BY CLEM AGUIYI
Dear Archbishop Obinna,
I am Clem Aguiyi, a bondservant of Jesus Christ. Greetings of Christian love to you. May grace and peace be multiplied to you and the Church in the knowledge of God and our Lord Jesus Christ.
I write this letter with all diligence to stir your heart to the plight of our people, even though you are aware of the facts I will record here again. Permit me to begin by restating that I have nothing personal against Governor Rochas Okorocha, whom I also helped bring to power as governor believing he will govern our beloved with the fear of God. I am also aware of the role the Church played in bringing Okorocha to power, hence we must collectively take the responsibility of thrashing him into the dustbin. We must not shy away from our God given responsibility.
History beckons on you as the leader and shepherd of the faithful to speak-out against this four years of impunity, tyranny, shortcomings, unbridled lies and trickery suffered by the people due to the singular mistake of electing the wrong man. From inception, Okorocha has remained a study in lawlessness. Rule of Law is non-existent under his watch as court decisions, including Supreme Court’s judgments are obeyed in breach. The cases of Eze Ilumoanya vs state government; ALGON, Imo State vs state government readily comes to mind. Put more crisply, Okorocha has disobeyed virtually all judiciary pronouncements, and thus creating ample room for anarchy, civil dictatorship, constitutional crisis and absolute disregard for the concept of separation of powers. The traditional institution is not spared of his sordid assaults; traditional rulers now rule as conquered people; they are forced against their will to belong to the APC or be dethroned.
Because of our silence, the church is under threat. Christian youths are brazenly induced with Arab money to convert to Islam. Seventeen Imo youths were on November 16, 2013 at the Abuja National Mosque paid N2 million to renounce their Catholicism (Christianity) and defect to Islam. If we allow this to continue, Imo will become Turkey. God forbid that the Assumpta Cathedral will become a mosque.
Owing to our silence, government has refused to give back missionary schools as it is the practice in other sister states. The free education, which is the governor’s cardinal project, is a packaged fraud. Whereas the constitution provides for free and Universal Basic Education (UBE) for every Nigerian child from the primary to junior secondary school, the governor now makes this a political trick to hoodwink the ignorant members of the public. Imo that used to post top rated results during external examinations now records dismal performances in WAEC, NECO and JAMB examinations. Number of teachers in key subjects, such as English and Mathematics has scaled down significantly. Juxtapositioning the JAMB and WASC performance between Anambra and Imo from 2011- 2014 will show how poor Imo has performed. The percentage of Imo indigenes admitted into the state university compared with non-indigenes has gone down. The scam, which many refused to see, since the indigenes pay little or nothing is now hydra-headed. The admission figure of non-indigenes is scaled up to the detriment of the number of indigenes admitted so as to raise money to cater for the purported subsidised education for indigenes.
If we have spoken, the fraudulent impeachment of Jude Agbaso would have been averted. Okorocha engineered the impeachment to avoid keeping the agreement he reached with the Agbaso family for a single tenure. He used deceitful allegations of bribery to pursue the fraudulent cash-induced impeachment, which took place on March 28, 2013. Okorocha had accused Agbaso of collecting N485million bribe from JPROS, a construction company he awarded N1.3billion contract to execute Warehouse-Orlu Road Junction, Odense, Aba Road and old Nekede Road projects. The money was later traced to the contractor’s account in Dubai and Lebanon. Interestingly, one of the governor’s aide in charge of Monitoring and Implementation of Road Projects is on the board of the company and controls the largest share.
The dishonesty surrounding the impeachment was reinforced nine months later, as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission concluded its investigation and revealed that Agbaso did not collect any money; rather the money was actually paid into the contractor’s account, and if we dig further it might be discovered that Akano who holds a controlling share in the company may well be a front.
If we had spoken, the widows who were physically assaulted by thugs would have been spared the horror; if we had spoken, the Odenigbo debate sponsored by the Church wouldn’t have been disrupted right inside the cathedral; if we had spoken, the priests who were physically assaulted would have been spared the unprovoked humiliation.
Today, the talk within the governor’s circle is that we the people and the Church has been swallowed and defeated. I don’t think the church has been swallowed but if the butcher is reelected the Church certainly will weep. We cannot, in good conscience, pretend we are helpless. If the government that we install is behaving badly, we have both moral and democratic duty to demand for accountability.
Under Okorocha local council administration has been deliberately and brazenly destroyed peeving way for the governor to manage allocations to the 27 councils in the state. He spends public fund and collects loans and raises bond without recourse to known fiscal principle and lay down procedures for public fund management. Consequently, Imo is in serious debt and things will only go from bad to worse if the Alhaji in Douglas House is allowed another four years. It is the regime’s financial indiscipline that informed the action embarked upon by the EFCC against two top officials of the state – Commissioner of Finance and Accountant-General of the state –who were arrested and interrogated by EFCC over alleged N456billion loan. A follow up to this was the interrogation of the Clerk of the State House of Assembly by EFCC officials over alleged poor management of the Assembly fund.
The governor that we foisted on the people runs the state as if it is his personal estate and dwelling largely on propaganda and disinformation to sway unsuspecting members of the public towards embracing his deceptive style of governance. His administrative approach is mainly on ad hoc basis, awarding contracts arbitrarily without proper record. The result is that most of his projects, which litter several local councils are executed in abandonment due to none payment of contract obligations to contractors, except where in cases the contracts were awarded to his company, his family members, in laws and cronies. There are also cases of indiscriminate land grabbing and dubious acquisition of Imo Transport Company ITC and creation of another tier of government, which he called the Community Government, contrary to constitutional provision for three-tier government. He has failed to pay salaries to those chosen to handle the community governments across the state.
The list of Okorocha’s sins is endless, but the real question is: what is wrong with us? Why are we not angry enough to reclaim our beloved Imo? The Church has a responsibility to guide the people and they will follow? Imo will be better with an honest, humble and God fearing leader.
•Aguiyi wrote from Lagos: SMS Only: 08034747898; Email: totalpolitics@ymail,com
