Is Ihedioha A 419 Governor?

ONWUASOANYA FCC JONES

 

I was waiting to take Imo’s new governor up by the time he is one month in office, but his overzealous media handlers wouldn’t let me keep my peace. They pollute the internet and conventional media with half-baked and unintelligent falsehoods. For a man who campaigned on the back of fictitious integrity, one expected Ihedioha to have pretended for some time more at least to lend a little credence to the fake slogan of ‘my word, my bond.’

For some of the governor’s aides to have come out boldly to claim that the man who has travelled out of Imo more than he has stayed in Imo, has done anything of significance to add to the massive gains of the last administration, is to say the least, embarrassing to the His Excellency Rt. Hon Emeka Ihedioha and the image he has struggled so hard to build for himself over the years. For a man whose chieftaincy sobriquet is Omenkahurunanya, we should not expect long rehashes of mendacity to know that he is working.

It is ludicrous for a man to have promised to run his government on due process and transparency, yet claims to have awarded road contracts in the last 26 days of his administration, without having constituted a Tender Board, or advertised for any contract in the State. We know that Ihedioha will want to run a government of lies and deceit, but we have to remind him that he is dealing with Imo people, arguably the most enlightened populace in Nigeria. We shall hold him to account for everything he says or does.

Publishing pictures of projects executed by his predecessor, as evidences of his imaginary alteration of Imo’s landscape portrays our governor as not just an untrustworthy character, but something very close to a fraudster who obtains by false pretense. For the records, I want to be quoted that Ihedioha is aiming at obtaining the people’s trust through lies and false pretenses, and there is no better definition of a 419 governor. Some of the roads he published as having constructed are roads done by the previous administration, while the other one is an ongoing road construction attracted by the Owelle Rochas Okorocha administration and being executed by the NDDC.

Governor Ihedioha claims to have transformed the sports sector, yet, not a single pan has been added to the roofs of either Dan Anyiam Stadium or any of the two new stadia built by the immediate past administration in Orlu and Okigwe. Instead of building on the vision of taking sports development to the grassroots which informed Governor Okorocha’s idea of building these stadia, Ihedioha has arbitrarily ordered Heartland Football players to return to the Dan Anyiam Stadium. The immediate implication of this is that these new stadia will be left to rotten away and at most become playground for rabbits and grasscutters.

On road infrastructure, Ihedioha would be a terrible liar to say that he has dropped a tipper load of sand on any of the roads in Imo State, and if he insists he has, he will have to explain to Imolites how and when he did that. It is important to remind the Imo governor that he is not doing Imolites any favors neither will he be using his personal money to carry out any projects in the State, hence, we demand transparency in the handling of government businesses. Already, the ENTRACO has long started evacuating refuses from some parts of the State capital, but, we are yet to know under what arrangement that is being done. Was this contract sourced out to a private contractor or is ENTRACO employing direct labour to do this? If it is direct labour, at what cost to the Imo people? If it was outsourced, who is the contractor and what is the arrangement?

His Excellency Rt. Hon Emeka Ihedioha claims that he has restored confidence in governance and investors are now falling all over themselves to invest in Imo. Like I argued yesterday, any investor who brings his or her investment into Imo State from now till the next one year, is attracted by the developmental strides of Ihedioha’s predecessor. Ihedioha wouldn’t have been able to do anything of note to attract investors, even if he was a magician. If Ihedioha succeeds in getting any serious investor into Imo State soonest, he would only have succeeded because of what have been put in place by Owelle Rochas Okorocha.

However, I must express my doubts about the sincerity in Ihedioha’s purported investment drives. Imolites must be on the alert to ensure that this governor is plunging us into some bottomless debt ditches. He must be compelled at all times, to make public his agreements with these so-called international investors. What is Imo’s involvement in this. We should be told if the governor is simply going for loan from some of these organizations or he is wooing investors. Those are two different things, and we must be properly briefed.

Since the governor has decided to make it a point of discussion, I must concede that he has assembled a group of overfed tired legs who should have been enjoying their retirement or playing advisory roles to the government. I didn’t think it was necessary discussing whom the governor decides to appoint and to whatever position, but my governor thinks that appointing individuals who are themselves as co-governors rather than appointees of the governor is something to gloat about. I wish him well with his team and pray that Imo survives their onslaught.

 

Let Imo Move Forward!