By Declan Emelumba
Sweeping generalisation is one of the dangerous assaults on logic. When a premise is abinitio wrong, no conclusion can make the argument right. And it is a mortal sin to presumptuously claim indispensability when we are mere mortals who can exit the stage in a minute, and the world would move on as if we never existed. For someone, therefore, to condescendingly assume that Imo State can not make progress without a certain Emeka Ihedioha is to dismiss the millions of Imo people, educated, cosmopolitan, intelligent, and wealthy, as morons. That is the highest insult to the sensibilities of the good people of Imo State.
While everyone is entitled to dream dreams, it crosses to fantasy and even lunacy for the person to borrow the robes of omniscience mixed with indispensability within a crowd that he knows he may be a tiny pebble. And it irritates sensible people when, instead of acknowledging his limitations, he carries on as if he is an ostrich on one obscure island. Anyone unfortunate to read the gibberish entitled, “Emeka Ihedioha: Imo’s last hope opportunity for growth, development,” written by one Kelechi Jeff Eme and published recently in the media, would be stunned that someone seeking the high office of governor would authorize just a toxic publication that ended up exposing his little mindedness and egoistic malady. This foolishness is not entirely surprising because Ihedioha’s bane has been his ridiculous belief that Imo State needs him as the Messiah.
From the headline alone, the assumption is that without Emeka Ihedioha, Imo would never make progress. Of course, that is a fallacy. Within the body of the essay, it emerged that in their warped logic, the seven months of illegally occupying Douglas House by Ihedioha was the golden era of governance. Again, that is false. The submission that no governor achieved anything in Owerri before Sam Mbakwe emerged as governor was also false. Some of the enduring roads in the capital city today were built by Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu. We should learn not to engage in fiction writing in the name of political campaigns.
Therefore, it couldn’t have been factually correct even to allude that nothing ever happened in those administrations preceding Mbakwe or after him until the arrival of our “Spiderman and superhero, Emeka Ihedioha.” Life and development went on before Mbakwe. Life and development continued after him, just like life and development have been blissfully going on before and after Ihedioha.
Now, to the distortion of facts. Firstly, no one expected Ihedioha and his band of cheerleaders to give credit to Governor Hope Uzodimma for his monumental transformation of the state in all sectors; after all, the man punctured his daydreaming of being a governor after he stole a mandate that wasn’t his. Till tomorrow, I blame our system that allowed all those who violated the constitution by declaring Ihedioha governor when he didn’t win the election to walk the streets, still free men. I don’t think it was enough for the Supreme Court to pronounce Uzodimma as the rightful winner without jailing those who engaged in stealing the mandate in the first place. Both the perpetrators and the beneficiaries of the robbery ought to be in jail. If that had happened, none would have had the guts to pollute the environment with their putrefaction of legacies. I still believe that there is a need to erase the period of that illegal occupation by the courts declaring it as not having existed at all.
The constitution and the electoral act were clear that apart from scoring the highest number of votes in an election, a person cannot be declared a governor except he secures one-quarter of votes in two-thirds of the local government areas in the state. After Emeka Ihedioha used his sister-in-law and colluded with INEC to manufacture the so-called highest number of votes, he met the constitutional requirement of spread in only 12 local government areas and not 18 required by the constitution. Yet a professor of mathematics declared him a winner, and INEC accepted that brazen rape of democracy. If Hope Uzodimma had not fought to reclaim his mandate, Ihedioha would have set a dangerous precedent with that inglorious conduct. The truth is that even in 2015, when Emeka Ihedioha came second after Gov Rochas Okorocha, it was only in his Mbaise enclave that he got the sprinkle of votes in that election.
Strangely, these same Mbaise people were the first victims of his abuse of power, avarice, and primitive acquisition of wealth and landed property in the seven months he illegally served as governor of Imo State. Did Ihedioha complete one single road in those unfortunate seven months? Of course not. When he was not blaming Rochas for the state of the streets, he was using the rains as an alibi to cover his cluelessness. Yet he dared to suddenly go blind in the face of the road revolution wrought by Hope Uzodimma by grudgingly acknowledging only three roads as the government’s achievement.
It is essential to remind Ihedioha and his cohorts that within his first 100 days in office, Uzodimma completed
nine (9) solid roads, namely;
1. Oparanozie Street to Edede Street 2. Chhukwuma Nwaoha Relief Market Road,
3. Assumpta World Bank Road,
4. Assumpta Roundabout to Concorde Junction,
5. Dick Tiger – Egbu Junction Road and
6. Dick Tiger Aladinma Lake Nwaebere Road
7. Umuaka internal Road in Njaba L.G.A.
8. Amaigbo – Njaba Road
9. Mgbidi – Omuma Road
As we speak, Uzodimma has 100 solid roads and bridges constructed and commissioned within his first tenure.
These projects
are verifiable.
So when a handful of the remaining Ihedioha cronies tepidly talk about his legacies in those illegal seven months, what comes to mind is his vast appetite for self-centeredness. Within seven months, he travelled seven (7) times outside the country. Within seven months, he began the construction of one of the most stately country homes comparable only to Buckingham Palace. When his kinsmen accused him of land grabbing, he used state power to intimidate them to silence. But their silent prayers led to his eviction from Government House. Never in the history of Nigeria had a state governor nursed the imperial taste of Emeka Ihedioha. The official car he ordered for himself was a study in luxury, valued then at over N.2 billion. No president of Nigeria had used such a car because the staggering cost was simply scandalous.
Luckily, he never used the car because it arrived after he was removed from office.
Talking of civil servants, did Emeka Ihedioha feel concerned about their welfare? If he did, how come he hired consultants to do their work of preparing a payroll? How come a hefty five hundred million Naira was being paid monthly to the consultants, an amount that could clear pension arrears? How come many pensioners were still owed by the time Uzodimma took over as governor? Indeed, did he pay a single retiree one kobo? What about the civil servants’ offices that snakes and rodents had taken over? Did he work on them?
He could not have because even the Government House was left desolate. Ihedioha conducted government business in a guest house at Odenigbo. If he had used the same speed he employed in building palaces for himself both in Owerri and his village in renovating the government house, perhaps he would have had one project to show as his so-called legacy. But he left the legacy of imperial inclinations, the legacy of a man who needed power to live like an emperor, a monarch. Nothing more.
He said he paid attention to youth development by building stadiums in the 27 local government areas. He is angry that Uzodimma didn’t continue from where he stopped. Fair enough that he even acknowledged that government is a continuum. But one can not build anything on nothing. The 27 stadia were on paper, though Ihedioha’s illicit administration had already pulled out the money. Where were they?
And is it not laughable that Ihedioha’s vision for youth empowerment is to build a stadium in every LGA? What a primitive vision, indeed. Uzodimma has empowered over 40,000 youths by equipping them with digital skills and many others in different other skills. That is what youth empowerment in the 21st century is all about. Assuming he didn’t understand what youth empowerment means, he should be humble enough to acknowledge what Uzodimma has done in that regard. He should also visit every part of Imo State to interview people on what they think of the prosperity agenda of the present administration, which has changed their perception of governance from predatory Ihedioha’s tenure to that of participatory in Uzodimma’s era.
Again, the vast agricultural project he claimed remains only in his imagination. There is no evidence that his sordid administration ever conceived such vision.
Therefore, it is not enough to criticize a performing governor like Senator Hope Uzodimma. You have to develop functional and acceptable alternatives to what he has done. Realistically, you must know that he has a mileage, an unbeaten record that even blind people can feel and believe. Political opposition is not mere rhetoric of seeking to govern a state based on falsehood and fantasy.
The writer claimed Ihedioha has integrity. I don’t know whether the people of Ngor Okpala Local Government Area, whom he shortchanged for the House of Representatives seat for three tenures, would agree to that assertion. For those not familiar with what happened, check out the facts. The two local government areas comprising the Aboh Mbaise/Ngor Okpala federal constituency agreed on the seat rotation. Ngor Okpala took the first shot with Greg Egu. After his tenure, Egu declined to re-contest in honour of that agreement. Then Aboh Mbaise took its turn under Ihedioha. After the first tenure, he reneged on the deal. The records are there of how Ihedioha became a monkey that seized the cup he was served water with.
Then, when he started running for governorship, the same scenario repeated itself. He became a serial manipulator of the PDP primaries in 2015 and 2019. It was only last year, when they succeeded in pushing him aside, that he started sulking like a child denied his candy. Most PDP members in Imo State have described his exit from the party as a good riddance to bad rubbish. The tsunami he predicted never came around. That is a foretaste of what awaits him should he try to contest again.
Meanwhile, while he has the constitutional right to run for office as many times as he wishes, he should refrain from blackmail and character assassination. He should stop presenting himself as a god or messiah who, without him, Imo State, can not be saved. Long after he would have disappeared from the political firmament, Imo would continue to flourish. The charismatic and purposeful leadership of Governor Hope Uzodimma has already assured that. Ihedioha and his cohorts dreamers should wake up to the reality on the ground.
• Emelumba is the commissioner for information, public orientation, and strategy, Imo State