#BlogFeature: The Man And His Empire

Hello everyone, here is Vivian Beulah Igbokwe again, a consistently passionate writer who has been featured on my blog several times. Her articles and views are her own experiences and opinions and they are very interesting and enlightening. 

If you would like your written articles featured in my #BlogFeaturePost columns, kindly send them in to bukiotuyemi@gmail.com.

Enjoy. :)

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I want to remind (or probably educate) our governor, Rochas Okorocha, that empires never last; they usually self-destruct. Let him go back to history and refresh his memory - the Roman Empire, the first and second French Empire, the German colonial Empire, the British Empire, the Japanese; these used to be forces to reckon with in their time of rule.  For any of these that still exist, they are just a figment of what they used to be, both in resources and influences. Reason being that no man (or men) was ever created to cower under the oppression of another. Whenever he takes more than he can absorb, he rebels. Usually, it is bad for the oppressor. Aside the fact that slavery was going out of trade and a lot of people were speaking out against that evil, slave masters and plantation owners would tell you that it was getting increasingly expensive to quell slave uprisings.  The French revolution, a people's attempt to be free from social and economic oppression, would also serve to refresh his memory.

You know, Rochas got there and started suffering from amnesia. Of course, it has to be; if not how could he quickly forget how the people of Imo fought to see him become the governor? The story goes that some people refused to sleep and bathe for some three days or more to ensure that the election would not be rigged. It was an election victory that was celebrated beyond the borders of the sit. Now, he sits upon his throne and carries on with his agenda of oppression and frustration.

 

When he first came, he was the apple of our eyes. We believed our savior had come. He began to build roads; soon after the stories of suicides followed: Of how contractors would borrow huge sums from banks to construct roads and then our dictator would refuse to pay them. They thereafter commit suicide because the sums were much more than they could ever pay. A lot of us dismissed them as fabrications. Not long after, these same roads built by our messiah began to practically disintegrate. Now, the state of roads in Orlu and Umuguma are worse off than they used to be before Rochas began his road constructions. MCC, formerly a clean and well tarred road is now a mess. The same can be said of Weathral, Amakohia and several roads in the state before he began his road expansions. He begins to build a road, abandons it and goes to another. The road contractors begin to dig drainages along a street, they begin from a point, jump some distance, continue to dig; as such the drainages are not continuous and so water logs all the time in our drainages. Mosquito breeding is now on an outrageous level. Everywhere is dirty, stinky and now like the case of a mad house.

Nobody expects a messiah in a governor, however, every leader should be able to contribute their bit and make things a little better than they met it. Rochas has destroyed the beautiful and clean city we used to have. The worst is that people outside Imo assumes that we are living in heaven. I have a friend who would die defending Rochas. Yet, he lives in Abuja. How many people have the emergency response centers helped? How many people has he gainfully employed? How many roads did he build that are still in good standing? How many hospitals did he build in the different LGAs in Imo are functioning? (Can someone please educate our dictator that empty structures are never called hospitals. Buildings become hospitals when there are medical personnel, medical supplies and equipments, and all other auxiliary staff required to make a hospital run effectively.) How many skill acquisition sites built in his wife's name are functioning? How many roads, road dividers, and artificial fountains has he built and destroyed because he wants to build something else? How many structures has he built that are unused in Imo in State? If you come to IHOP, you see a lot of unused halls constructed. The Imo shopping mall that was constructed with mullions of naira lies there in waste. Our governor is busy but doing what? He is spending tax payers' money on useless constructions upon constructions. "Rochas is working."

So then, our governor in his first tenure makes education free up to tertiary level. In what part of the world is university education free? How do you fund such an unrealistic project?

A few months ago, he embarks on expanding bank road. So he breaks down the fountain falls at government house junction, breaks down all the road dividers, and breaks down all the walls of the banks along the road. Didn't he know he would expand that road before spending millions to build the fountain falls, the Douglas souvenir building that is now being destroyed by rainfall and the road dividers? Oh yes, Imo is now in the hands of a mad man who wakes up today and feels like breaking down a street, he goes ahead and does that. Tomorrow, he feels like building it and does just that. No plan, just wastes upon wastes. Now, he's done expanding the road, the traffic situation along that road is even poorer. People drive recklessly because the road is too wide and they are trying to maneuver the numerous potholes. Banks can't even put up their walls to reinstall their ATMs because the confused government who razed down their walls is asking them to pay a huge sum before reconstructing them. Is something not terribly wrong?

Why is everyone quiet? The State House of Assembly members and State Commissioners are just ghosts. They don't exist. We don't know if Imo state has such officers. In fact many people do not know the name of the deputy governor of the state. The voices of the Ezes (Kings of autonomous communities) of the lands have been mysteriously silenced. No one coughs. We only know our governor and the chief of staff who was formerly the commissioner for works, Uche Nwosu, the governor's son in-law. The moment he was made commissioner for works, all the C-of-O's in our state were revoked. So people began to pay again for properties that were already theirs. Once he was done enriching himself through that glorious project, he became the Chief of Staff. Praise God! And even so, each Christmas, while workers are hungry, our dictator spends hundreds of millions on street decorations and concerts. In fact, the only time I heard about the Speaker of the House was sometime in the news, on YouTube actually, where I watched him shield our dictator as a Biafran protester hurled insults at him. Of course, he wasn't speaking anything as the Speaker of the State House; he was doing the job of a security man. What can he say, when the dictator has sealed everyone's lips? There are no projects being done by the commissioner of works, or of education, or of youths and sports, or of any office for that matter. All we know is that "Rochas is working."

You see, we are Africans. We are a people of traditions and cultures. There are markets, market days or particular structures that are symbolic to us. Thus, our dictator without consulting the community, decides to relocate an age long market to a new unfinished and swampy site, where a woman who sells pepper along the road will rent a shop from his government or pay two million to buy it, not forgetting the numerous market levies that would be introduced. The worst part of it is that the New Market isn't even fully constructed and has a very serious issue of water logging. While in the keke on the Sunday morning after the demolition, a young man said that the demolished market is not in the master plan of the state and I nearly ate him alive. So what is the in the master plan? The hunger and frustration he daily causes people in this state? The potholes ridden roads? The floods? The haphazard drainages that are causing floods in this state? The indigenes who extorts from people under his watch? The continual slashing of salaries? The continual bringing down and reconstruction of structures irrelevant to people's sufferings? The comatose state of our school, legal and health systems in Imo? Which is in the master plan? This is a repeat of what took place when he began to destroy buildings last year to construct roads. We began to hear of suicide and the resultant increased crime rate. My hearts bleeds for our people.

I do not blame our sons and daughters who are still in his employ - especially the funny road contractors ( oh yes, they are funny. You need to see what they do in the name of road construction). I blame hunger and lack of employment. It's now a case survival. A contractor who haven't had a contract all year accepts to bring down people's source of livelihood or begin to construct a gutter he knows he would stop midway and thereby creating breeding sites for mosquitoes. I hail all of them as I hail the dictator. When we are asked to pray for leaders like him, I just know that prayers are wasted on him.

But just like I said earlier, let him go refresh his memory; Hitler finally went home. People get tired at some point. Empires crash. We have an Igbo proverb which says, “if one person cooks for the community, the community can finish the food but if the community cooks for one person, he can never finish the food." Let him take purgatives. People and history will serve him food one day.

Vivian Igbokwe wrote from Owerri.