By Oguwike Nwachuku
On Wednesday, July 15, His Excellency, Senator Hope Uzodimma, Governor of Imo State clocked six months in office.
On the same day, your sincerely had cause to engage a former Commissioner in the administration of sacked Governor Emeka Ihedioha on what she thinks about Governor Uzodimma’s administration after six months, and she returned a very hopeful response.
“To be honest, the governor has done well, and if he continues the way he is going, Imo will be proud of him,” she said.
Yes, it has been eventful six months. Call it six months of no dull moment and unprecedented activity despite seen and unseen vicissitudes you will not be wrong.
Those whose eyes can see beyond the immediate already know where the government is headed but those who are blinded by fear, self-delusion, mischief, deliberate unbelief and rabid hatred may never fathom where Uzodimma is taking Imo to. Not even time and space will convince them to see any change but gloom.
To Imo folks whose heart is pure, six months of Governor Uzodimma has reinforced their hope that tomorrow is better.
Imo citizens in this category have seen signs of good governance in the governor’s intervention on road infrastructure, water provision, health sector, security of lives and property, youth empowerment, civil service reform, improved revenue generation, among others. They know that Nkeiruka. They are hopeful that better days are near and they are thankful to God for the governor and his afforts.
Unfortunately, to Imo folks whose hearts and minds are polluted with the diarrhea of hatred just because they never contemplated that Uzodimma would be governor, the six months of his administration have been a waste.
This category of Imo citizens are like the famous Thomas in the Bible. To them, doubting is fun. It gives them spiritual orgasm. They can even doubt their own comments, shadow and deeds if the opportunity presents itself.
Remind them that Governor Uzodimma recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Julius Berger Nigeria Plc, for the rehabilitation of Owerri to Orlu road and Owerri to Okigwe road, and that another pact was signed with United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on clean and portable water provision for Imolites, they will question why it must be Julius Berger and USAID. But we excuse them because that is how they are wired spiritually and physically.
Let me refresh our memory with the excerpt of Governor Uzodimma’s speech on Monday, April 27 when he marked 100 days in office.
By the way, for those who bother to evaluate speeches made by leaders, this excerpt is on marble as mother of all speeches, and I am proud that His Excellency is linked to it.
Hear him: “My beloved Ndi-Imo, I want to assure you that I have come to serve. I have come to define good governance.
“I have come to prove that our people have not been cursed with bad governance since the end of the De Sam Mbakwe era as people have been bemoaning.
“I have come to demonstrate that from among us a good government can emerge to offer sincere, honest, purposeful and incorruptible governance.
“Hold me on my words and read my lips: Under my watch there will be zero public sector corruption. Imo State will witness unprecedented developmental strides that will make our people glorify God.
“I recognize that if not for divine intervention I would not have been able to recover my stolen mandate. I cannot therefore afford to fail either God or Ndi-Imo.”
From the above excerpt, it does not matter what the naysayers and rabid wailing wailers who have remained fixated on what they either lost or failed to gain when they were in office before they were booted out think about where Uzodimma’s government is headed.
What is important is that gains have been recorded six months down the road. More gains will be recorded as months succeed months in this administration and those who have eyes to perceive clearly such gains will be happy that it is not by accident that this government is tagged “Government of Shared Prosperity.”
I have read some pieces from those who still delude themselves about the direction the Uzodimma administration is headed. One was tagged “Uzodimma and the Battle Within” by my friend, Henry Ekpe.
Like some write-ups when Uzodimma’s administration clocked 100 days, the authors have continued to paint a gloomy picture of a government that has not done anything even after six months.
The question is: For how long will the authors continue to bemoan the loss of power by their paymasters through such pieces? Who does not know when write-ups that tend to be advisory to Governor Uzodimma but in actual fact, are not, are instigated?
Like Dr. Chuks Osuji, a Public Relations icon noted in one of his essays in response to those who played politics with Uzodimma’s 100 days in office, “nobody in his right thinking mind could say that the governor has wasted one hundred days for nothing.”
The same persons like Ekpe are still at work trying to undermine the governor with insinuation that he is yet to land. Land where?
When they are not complaining that Governor Uzodimma has jettisoned Ihedioha’s programme or projects, they are getting goose pimples about internal politics in the All Progressives Congress (APC), a party that does not have anything to do with their own party. Like physicians who cannot heal themselves, they fail to remove the log in their eyes before looking for the peck in another person’s eyes.
That Governor Uzodimma said government is a continuum does not detract from the fact that he must plan his own governance strategy to suit his orientation.
It is wishful thinking by anybody who wants to guide Uzodimma to be like Ihedioha in the name of continuity in government, and that is the blackmail their write-ups are portraying.
From the day of his swearing-in on January 15, 2020, Governor Uzodimma knows where the journey to deliver on his mandate is headed.
He understands clearly where the governance journey is taking him and the good people of Imo State to. Surely and steadily, he has kept his eyes on the ball regardless of the blackmail, propaganda, slander and uncountable mischievous demeanour political traducers deploy to derail the journey.
He knows the journey is promising, six months gone by, as the foundation of good governance has not only been adequately laid, but Imo people are beholding the tangible things that go side by side with good governance.
What we have today as gains of our six months in office are simply the result of strategic thinking on what constitutes good governance which Uzodimma symbolizes and irrevocably poised to vigorously pursue as the coming years will show.
One must be blind not to see that ours is a government where Governor Uzodimma’s insightful, pragmatic leadership blends with his tested public and private sector experience that will ultimately lead to translation of the intangibles to tangibles.
It is not an accident that Governor Uzodimma sees himself as a licensed driver and no one is in doubt the appellation fits the mould.
Going by what has transpired in Imo in the last six months of his swearing-in, Governor Uzodimma’s politically ebullient disposition has stood him out. Let me explain.
No sooner was he sworn-in than political detractors roll out their arsenal to frustrate his well thought-out agenda for Imolites.
Imolites still recall how detractors pursued the failed Supreme Court review with uncommon vehemence, including blackmailing the Supreme Court Justices, yet Uzodimma remained undaunted, till his well-earned victory became history on March 3.
In his six months in office, Governor Uzodimma has synergized the three arms of government – executive, legislature and judiciary – knowing full well that doing so is key to a strengthened governance process.
But the truth is, never in the history of Imo State since 1999 has there existed such camaraderie between the executive, the judiciary and the legislature the way we are seeing it today under the administration of Governor Uzodimma. The opposition would prefer a fractured relationship.
Those who came before Governor Uzodimma loved and even instigated war-war situations that dovetailed into lack of trust, lack of concord, and lack of synergy between the three arms of government with the attendant political instability and underdevelopment consequences for our dear state.
To him, Imo will be better if everybody works together, and he believes there is strength in unity and more so, in government business.
Let me say that those who pretend not to know that Governor Uzodimma has achieved commendable gains in six months because of their bias inclination to the immediate past government may never reckon with anything good even if the projects are cited in their compound.
When journalists whose jobs that have so much to do with public trust, betray the sense of objectivity by stoking issues they know cannot pass the test of sincerity, then all of us are snookered.
Who says subjective outing based on arrogant thinking that adopting whole and entire Ihedioha’s structure could have been the only panacea for assessors to score Uzodimma creditably after six months? How wrong can some fellows be?
In my previous interventions, I cautioned against crying more than the bereaved, because of our failure to bridle our greed as interested parties in the Imo project.
I really find some pieces nauseating when their authors descend that low, to the nadir where only highly ignorant persons could be found when serious matters that demand critical assessment are being considered.
I am sure residents of Owerri municipal are not worse off today managing the perennial flooding that has become a hallmark of the town every rainy season.
Reason is because Governor Uzodimma has within six months isolated roads that are critical to putting a final stop to the flooding.
I am sure we know the state of these roads before now: Oparanozie St to Relief Market Road, Chukwuma Nwaoha Relief Market Road, Assumpta World Bank Road, Assumpta Roundabout to Concorde Junction, Dick Tiger- Egbu Junction road and Dick Tiger Aladinma Lake Nwaebere Road.
Those who delude themselves with the “show us what you have done” fad ought to be reminded that the reforms in the State’s Civil Service have yielded monumental payroll fraud perpetrated by civil servants in conjunction with their collaborators in the ousted and past regimes.
For those who use the payment of workers’ salaries and that of pensioners as yardstick to tell unfounded lies about the Governor Uzodimma administration, just be rest assured that in the another six months you will be disappointed.
We are not under any illusion that the governor is serious when he said payment of salaries to workers and pensioners is not an achievement worth showcasing and he hopes to make it a given every month given the improvement in the Internally Generated Revenue and the deployment of automated payment system that will make nonsense the criminal intents of the perpetrators of the pay-roll fraud.
The truth is that Governor Uzodimma feels for the pensioners much more than those who are using their plight to play politics and in the fullness of time, the pensioners will know who has their interest at heart the more.
Notwithstanding that the Covid-19 caught the globe off guard, leaving nations hitherto perceived invincible in science and health matters begging for help, Governor Uzodimma is taking advantage of the situation to revive the state’s health sector.
Apart from putting in place six well equipped isolation and treatment Centres and providing 30 state of the art ambulances for emergency response to the Covid-19 pandemic at the 27 local government areas and the state capital, the Imo State University Teaching Hospital at Orlu recently hosted the ground breaking ceremony for a permanent emergency and infectious disease hospital for the South East. The project was attracted to Imo by Governor Uzodimma.
Talk of Operation Search and Flush vehicles with inbuilt modern communication gadgets now found in all parts of Imo State to help secure the lives and property of Imolites, you won’t delude yourself and misinform the people that “Uzodimma is yet to land.”
What one finds curious is that not even Ihedioha will say Uzodimma has not done anything worth commending the way his wailing wailers do without knowing that they are discrediting themselves as agents of falsehood, fake news, disaffection and hate. What a shame being a subjective assessor!
.Nwachuku is Chief Press Secretary/Media Adviser to Governor Uzodimma