EXPRESSO_Rebut>> By Steve Osuji
I INSIST GOV. UZODINMA IS NOT DESERVING OF THE VANGUARD AWARD AND THAT THE VERY AWARD IS IN ITSELF, A SHAM AND A TRAVESTY…
CRUX OF MATTER: In the days, regarded in Christendom as Holy Week, a barrage of insults, invectives, lies and inanities were poured on me by the media goons of Governor Hope Uzodinma of Imo State.
These are in response to my earlier write up arguing that the Governor was not deserving of the honour bestowed on him and may have indeed purchased it with a chunk of state’s resources.
I outlined my reasons and raised a few questions. I also observed that the award does more harm to my State and Imolites than good. Not to mention the deep damage to the journalism profession.
A POOR, POOR TEAM: Having been on both sides of the divide, I am very much aware that my write up would put my colleagues on the other side under pressure but we are talking about the good of a State against the pleasure of a few.
From my experience on the other side, the appropriate response would have been for the media team to sit, review the write-up at length and devise a single, appropriate response. Thereafter, they would inundate the public with facts and photographs of achievements.
ARROGANCE OF POWER: But their staccato responses only suggests the incipient arrogance and mindset of a conqueror. One who must not be criticised.
Their master must have harried them to justify their presence in his cabinet if he could be so criticised by their colleague. With that obvious threat, every two-penny media hack in the Government House picked his pen and went to town.
The result is that there’s no reasoned, responsible rebuttal to the cogent issue raised in my piece.
The CPS/Media Adviser, Oguwike Nwachukwu, who knew me intimately until he became Media Aide, said I had gone mad! Really! Ogu?!
Commissioner for Information who you would expect to know better made the silliest response. He said I envy his Master, the Governor. How? He has nothing l crave. Nothing!
This is apart from his subtle threat: (“”Steve has become suicidal””). Meaning that to criticise or have a say in the affairs of my State is an act pregnant with SUICIDAL CONSEQUENCES, according to MR DECLAN EMELUMBA, Imo State Commissioned for Information.
Of course the threat is well noted, but if he thinks he scares me for a second, then he’s got to be a big joker.
Then the young fellow known a Martin Oghalaa may be forgiven for being obviously a neophyte.
When I appointed a State Correspondent for Owerri, Imo in 2003, he was probably still in school. Today, he wears an oversized cap and he acts like eleke the foolish bird. Suffice to say that my old Correspondents are still around in Owerri. In a manner of speaking, he can’t stand fully erect and upright before any of them.
But Ughalaa’s undoing is to say he found pornography in my laptop. The truth is that I had a super flat HP ELITE, touchscreen laptop that turned 360 degrees and double folds on both sides.
I used it as SA Media in Imo Government House in 2019. Yes, the laptop came with a cache of educational porn materials in it being fairly used. But the story here is that the laptop was stolen in December 2019 in Government House.
Now that UGHALAA has revealed the content of my stolen laptop, he’s either the thief or an accessory. I may have to escalate this to the Police so he may be invited to explain how he got access to the contents of my missing laptop.
Meanwhile, the public needs to take an especial note of him asmentioned a questionable character, and beware never to keep anything of value around him.
POOR RESPONSE: As a proof of their claim to the so-called infrastructure award, they all parroted the same 120 roads and other infrastructure.
One expected a detailed list, traceable locations and cost of each project as a show of accountability and transparency. But nothing of such.
Even if we take the spurious claims on their face value, are these enough in five years?
Governor Peter Mbah of Enugu State has probably more to show in just two years.
HUMDRUM GOVERNMENTS: We insist that no proper governance is going on. No system, no method…
What we have is humdrum, knee jack and ad hoc brick and mortar conjecturing.
How has Uzodinma impacted on the health, educational, and transport systems in the past five years for instance. What about the life of the man on the street? I was expecting them to regale me with their HDI numbers. But apparently, this government doesn’t know the meaning of HDI and I will not tell them! Not after all the hailstones of personal abuses.
In other words, there’s no method to the madness called governance in Imo currently. Let’s take a few instances: The early learning and primary school system in Imo is all but dead. A few schools I checked revealed dilapidated structures everywhere, that only a handful of pupils attend school; a core of absentee staff and a host of ghost workers. No parent worthy of the appellation will send his ward to public primary school in Imo anymore.
Ditto for rural health system. Most rural health centres in Imo are overgrown with bush and are long abandoned (see pictures).
WHITE ELEPHANT: A misplaced International Conference Centre, ICC, planted at the heart of Owerri by the wastrel, Rochas Okorocha, failed before he left off. One would think Hope would reclaim the land for city aesthetics, but nay, he began to construct another ICC, regardless that Imo has a well-situated AHIAJOKU CONVENTION CENTRE. Obviously, the whole idea is to drain Imo treasury as Rochas did.
But as you read this, the last rainstorm blew away the roofing cap of the building to betoken the wretched quality of the multi billion naira whited sepulchre.
WHERE’S THE LGA FUNDS GONE? This leads me to one of the crucial questions raised in my article.
Not one of the media goons attacking me said a word about Imo LGA funds in the last five years.
Greenhorn UGHALAA (onye ugha) lectured me about a lack of data and stats in my opinion commentary as if the Imo government today can stand the most basic stats, data and cold images!
He’s too naive to understand that I was actually pulling punches by neglecting to use figures and telling images.
I have obliged him a bit here so that he may learn not to punch above his weight next time.
Since last year, each Local Council in Imo have been averaging three billion naira monthly in federal allocations.
If we take an average of N2 billion per month for each of the 27 LGAs in Imo State over five years, that would total at least N5 trillion.
ISIALA-MBANO, my LGA, would have received between N100- N150 billion under Uzodinma in the last five years!
I challenge EMELUMBA, NWACHUKWU and UGHALAA to show me a single project worth ten million naira in Isiala-Mbano?! The township stadium and modern vocational school started by a previous Governor are now thick forests!
The crime I committed is to ask this simple question and they resorted to expletives, saying Steve Osuji has gone mad. Does a mad man keep a column?
IMO A WASTELAND: The truth is that Imo under Uzodinma is nigh a wasteland. Most Imo people know this but they have been cowed into silence. Hope has captured Imo, Hope will kill you if you speak up, is now the hushed refrain in the State. But Igbo adage tells us we do not refrain from going to war out of fear that we might be killed.
On the contrary, some of us have a bounden duty as journalists and citizens, to continue to ask these questions until we get some answer…
EMELUMBA and NWACHUKWU know we have been writing and asking these questions for the past 30 years, long before Hope joined politics. We won’t stop now because he is in power. He will soon leave and we shall continue to probe until becomes great again.
It is a known fact that most journalists in Imo and beyond have been silenced by fear of Hope or through compromise. But there’s always one voice that won’t be silenced.
EKUKE POLITICIANS: I noted also that Hope has damaged all the opposition parties in the State, using the vicious APC template. Most of the men in Imo have been castrated.
My generation of PDP members, people like Chuma Nnaji, Chris Okewulonu, Willie Amadi, Raymond Emeana, to name a few, who ought to form the bulwark of reasoned opposition have become EKUKE POLITICIANS. Most of them have scurried to join Hope in APC, following him up and down looking for Hope’s droppings to lap up. So sad!
Today, Hope has morphed from being an absentee Governor to an APC frontman, chasing a seeming fast-fading second term for President Bola Tinubu. He has abandoned Imo, having become OKANMA NA AMA.
Apart from helping APC procure results in difficult bye elections, in his current servile status, he’s quick to do the bidding of members of the APC dark conclave.
For instance, Wetheral Road, the high street of Owerri is currently lined with Tinubui’s reelection buntings. Yet elections are two years away. Hope is obviously pouring Imo’s cash into the potholes of APC’s governance!
A DAMAGED SOCIETY: A society has died where the political elite, the intelligentsia, the media, the CSOs, the elders, the body of clergy and the rump of the plebiscite have been cowed into silence by a plundering, kleptomaniac ruling clique. This is the State of Imo today: bondage.
BOTTOM LINE: The good thing yet is that Governor Uzodinma still has three years to make amends. I had written a lengthy article in January last year at the beginning of Hope’s second term to the effect that he could still salvage his era. Those abusing me may chew their pride and go look for the article online if they seek change.
Fortunately there is still a bit of time … he must role up his sleeves and work instead of buying fake awards. We are not deceived. He must apply the bulk of Imo funds for developing the State. He must spend Imo LGA funds in the various LGAs and not for APC’s silly politics.
But if he continues on this baleful trajectory, he will end up a debacle, he will end up as the worst Governor Imo ever had.
- Osuji was former editor at The Guardian, Thisday and NewAge. Feedback: Steve.osuji@gmail.com
OSUJISTEVE/05.05.25
