By Umunna Oputa

FOR the sake of the false history Owelle Rochas Okorocha orchestrated in Imo State, permit this writer to use the literary license of the portmanteau word “Fistory” for False History. Many may have forgotten, but Okorocha was elected to Government House Owerri with the  mandate of the All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA. A master of false pretenses, Okorocha presented the  face of a progressive before members of APGA and deceptively gained their mandate and by the victory of his party, APGA, in that  gubernatorial election, became the elected governor of Imo State. Shortly thereafter, Okorocha like a tail intent on wagging the dog, began the Fistory in Imo State by unilaterally taking the mandate of APGA in the state to instigate an alliance with the merger partners of the All Progressives Congress, APC, without consultation, reference or consensus agreement by the political party that nominated him for election, its members or party executive.

Conscious that an individual member cannot unilaterally merge a party with others as indicated in section 84 (5) and 97 of the Electoral Act which implies that APGA should have ceased to exist if it was a party to the APC merger and aware that the highest court in Nigeria, the Supreme Court, had previously decided in the famous case between Governor Amaechi vs Omehia, that the gubernatorial mandate belongs to a party and not the individual, APGA, as a party instituted a suit, praying the Court for an order directing the Deputy Governor of Imo State or Speaker of Imo State House of Assembly or any officer next in line to the position of the governor of Imo, who is a member of  APGA, to be sworn-in as the governor of Imo State. If our courts were consistent in enacting justice, that order would have orchestrated history in Imo State, but alas, our courts do not always deliver justice, and that was how Imo witnessed democratic “fistory” instead of democratic history.

Fistory in Imo State, true to the nature of Okorocha, began with the promise to develop Imo State and improve the welfare of its denizens, which underpins the ideological formation of APGA under Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu, but instead of increased welfare, leadership was delivered with deception by Okorocha.

A fistory cruelly emerged from the ordeal of Pensioners in Imo State. By January 2017, the state owed pensioners several arrears of their due earnings. In frustration at the gross lack of empathy, the state Chairman of Pensioners, Chief Gideon Ezeji led pensioners to block Okigwe road as well as the entrance to Government House Owerri. In response, Okorocha devised several plots to pressure the pensioners to forfeit between 50 and 60 per cent of their entitlements of arrears up to December 2016.

The traditional institution and local governments will also look back on the Okorocha years with an agonising tale about his duplicitous “Fistory.” Okorocha introduced a Balkanisation/Bantustan policy of breaking traditional institutions at will, creating all manner of traditional stools out of political expediency rather than from autochthonous consideration of communities of interest. For fear of facing the verdict of the people, he repeatedly failed to conduct local government elections, thereby breaching the Nigerian constitution and risking the sequestration of federal funding of affected LGAs. The funds that did come through , were used with state diktat, wherein the local governments were run like mere vassals of the Okorocha regime. To exemplify this fact, the governor directed from Owerri that about 12,000 local government workers be suspended for spurious claims he made against them, directing the punitive verification of workers at LGA levels, just imagine that the Federal Government decides to order a verification of state government staff, so much for local government autonomy under the Fistroy of Okorocha.

Tragically, the constitutionally enabled autonomy of the judiciary was not spared the Fistory of the Okorocha years. At the height of the onslaught on the state judiciary, the Nigeria Bar Association, NBA, Owerri Branch was compelled to sue the governor. The suit number NICN/OW/58/2017 filed against Governor Okorocha prayed the court, among other things, for “A declaration that the practice whereby the respondents withhold or refuse to pay the sitting Judges of Imo State High Court and Judges of the Customary Court of Appeal that portion of their remuneration released to the respondents from the Consolidated Revenue Fund is a breach of Oath of Office of the 1st respondent as the Governor of Imo State who swore to preserve, protect and not to mutilate it.” Furthermore, Okorocha’s Fistory was at its nadir when he purported to sack the Chief Justice of the State without recommendations from the National Judicial Council, an act that alarmed even his friends as much as they confirmed the fears of his foes that nothing was beneath him in his fraudulent historical crusade.

To compile the false history of the Okorocha years will be a chronicle of pain, disappointments,  and missed opportunities, for a state which was prepared for him for effective economic take-off, a state with one of the nation’s highest standards in human resource capacities, if only he had not deviated from the progressive pathway that the Imo people mandated through a progressive vision. But the people of Imo State can now breathe a sigh of relief as the search for a third political force gains national currency, and a new way different from the rot of the past gains momentum. Imolites can now look to the end of the Okorocha years as opinion leaders are lending their weight of credible support to “a light of progress in the horizon”, a young and vibrant hopeful, untainted by the rot of the political establishment in Imo State but honed by accomplishments in different fields. History beckons an end to Fistory as a great son of Imo State is giving very positive impulse to the urgings of well-meaning Imolites to bring the “Light of progress” to the governance of Imo to demonstrate the true meaning of development which he has enacted in other spheres. At last as the elders and people of influence in Imo State have successfully thrown their weight and experience behind him to take up the challenge to restore the mandate and hope that was usurped and betrayed by the Fistory that Okorocha enacted like a larcenous malady that ails Imo State still.

With the ongoing consultations which the light of progress is embarking upon to concretize the great vision for the future of Imo state, the people of Imo state will have one more opportunity to rewrite their history by defying the Fistory Okorocha is hoping to extend through his puppets or proxies.

•Dr. Oputa, a political scientist, wrote from Owerri, Imo State.