You can’t deny him the heart to do good
things for the people; he’s got it. His name is Rochas Okorocha, the
governor of Imo State. What’s not sure is if that’s his nature or some
way to drive his serial political ambitions. He’s touched the life of
many irrespective of origin and in his two years as governor, Imo State
has come smiling and sobbing. That makes it difficult to place him.
Not hidden is his high-wire political
ambition: he wants to be president. He had contested before and banged.
He formed his own political party and failed, he left the PDP and
focused on his philanthropy; then came APGA to the rescue. They gave him
a platform to contest as governor and his built-up goodwill over the
years paid off. He won. Now in APGA, he’s quarrelling with APGA
stalwarts as he did in the PDP. The founders and drivers of the party
have become no-persons and, more painfully, the Ojukwu legacy which he
inherited without sweat he’s about to sell off. He’s telling Ndi-Igbo to
clap for APC because it’s the party that will make them actualise their
presidential dream, maybe a euphemism for his presidential dream. Now
see his trajectory: ANPP, PDP, his own party, APGA, and while still in
APGA and enjoying its highest office, he has begun APC-ing. Political
whoredom is it. It derives from lack of principles. If Okorocha really
means well for the Igbos, having the exalted platform of governor, why
hasn’t he strenuously worked to see the lingering quarrel in APGA
rested? As Igbo, he knows the in-built mechanisms for resolving
conflicts within the culture; which one did he exhaustively pursue and
if he failed, which others did he explore, at least to convince the
people that ‘our son has done all he could’? Indeed, in Igbo culture,
when such effort is genuinely made, people everywhere work to see it
succeed. So which did Okorocha painstakingly undertake? Not just that he
has failed to put his people’s house in order, he’s abandoning them
altogether for another. Still more provokingly, he’s telling them, ‘come
with me to APC, the party for Igbo president’, which, incidentally,
like Afolabi to Ige, he was called ‘to come and eat’. Now the question:
Rochas, what of your own party? What Ojukwu bequeathed to you all, what
have you made of it? These are questions he must answer before he
elopes.
To show him things to come, last week, a
trailer-load, the type used to carry cows from the north, dropped his
people at Upper-Iweka and headed back to Lagos, not handing over to
government or any other constituted organisation/authority. That’s the
APC-tent Rochas is taking his people to. If he can do the arithmetic,
it’s the same way they’ll dump his presidential ambition at Upper-Iweka.
We’re watching to see how our governors react. Maybe also, they’ll
remember to ask Lagos to explain its action. APC isn’t East, isn’t
South-south but North and West. After forming it, they’ll invite Rochas
and tell him, ‘Darling, come and be our president.’ Rose-bed. Can
somebody tell Rochas to stop snoring?
There’s something good he’s doing, though.
He opened up his cabinet to indigenes of other South-east states. And
I’d encourage him to add South-south, too. Here again, I don’t know if
it’s coming from his heart or a tarmac to that dream. Whichever it is,
it’s good. If the other governors can follow suit, we will have begun a
good journey.
The other initiative Rochas should take is
bring closer the likes of Uwazuruike. Gani Adams is honoured by the West
because there’s something special he does in the scheme of things. This
thing called politics is multi-faceted. That’s the lesson Governor Obi
refused to learn. Rather than build his own, he destroys them and at
countdown, he goes begging for notice. Niger Delta militants are no
politicians but when they speak, politicians listen. Now the North has
groomed a deadlier monster. You may think they’re foolish, wait until
election proper. The West has OPC, the South has militants, the North
has Boko-Haram; these are political cannons, not politicians. But yours
that’s even non-violent, you destroy and go to shake hands with those of
others. The East should trade less and politic more if they must come
forth in the Nigerian political landscape. It’s their collective duty to
defend their own. It’s fruitless to keep crying South-east is schemed
out whilst they fail to do what others do to advance.
Your Excellency, you’ve heard it all: you
can’t pull your house down and get it from another. Your ambition
without your people won’t fly. May history not judge you as the man who
left the gate open for his people’s legacy to be plundered.
By: Onyebuchi Onyegbule
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