By Emmanuel Aziken, Political Editor & BARTHOLOMEW MADUKWE
IT was early in the morning penultimate Tuesday and the group of visiting journalists were at the Imo Governor’s lodge in Owerri for a scheduled appointment with Governor Rochas Okorocha. Time was 7.30 a.m. and the governor was not at home but his deputy, Jude Agbaso, was on hand to receive the visiting journalists.

Few minutes and a little banter, Okorocha drove himself in, in a black SUV towards the façade of the Governor’s residence. Dressed in a long short and shirt, he apologized for the delay as it was passed on that he had just come from the inspection of some ongoing projects in Owerri Capital City. Some of his hangers-on soon passed word round that that indeed the daily habit of the Governor.

It wasn’t surprising. A day earlier, government officials were effusive noting that Owerri, nay Imo State was now a work-in-progress with the mobilization of men and equipment in a way that is strange in these shores. Mr. Agabso had earlier let out the secret that the state was able to embark on the projects through the reversal of the spending habit.

*Okorocha: This is the hand of God!

While the Federal Government and most of the states skew recurrent spending disproportionately against capital spending, Imo has dramatically done the reverse, putting recurrent spending at 27 per cent and freeing 73 per cent of inflows into capital development. The ongoing developments in Imo if sustained could be a great embarrassment to other Governors.

Following the introductions, the Governor sat down with his principal officers and the journalists for a breakfast during which he explained his bearing. Excerpts:

What is the scope of the work going on in the state?

We have dabbled into federal government projects and that is why we are being slowed down. We are dualising the Airport road, we are dualising the Okigwe road, we are dualising Orlu road, we are dualising the Mbaise road so as to make the whole state a one city state.

For us, completion is already planned. We have a chart we are following and we have tarred most of the roads. If you go to Ekinegbo road you will see it, but we intend to have all the roads tarred before the end of September. If you go to Oguta, what they used to call water-lake, you will see that we are turning it into a Bar Beach now and we are turning it around, even the hotel has been completely renovated. It is not something I think I can take credit, I think there is hand of God in it. I think Angels are beginning to award contracts themselves. But there is the monumental project, which you are not seeing yet. In the last two weeks we awarded a contract of about N31 billion naira for the ‘Hand of God’? The ‘Hand of God’ is going to be the tallest tower in Africa, if not in Africa and Europe.

We want to attract the world to Imo State and its monuments. Like we just have the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and we have the Washington Monument. We also have a new city we are building, that is near the Concord hotel.

It is an issue of vision and sacrifice, and prudent utilization of resources. In the time past, the last administration had about N280 billion that came into the state. And 95 per cent or 90 per cent of that money went on recurrent. But we have reversed the trend of recurrent, that is the  secret. Now we have 27 per cent recurrent and 73 per cent capital.

How did you do it?

How we did it is that we introduced what is called “Commercialization”. Take for instance, Concord hotel for the past thirty years never yielded one naira profit for government. Concord, since its inception! When I came in, I met a debt of N450 million owed to the Lebanese company running Concord, plus the N850 million given to the man to renovate the place. So, we spent N1.2 billion in 12 years and no one naira came out and we still owed.

When I came in, I reversed the trend, I sacked the man and I started the renovation of Concord, set up a new management team and then handed it over to Ministry of Tourism. Their salary is about N12 million every month. Now, for the first time, Concord made N40 million. And now it is taking care of paying all the salary of Ministry of Tourism and that has reduced recurrent from our budget. So, every ministry has something similar to Concord allocated to them.

Eventually, we may have a state where money that come from the federal government appropriation will be used (wholly) for capital projects. While the internally generated revenue, plus the commercialization effort take care of staff welfare and everything.

We have brought business acumen today into governance and removed all the waste and closed down all the pipes of waste. Like for instance, I removed N4 billion out of my security vote back to the conference. This N4 billion would have been money unaccountable.

Insecurity has dropped by almost 70% in Imo state, I mean crime has dropped. These are some of the things making the difference. It’s just sacrifices, prudence in the utilization of resources, bending the laws of due process without breaking it.

Borrowing equipment

This is the secret. We said if you are a real contractor prove yourself. First of all, we told all of them to bring their machines to the site, so those who borrow equipment after two weeks ran away, so the real contractors now stayed. And the price we award contracts here is the cheapest anywhere in the world. For instance, the office building here was built by the previous government for N650 million.

Now, we can build the same type of building, three or four of it, for the same amount. So, there is a lot of waste and we recovered a lot of money over N15 billion from past contractors who have come back to re-negotiate with us. These are just the way the money is coming, that is just what we are seeing in action. In all of that, it is God and not me who we should thank.

We chose the people for such monumental projects; they are all handled by foreign companies. For the smaller projects, all are being handled by indigenous companies. An Italian group is handling the Hand of God, the Community Centre and the five star hotel.

The Koreans are handling the new city, the Spanish group is handling the Okigwe five star and Orlu five star hotels, the new tertiary hospital. But we are hoping that in the next one year all these projects must have been accomplished.

I believe that in two years anybody that wants to work for the nation can work for the nation. This is where it becomes absolutely necessary; the issue of people staying eight years in office is really uncalled for. Anybody who wants to make any impact for the society in four years time can do that if you bring out all the time to work for the society.

What is your government doing to enrich the secondary and primary school curriculum?

The young scientist college is something we have started. It is a brand new school we just built. But this is to improve the area of science because we just realized that interest in science subjects is going down. We saw that people are no more getting interested in physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology and agricultural science.

So, we tried to create a special science school where you must have finished your three years in junior and you must be a hot brain. It is a genuine centre, once you are admitted into that school we have decided to pay your fees, what is called “allowance” for going to that school, there will be so much competition.

We also found out that most of our educational system lack the practical side to it. We just signed an MoU with a Congolese Chinese I.T. (Information Technology) guru. I must call him a guru because I saw what he did in China.

He is here right now as I speak to you. And I want to connect the entire school, the secondary school and primary school with computers, e-learning centers, so that anybody in the world can give a lecture at a particular time, using the V-sat to all our children.

That is what we are introducing right now. The project is about to commence. This is how we want to enrich the curriculum, but one thing we want to do is patriotism as a course and nationalism.

We are trying to re-orientate or change the mindset of our children so that they will grow and hit their chests and say, “look I am from Imo state, I must defend it”. So, we introduced what is called the bursary in primary and secondary schools.

Right now we pay bursary to children, N100 per month as salary and we pay N150 to head-boy and head-girl and that has changed the entire sense of the children, who now say “oh! The state is our father”. That is what we are trying to introduce, after that we want to introduce patriotism and nationalism. We are trying to introduce a common song that the children will sing and remember Imo state wherever they go.

Defining citizenship

And don’t ask me, “how is the money coming?” because I didn’t even know how Mary gave birth to Jesus Christ, other than the Holy Ghost spoke to her. If you are in primary school now, all our children will be paid yearly salary for being a son or daughter of the soil. We are now trying to define who is a citizen.

Your father must be Imo; your mother must be Imo!  Every university student is now to be paid N100,000 every year.

Now the children pay N50,000 for their school fee, but the government is paying them N100,000 and making the university autonomous.

How will you sustain this?

Today, I have over five thousand (surrogate) children. I have school in Ibadan. I have school in Jos. I have school in Kano. People are saying “how is it sustained?” It is vision that sustains a thing and sacrifice. Resources come out of vision. I am afraid to say that my inner spirit tells me something about administration that people cannot see.

Why should even a child of Imo state go to school that belong to Imo state and pay for it? The problem is that the bureaucracy has eaten up all the funds and nobody is responsible, now we have started a greedy system where we are going to have Grade A school, Grade B school and Grade C school, even at the primary school and secondary school because every school  is autonomous in Imo state.

There is this issue about the relocation of Imo state university from Owerri to Ideato?

Well! The Imo state university is in its temporary site. I have received seven letters from National University Commission (NUC) for the immediate relocation of that university or it will lose its institutional accreditation.

But that is not even the issue; my concern is that I don’t intend to build one university in Imo state. I intend to build three universities in Imo state. One in Okigwe, one in Owerri, one in Orlu. It is a very sensitive issue and that is why I don’t talk about it, rather let my good works speak.

Now, if you say the relocation of Imo state university from Owerri is not proper. If you move it from Owerri, and it is not right to go to Ideato South, where is the place that it should be that it will be right? Imo is Imo, what is important is that we have a university permanent site. The question should have been, can this administration actually build a permanent site? I think that is what should be the major issue of concern and not where the university is to be located.

But I have decided that if  I have enough time in this state, I am going to build three universities. Which is better? To leave the university where it is and lose its institutional accreditation or to move the university.