By CHIJIOKE AGU

Politics, as we all know, is a game of intrigues and high-wire scheming. The players go to unimaginable extents to earn advantages or portray opponents in bad light.

In no place is the latter more prevalent as it is in Imo State. Here, some desperate politicians and mischief makers have concocted lies and turned truth on its head in vain efforts to disparage one another. 

Today, Emeka Ihedioha is the fall guy. His traducers have credited him with positions and statements that did not emanate from him. It is even more regrettable if such unholy acts are coming from official quarters, all geared towards coating him in black before the very Imolites whom he endeared himself to in the few months that he spent in office as the Governor of Imo State. 

The essence? Just to de-market ex-Governor Ihedioha and present him as a hater of Igbo cause.

The other day, these paid merchants credited to him what he did not say about Mr. Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of Labour Party in the 2023 general elections. As soon as he put a lie to such laughable fabrication, these hired writers were at it again, this time, accusing the PDP chieftain of authoring a letter to the country’s Attorney General to stop the release of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu after his acquittal by a court of competent jurisdiction. 

The good news, however, is that the position of Ihedioha is well known and in the public space.

The sponsored events of the past few weeks by the Imo State Government and its officials has largely been ignored due to the nuisance value it seeks to achieve. When a government leaves its primary responsibility to provide for its people and rather goes on individual shadow chasing, blatant forgery as symbolised by the very recent letters circulating purportedly emanating from Emeka Ihedioha and other series of misrepresentations and sponsored riots and articles against a man who has largely kept quiet, it only provides a response to the illegitimacy the government represents and the lack of vision that has driven its purpose. 

This media statement is not intended to join issues with the Imo State government but rather to alert the security agencies and the general public of the rising agenda of a government to demonise and possibly take out Emeka Ihedioha from the political space in Imo State. 

It is already public knowledge that the Imo State government has been sponsoring paid actions and desperate paid acts of calumny all aimed at impinging and diminishing the profile of Ihedioha whose achievements, popularity and acceptance by Imolites have been a thorn in the flesh of the present non- performing government of Imo State. 

While Emeka Ihedioha cannot be deterred or cowed by these tendencies, it is however important to alert all state security actors of this intent to throw Imo State further into anarchy by the present government through these diversionary tactics being used to cover incompetence and lack of vision by a government that its legitimacy has continued to be questioned by the people it seeks to serve. 

Recall that in a judgement that has continued to bewilder the minds of even legal pundits, the government of Emeka Ihedioha was terminated on its seventh month and replaced by that of Hope Uzodimma. The seven months administration still elicits memories of great hope and purposefulness in the hearts and minds of Imo citizens and residents. The inclusive stakeholder visionary approach that characterized those memorable seven months only reminds one of the kind of governance only witnessed in Imo during the times of leaders like the late Sam Mbakwe. 

Governance really became about the people with clear directions of expectations with measurable timelines for service delivery. Insecurity almost non-existent in that era has now become the identity of Imo State with suspicions of state-sponsored terrorism making life and businesses unbearable for the average citizen. 

These hallmarks of lack of direction has continued to plague the Uzodimma administration, making it near impossible to gain the trust of the people. It is these series of failures and consistent own-goals that have blindfolded the administration into looking elsewhere for the sources of its failures rather than looking at itself. 

One begins to wonder what expectations can be reasonably expected from a government that rather than govern, is only interested in blackmailing Emeka Ihedioha into not answering to the yearnings of the citizenry to use the next ballot to recover the  peoples stolen mandate. 

Every right-thinking mind is bothered about the heightened insecurity and general lack of direction in the business of governance that Imo State represents today. In spite of huge potentials to blaze the trail in governance in the South-East, Imo continues to wobble in her quest to greatness. 

It is therefore not in doubt that the present administration is not the right fit for a state that boasts of human and material resource that can compete with the best in the world. One hopes that with time this anomaly will be corrected by the people with the view to putting Imo back to its pride of place as one of the foremost states in Nigeria. 

The general public is therefore implored to not get deceived by sponsored actions by the Imo State government in the recent past to distort, misrepresent and mischievously malign Emeka Ihedioha so as to present him as an enemy of the South-East. The theatre of war Imo has become in the last few years calls for grave concern by all, and any attempt by government to escalate this already bad security situation must be resisted by any peace-loving person of Imo State extraction. 

Let us all rise to be counted in saying never again to the actions that have befallen our people by the present government and join hands to create the Imo of our dreams. Enough of hopelessness.

Agu, a public sector analyst, wrote from Owerri, Imo State