Owelle Rochas Okorocha personifies the pious fraud of citizenship. The executive governor of Imo State flaunts the contradiction of a style of living that cultivates sincerity and fraudulence often in one breadth. Like a struggling actor playing pretend, Governor Okorocha hawks falsity as gospel reality, using the Imo Governor’s Office as his amphitheatre. But every minute, the plot falls apart.
Having rode to power on the wave of his self-confessed mission to rescue Imo State from insufficiency, few months into his tenure, Okorocha’s mission of change suffers the dearth of conviction. There is no gainsaying his message was enchanting to a poor, helpless electorate that had suffered too much hardship under his cantankerous and insensitive predecessor, Ikedi Ohakim. The citizenry welcomed Okorocha with open hands, hoping that his spell in power would guarantee them a better deal.
On his part, Okorocha enthralled the long-suffering masses with promises of progressive change and instant rescue from the abyss that the state had been mindlessly plunged by previous administrations. Imbued with an oratorical flourish that surpasses his sparse education. Okorocha won the masses over. He was brilliant and believable. He presented a better alternative to Ohakim. Thus he won the 2011 governorship election.
Within his first two years in office, he initiated massive construction projects, building roads where there were none and repairing the ones in disrepair. However, his initial commitment to progress was merely a ruse. Governor Okorocha’s mission to rescue the state has since morphed into a nightmarish episode of inefficiency and tactlessness.
Across the state, it is believed that the governor is no longer rescuing the people. The people believe that he is only rescuing his closest aides, political associates and family.
Add to this to his deep-rooted passion for travelling and you have a perfect picture of the degeneracy afflicting his government. However, Governor Okorocha’s apologists argue that his favourite pastime is travelling because he believes that it is a more practical and tactile approach to educating one’s mind. A blessed man by all standards, Okorocha has a private jet to further his expensive habit and a bottomless pocket to satisfy his vanities. If he weren’t governor, it would have been better. He took an oath to lead a people but he is running the state like a personal fiefdom.
In the last four weeks alone, he has been to Adamawa State for the wedding ceremony of the state Governor, Alhaji Bindow’s son. He spent a night there before leaving for Niger Republic on April 2nd for the inauguration of President Issoufou Mahamadou. He returned to Owerri and remained in his sprawling estate where government functionaries resumed daily for briefings and meetings before he departed again for the United States of America and China. He will spend a few days in Dubai before returning home.This year, the governor has travelled to London thrice – it was during one of his visits to the country that a pro-Biafra activist interrupted his presentation at the Chatham House.
Last year, he was pilloried for deserting Imo for Turkey twice without commensurate benefits for the trips. While international travel may be part of his brief, Okorocha’s penchant for deserting his office and crucial affairs of state for pleasure trips abroad, has become worrisome given the deplorable state of Imo State. Contrary to his much vaunted free education scheme, the Imo State University has been on strike since March over fee issues. Civil servants have not been paid since January. Disillusionment is palpable and pervasive around the state. It was no surprise therefore, that former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon Emeka Ihedioha, recently advised Governor Okorocha to suspend his foreign trips and save tax payers money. Such trips have not yielded anything apart from photo sessions with ‘foreign investors,’ so argued Ihedioha.
