BusinessDay 22 Oct 2017

2 BD SUNDAY
C002D5556 Sunday 22 October 2017
IssueOfTheWeek
Okorocha’s newfound villain worship
CHUKS OLUIGBO
Since he came to power
as governor of Imo State
on May 29, 2011, Rochas
Okorocha has always
been in the news often
for the wrong reasons. If
he is not sacking duly elected
local government chairmen
and councillors and replacing
them with puppet transition
committees, he is dumping and
badmouthing the party that
brought him to power on a platter
of gold, or he is busy dissolving
town unions and working to
constitute an unconstitutional
fourth tier Community Government
Council, or constructing,
demolishing, and reconstructing
useless roundabouts, or naming
a government building after his
first daughter Uloma, or slashing
salaries of civil servants and reducing
their work days to three
instead of five compelling them
to become farmers overnight, or
issuing dud cheques to pensioners,
or pulling down residential
homes of his opponents in the
guise of road expansion, or erecting
billboards showing him in a
handshake with Barack Obama,
or publicly threatening to deal
ruthlessly with journalists and
chase them out of Imo State for
daring to ask him to account for
the state’s revenue and expenditure
since 2011, or turning the
state legislators into errand boys
and girls or heads of all manner
of task forces, or celebrating
his 55th birthday with 27 giant
cakes, or telling Imo people to
plant palm trees to make the
state financially self-sufficient
while the state-owned Ada Palm
Plantation, formerly a viable
source of revenue, lies waste – or
simply carrying out any other
absurdity that his mind can
conceive.
This was a man who waxed
lyrical during his swearing-in
in 2011, telling the mammoth
crowd of Imo people who gathered
at Dan Anyiam Stadium,
Owerri that he was on a rescue
mission and in a hurry to develop
the state.
“Today, the Lord has loosened
the captivity of Imo people.
Today is indeed the day of freedom,
the day of emancipation,
the day of resurrection. I know
you expect so much from me. I
know you believe in me. I know
you believe I can deliver. And
I promise I will deliver. If the
only reason that I will be poor
in this life is to serve my people
without being corrupt, then I
declare myself a poor man from
today onwards,” Okorocha had
said, punctuating his speech
with elaborate Bible quotations.
However, with the passage
of time, many Imo citizens
have kept wondering how they
Statue of Jacob Zuma in Owerri, Imo State
walked into such a deadly trap
with their eyes wide open as
they see that the only rescue that
has occurred in the state in the
last six-and-a-half years is that
of the Okorocha family and their
near and far relatives.
Now again, Okorocha was
in the news for the most part of
last week – for the wrong reason,
as usual. It had to do with
South African President Jacob
Zuma’s visit to Imo State. During
the two-day visit, Okorocha
got the puppet chairman of the
Imo State Council of Traditional
Rulers, Eze Samuel Ohiri, to
confer Zuma with a traditional
chieftaincy title of Ochiagha
Imo and former President Olusegun
Obasanjo to issue the title
certificate, unveiled a life-sized
bronze statue of Zuma standing
at over 25 metres, named a road
in Owerri after Zuma, and conferred
on Zuma a superfluous
Imo Merit Award.
This was even while the dust
raised by a similar 30-ft monument
in honour of Zuma in the
North West region of his own
country in the first week of
October was yet to settle, with
aggrieved South Africans asking
that the statue be pulled down;
while 783 charges of corruption,
fraud and racketeering stare
Zuma, whose presidency has
been anything but inspiring, in
the face; while Nigerian citizens
living in South Africa face constant
harassment in the hands
of the locals and several cases
of Nigerians murdered in series
of xenophobic attacks by South
Africans remain unresolved;
and just a few days after yet another
Nigerian, 35-year-old Jelili
Omoyele, was killed in Zuma’s
enclave.
But why was Zuma in Imo
State in the first place? Of what
benefit was his visit to Imo citizens?
Zuma was in Imo State, on
behalf of his Zuma Foundation,
to sign a Memorandum of
Understanding with the Rochas
Foundation. Okorocha himself
admitted this.
If that were truly the case,
then Zuma’s visit and the meeting
between the two men was an
entirely private affair, in which
case there was no need for the
pomp and glamour that attended
the visit, no need to confer Zuma
with an Imo Merit Award, even
if superfluous, and there was absolutely
no need to waste public
space and about N520 million of
public fund to erect and unveil
Zuma’s statue or to name a road
after him. The right thing would
have been for Okorocha to take
Zuma to his private living room
or to the premises of a Rochas
Foundation College, sign whatever
needed to be signed and
that would have been it. If he
incurred any cost in the process
or if he needed press coverage,
that should have been settled
from his private purse. That’s
what private businessmen do.
But Okorocha says no, you
don’t get it. It was not just about
the MoU; there was something
else, something bigger and with
public benefit. His administration
decided to honour Zuma
so as to encourage the South
African president to do more and
appreciate him for visiting the
state, Okorocha said. He said the
South African president during
his visit met with some businessmen
at the Ikemba Ojukwu
Centre in Owerri, including Leo
Stan Ekeh of Zinox Computers,
Pascal Dozie of Diamond Bank,
Innocent Chukwuma of Innoson
Motors, among others.
Well, it is good to encourage
someone who has done something
good to do more. But saying
you are encouraging Zuma
to do more means he has done
something already. So, what is
this thing that Zuma has done
for Imo State? How much benefit
did Zuma’s visit bring to the
ordinary people of Imo State
who have in the last six-anda-half
years borne the brunt
of Okorocha’s malgovernance
and often impulsive, irrational
policies? And what does meeting
with a group of private businesspeople
whose businesses have
no footprint in Imo State have
to do with the development of
the state? How does erecting
Zuma’s statue in Owerri attract
investments to Imo? How many
South African businesspeople
accompanied Zuma on that trip?
In what sectors will their investments
go, assuming that there
are even potential investors?
Does the Okorocha government
even know where investment
opportunities exist in the state?
But the avalanche of negative
reactions, from Nigerians
and South Africans alike, did
not deter the All Progressives
Congress (APC), the ruling party
at the centre, from singing that
all-too-familiar solidarity tune
for one of their own. At a meeting
of the party’s National Working
Committee with its 24 state
governors and principal officers
of the National Assembly, John
Odigie-Oyegun, its national
chairman, praised Okorocha’s
efforts at attracting foreign investment
to the country and
for his “feat in bringing some of
the significant figures from the
African continent”. And that
includes Zuma?
Amid the widespread controversy,
Okorocha turned around
to grind axe with the opposition
People’s Democratic Party (PDP),
just as the APC-led Federal Government
continues to blame its
inadequacies on either the immediate
past government or the
opposition PDP as a whole.
“If it was in the days of PDP,
schools and markets would have
been shut down and roads closed
because President Zuma was
coming. But none of such things
was done because Rochas and
his government have human
face. The PDP for the 12 years
they held sway never attracted
any meaningful visitor to the
state except PDP NEC members
who were coming to loot the
state,” the state government said
in a statement signed by Sam
Onwuemeodo, the governor’s
chief press secretary.
The statement further said
the governor owed no apology
to anyone for erecting the
statue and that if erecting statues
would develop Imo State, the
government was ready to erect
as many of such structures as
possible.
And while we were still on
the question of the relevance of
the Zuma visit, an unrepentant
Okorocha sycophant who used
to have some sense in his former
life wrote on his Facebook wall,
“With Zuma’s visit, commitment
towards stopping xenophobic
killings of Nigerians have [sic]
been made. That’s a remarkable
point scored by Owelle!” Owelle,
of course, is an unmerited title
that Okorocha gave to himself
and parades everywhere to give
him a false sense of importance.
Clearly, Okorocha’s association
with Zuma will bring the
governor some personal gain,
but it has absolutely nothing to
offer Imo citizens or Nigerians
in general. And for those who
are surprised that Okorocha
may find Zuma or his style of
governance admirable, don’t
you see that both men are hewn
out of the same stone? Both are
impunity personified.
The greater worry is that
Zuma is standing in the middle of
six other images – three on either
side – that are yet to be unveiled.
The guys behind those veils may
even be worse than Zuma.