Peter Claver Oparah.
E-mail: peterclaver2000@yahoo.com
To me politics should be a convenient and proper vehicle to improve the lots of the people, which is why I quarrel with those that employ politics as a means of robbing and cheating the people. It is this later group that hands the people the short end of the stick in a situation they deserve the entire stick. Any government or system that meets the satisfaction of the general good automatically earns my support and loyalty-whatever it is worth. This is the reason why I loathe the cabal that calls itself the PDP and why I loathed its progenitors, be it NPN, NRC or whatever configuration the band of grim reapers that have interred the hopes, future and aspirations of Nigerians congregate in any given political epoch. But my hatred for the PDP ranks higher because it has had a longer life span than its ancestors, it has presided over so much wealth; more than the rest period of our independence history and has churned out more poverty and misery for the Nigerian people. It has prosecuted the heftiest dash of hopes of Nigerians and it is the most audacious in its rapacity and ability to spin factors that luxuriate its deadly flavor.
But these are stories for another day. At present, I am concerned about Imo State and its gradual slip into the deep chasm the PDP plots for it since it lost power through mass action last year. Imo is my state and I have watched its trajectory and twists with different governments of differing shades and persuasions. I have watched its fate spiral up and down till the era of late Chief Sam Mbakwe lifted what is today Imo State, Abia State and a part of Ebonyi State to a respectable niche with his stellar performance in four glorious years Imo people still relish with nostalgia. I have equally watched its monumental decline in the hands of successive ramparts that humour themselves as governments. I have watched the defenestration of the state in the awful interregnum between Mbakwe and the present and I can say in this period, the Imolite has been yanked off the high horse Mbakwe put him on and made to eat the humblest of pies as successive governments took turns to rape the people and deface what Mbakwe left on ground.
In this period, I have watched the transition of governments and I must say that ever since the popular Mbakwe resort to self help, backed solidly by the people’s power, to fend off the rapacious NPN cabals that ogled for his seat in 1983, I have never seen the kind of popular resilience that was mounted in April 2011 to see the present governor, Owelle Rochas Okorocha to power. I have never seen the kind of mass euphoria that heralded him to power in Imo State before and the stout decision of Imo people to offer themselves as body shield against those that wanted to divert the victory is still historical in Imo State.
It is akin to what happened in Edo last week and these are soul lifting experiences that keep hope flying in these sad and dreary times.
I must say that within the few months since his emergence, Rochas has demonstrated enough good faith with Imolites such that Ndi Imo see in him another Mbakwe in the making.
He has so much enriched governance of Imo with enough capital as to sever the dim hopes Imo people have with governance in the state with their harrowing post-Mbakwe experiences. Rochas has touched every aspect of governance in the state for the one year he has been in power and it is a popular sentiment in Imo today that he has outperformed the twelve years the PDP sat on the state. Â I will still do more reports on what is going on in Imo at least to let the people situate the desperate efforts of his opponents to reduce his government to their level and ensure issues are so obfuscated for people to wreck the confidence the people repose on the present Imo government.
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I can vouch
that the Rochas government has touched every area and is still blazing. I equally believe he has retched up a great proportion of the people’s support with the early strings of successes he has recorded as Imo governor. Even as most of his actions and policies are still at the early stages of maturity, he has earned the trust and confidence of his people with what the people see in ground now. The Imolites have never failed to savour the wise investment they made in electing him and most importantly, staking their lives for his emergence. They do not fail to urge him to do more and that is how it should be with a government that meets the right expectations of the people in a functional democracy, which we sadly do not have.
All these glowing testimonials have however not failed to douse my own worries about Rochas. I know that most Imolites, especially his supporters, share the same worry. They worry because they care. They worry because they don’t want him to fail. They don’t want him to fall into the traps of the mourning cabal in the state whose daily prayers and wishes remain that Rochas should fail so as to justify their own failure. They know that such failure is the only lee way they have to steal back power and continue what they know best. They know that through such failure, they stand to level the ground and permanently remove performance as an index in deciding who accesses seats of power. These people constitute the few nay sayers in Imo today who deny everything that Rochas has done to uplift governance. They are people who would be ready to deny their names if that will guarantee them a return to the good old days where governance is all about defrauding the people and cooking up false flattering reports of their performance.
My worry about Rochas-and I believe the worry of most Imolites- stems from his style.
Yes, he has come out boldly to proclaim that he is an unorthodox governor by which he means that he believes in trading unbeaten tracks to spin results.
This is good, quite commendable but if and only if the people are carried along in this unorthodoxy. Yes, he does his bits and the people follow up with their own acclamation but he has to ensure he aligns his means with the ways and courses the people know. In other words, he should continue the commendable work he is doing in Imo State but not ruffle the normal setting of the people. During my last visit home, I was confronted with huge grouses by several Imolites I interacted with on the style of Rochas.
From workers that have now been sent to work in the offices of discredited traditional rulers in the name of fourth tier government, to Imolites who feel they are being placed under an archaic monarchical system, to those that feel that the goodies that should flow to their offices are not flowing and other sundry allegations, the feeling is that the governor is alienating the people-the very bedrock of his emergence in the styles he has come to adopt.
Even his party men were not left out of the complaints as they complain he is not patronizing his party enough to firm it against the rampaging angst of the PDP. While I acknowledge that some of these complaints are genuine, like the strange elevation Rochas is giving tainted traditional rulers in a fiercely republican space as Imo, I feel some others were borne out of the free loading mentality that has been promoted for long in the state and should not bother the governor. But the genuine fears of the people must worry the governor because the people want to maintain their fidelity with him. He should appreciate that fact. From what I got from my interactions with the people, they want Rochas to continue with what he is doing now. They want him to continue to perform as he is doing now.
They want him to remain in the full embrace of their love and they want to sustain their faithfulness but he must listen more to their worries. Â Even when his eyes are set on laudable results, he should do more of pandering to the wishes and desires of the people because it is for them that he is in power and a confrontation with them will prove fatal. He does not need to alienate the people in his quest for results so he must make Ndi Imo, their feelings and wishes the central corpus of his governance. He does not need to alienate them for without them, his good results do not have meaning.
I can acknowledge that these grouses have been accumulating and they are withering the huge cache of support he enjoys with Imo people. They are muzzling the commendable works he is doing in Imo State presently. While these have not worked to drive Imolites to the laps of the desperate opposition in the state, they are driving the people to the side of disinterest where they want to remain spectators as the opposition battles his government to gain a foothold in Imo after the blisters of last year’s electoral defeat. This is the reason why Imo people watch with disinterest as the PDP, backed by the presidency, the police and every other armada of force, levies a brute and audacious war to take over Imo councils when the case is still a matter of legal contention. This should not be so considering the type of mass acclaim that brought Rochas to power.
While working to satisfy the people through laudable achievements, he should strive to retain the confidence of the people and this is a tricky demand that he must carefully work on. I see it as a patriotic duty for Imolites to support the governor, not because he is the governor but because he has shown tremendous faith with the people. This remains the very soul of democracy that works for the people and Imo people are getting it with the Rochas government.