alive but
who knows what was on the mind of the congregating PDP warriors as they came to
today’s Imo, in contrast with what it was when they came in 2011 to
commandeer state to the PDP? What could have struck them as they witnessed the new
roads and urban facilities that have been wrought in Owerri for the past
three years? Who knows what struck them as they reveled directly opposite the
Owerri City Schools, which serves as the flagship of the new model schools that the
Okorocha government is building all over Imo State. Fact is that if President
Jonathan ever visited the Imo government house, he certainly would have
missed his way, given the dingy cell house he visited last when he was
campaigning for the PDP in 2011. Perhaps, he would have been looking for the old, dilapidated
colonial huts that formed the face of officialdom when he was last here and
would certainly not believe the architectural wonders that are the face of
public buildings in Owerri, not only in Douglas House. Sure, Jonathan would
have missed his way in Owerri as he rode through the newly reconstructed
roads, with no setbacks, broadened with beautiful silver street lightings that
now don the streets in Owerri.
All said, what is ensuing in Imo is a battle between the political slave masters and
the people. It promises to be a repeat of the epic April/May 2011 titanic battle
even as PDP’s task is made more difficult by the superlative works of the
Okorocha government. It is a battle between power exercised with utmost
responsibility and irresponsible power tailored towards attending to the
ravenous interests of the shylocks of power. It is a battle between the masses and the
slave masters who have done well to congregate under their ageless
masthead as a way of separating the sheep from the goats. It is a clear battle between
the pronounced twelve years’ rot and the landmark achievements of 2011 to the
present. Trust Imo people, they are taking note and will act in due season.
Peter Claver Oparah.
Ikeja, Lagos.
E-mail: peterclaver2000@yahoo.com