The Imo State House of Assembly is presently probing the Ikedi Ohakim government in Imo State over some allegations of financial impropriety. This should have been good news to those that have opposed the government since it came on board in May 2007 but the opposition in the state has pooh-poohed this as a mere ruse to cover what they allege is a great scandal that has been brewing in the state for the last two years. They have their reasons for the skepticism but chief among these reasons is that the Speaker of the assembly, one Goodluck Opiah and indeed the members of the assembly are willing collaborators with Ohakim in the task of raiding Imo State.
They allege that the Imo State assembly has only done well in approving of Ohakim’s excesses and sharing of the resources that would have been used to get thing working in Imo State. For these, they have dismissed the assembly as jokers who want to play on the intelligence of the people of Imo State by the so-called probe of the Ohakim government. They have insisted that only an open probe by the Financial and Economic Crimes Commission (EFCC) will uncover what they call a massive fraud going on Imo State for the past two years.
Some weeks back, a news website has reported that Imo State is broke. It alleged that the recklessness in handling the huge resources that have come to the state was responsible for this. It further alleged that most of the allocations that come to the state government and the Imo local governments since 2007 have been either looted or wasted on bogus projects that directly or indirectly benefit the governor, his immediate family and few of his hirelings. It further reported that Imo State is now living on borrowing from banks, not to fund wealth-generating projects but to fund the many phantom projects Ohakim has invented to celebrate himself. The website pointed out that financial management since Ohakim came to power has departed from the conventional known norms as he and his brother who is his chief of staff have cornered all resources and control them as if Imo State is an extension of Ohakim and sons company. The governor was to derisively dismiss the report but many tell tale signs from Imo State show that the report may not be inaccurate after all.
It is difficult to observe any worthwhile ongoing project in Imo State presently. Apart from the bogus, the more you watch, the less you see Clean and Green project, which exists more on the papers than in reality, Imo State is stagnant. The rainy season has further exposed the Ohakim government, its IRROMA and the Works Ministry as having not added any value to the state of roads in Imo State since 2007. Whenever it suits them, Ohakim and his government will make the bogus and unprovable claim that they have built more roads than all the governments that have ruled Imo State, Imo people believe Ohakim has been the least performing governor in that regard. The rains are meeting Imo roads in their worst ever state. The rural roads are as impassable as the urban roads. In Owerri, the roads are so bad that people wonder if Imo State has a government in place. While it has been fanciful for Ohakim to often dub Wetheral Road and one or two spots in Owerri with fresh paints, as evidence of his clean and green, the roads in Aladimma, Ikenegbu, Orji, Amakohia, New Owerri, Egbu, Uratta, Nekede, Ikenegbu Extension, and other parts of Owerri are so bad that one needs canoes to paddle through them. The gullies that have developed on what should be urban streets are so deep that movement has been greatly impaired. Behind the Dan Anyiam Stadium along Wetheral is a road that leads directly into the Imo Transport Corporation terminal. This road is like a huge river right in the very midst of the town and commuters and passengers have often found themselves swimming through acrid water to access the park.
I just mentioned this road to show that Imo is permanently locked down. One can challenge the state government to list and publish the roads it had done in Owerri for the past two years. I am afraid it may not list one apart from the dualisation of two kilometers each of the three entries to Owerri through Umuahia, Orlu and Okigwe. If there is such level of inaction in Owerri, the state capital, the hub of Ohakim’s pet one-city state, one can wonder where else the roads are being constructed but certainly not in the rural areas, which have been abandoned in the frenzy of Ohakim’s pet dream of celebrating inanity as success. One of such inanities that was meant to dupe the state of huge resources is the so-called dredging of Nworie stream with N8billion in the face of winding poverty and joblessness! If this is not daylight robbery, I wonder what is. For the avoidance of doubts and for those who do not know, Nworie is a small stream that dries off in November. Ohakim is yet to tell Imo people the value of such expense. A respected Guardian newspaper, Luke Onyekakea, like every other Imo man, raised this question in his Guardian column sometime ago but he was shouted down by one of Ohakim’s media mobsters, Amanze Obi and that was the end of the story behind this clearly corrupt act.
One has heard of bogus projects Ohakim promised at inception and these include the Oguta Wonderlake, the ring road that will link the entire state, the Nnanna Ukegbu Boulevard that will link the Imo and Port Harcourt airports, the Songhai wonder farms, the Imo State secretariat, the foundation of which President Yar’Adua laid two years ago, the Imo ring road that will run from Okigwe, through Owerri to Oguta. All these have became fairy tales because the state government is still attending to the greed of Ohakim and family. We are not talking of the education, health or industrial sectors, which exist only in names. I was baffled when one of Ohakim’s commissioners, one Chuma Nnaji, made the claim sometime last year, in an interview with Daily Independent that their clean and green project has offered jobs to over 300,000 Imo citizens! This is the face of the new scam in Imo State for the past two years.
But we must consider that this is a state that in Ohakim’s first year budgeted over 90billion Naira and in the second year (the current fiscal year), budgeted over 130 billion Naira. I remember when some concerned Nigerians raised doubts about the sustainability of the 90 billion Naira, they were shouted down by what has come to become Ohakim’s desperate media mobsters-and we shall come to these bunch at a later time. If we agree that indeed that budget was realistic and was so successful that the state saw the need to up the budget to over 130billion in the current fiscal year, Imo people will like to know where and how such money was spent. Certainly not on buying every available media spaces, mounting giant billboards at every corner in the state to tell Nigerians that ‘Ohakim is doing very well.’ Certainly not on sponsoring several orgies and self-celebrating useless programmes such as music shows, beauty pageants, launching New Face, launching a collection of Ohakim’s speeches as books and so many such vain but costly funfairs that drain the resources of Imo State. I may not say that indeed, Ohakim has been guilty of financial recklessness as charged but he needs to put his achievements in black and white for all to see, if the people of Imo feel he must show them what he did with their money. I had learnt, and Governor Fashola has confirmed this, that one’s works speak for him. Ohakim may not believe this, which is why he snatches every available media space, buys up every editor in sight, floats up so many shadowy groups to shut his enemies and to tell Imo people of the wonderful work he has been doing. It will pay him if he documents these for Imo people to cross check and indeed for prosperity to judge him better than the mealy mouths of his praise singers.
As I write, Imo State has usefully raised a 40billions Naira bond from the capital market, it has allegedly borrowed several billions of Naira from the banks, its monthly allocation averages about 3.5 billion Naira and its local government monthly allocation averages 2billion Naira. Imo is an oil-producing state. But the picture from that state is very gloomy. As I write, one cannot point to any meaningful project the state is embarking on. If there is, President Yar’Adua would not have been invited on a state visit to Imo State on July 25 to come and commission a two kilometers road Ohakim commissioned in May, commission a repainted old building rebaptised as the Owerri Appeal Court, commission a rented duplex as ‘PDP secretariat’ and commission a radio transmitter. Civil servants just manage to get their salaries; sometimes it is delayed. Contractors who did works for the government are not being paid and the list are pilling up. Newspaper organizations, which share in the advert bazaar from the Imo State government, are being owed. Even in Ohakim’s government house, his brother has become the Al Mustapha of his regime. He corners every available fund and as such it has become difficult to finance such routine expenses as DTA. The tradition of giving civil servants a free launch to augment their slave wages, which was inherited by Ohakim has been stopped, financing petty expenses, which is a normal office running cost has been stopped. The toilets and rest rooms stink because there is no water in his government house, facilities have all broken down. But Ohakim and his men are having extended party. They junket from one part of the globe to the other, from one part of the country to the other, talking brashly of the wonderland they are creating in Imo State. If Imo State is not broke, I wonder which state is.
Stephen Nwahiri.
Mushin Lagos.
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