By Innocent Onoja

Chief Sam Anokam, an estate surveyor and valuer, wants  Governor Rochas Okorocha to explain  how he intends  to utilize the N3,000 development levy paid by communities in Imo State.

Anokam, in this interview, commends  Okorocha’s road expansion programme but warns  that due process ought to be followed.

Anokam

How do you view political developments in Imo State?

I do not see anything happening in the state other than Rochas Okorocha being the alter-ego of politics. The opposition is humbled. The opposition has no competence and they may hardly come back together because we are already in 2017, heading to 2018 and then we have  2019 which is the election year.

So, I do not know how long it will take them to come together; maybe when Sheriff and Markafi come together, we can have possibly a viable opposition party in Imo.

Until that happens, what we have  is  one party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, but I don’t see  APC as a viable party.

The person I  see  there as APC in everything and in the definition of it is the governor. He is APC. He is the governor and he is everything.

It appears  you are supporting Rochas Okorocha’s administration.

I am not for any of them. Rochas Okorocha is not my friend, neither do I buy his political ideology. I do not believe in a one-man show type of governance. I believe in  collective action.

What do you mean by one-man show type of governance?

A one man-show is that he is the only person that is celebrated. If he is not celebrated, then he is not doing anything.

I have seen for the past six years in governance, one of the things I can always talk about Okorocha is that he is a man of courage.

A leader must be courageous. I have seen some of his policies that may appear at the initial stage not to be in order.

One of them is the road widening that his administration is doing and you equally look at the urban development programme.

The road expansion programme is good for the future of  Imo.  I say this because, with time, the population of the state will increase.

But the area I think, as an estate surveyor, is that everything he is doing should follow the rule of law which suggests that  he  must pay compensation.

There  is town planning law where there is provision for payment of compensation.

Do you agree with some people who alleged that Okorocha’s government does not follow procedures  on contracts such as road construction?

Contract agreement is statutory. It is fixed. It is permanent. It is governmental and nobody can change it.

If you change it, you create room for practices that will result in lack of  accountability.

The procedure of giving  out contract  starts  from the tendering stage to the selection of contractors, up to the the level of execution. Failure to follow this rule will lead  to roads being badly constructed.

Another thing is that we have  a  ministry of works and it is their right  to  be involved in this process. They have qualified engineers  and  professionals who  can supervise the job  and make sure that standards are maintained.

But in a situation that the procedures are not followed, you do not expect anything good.

Okorocha has vision on urban development especially creating of new roads, a trend I see will bring expected development.

What do think about the N3,000 development levy policy under Okorocha?

I frown at his administration’s  demand for six million per  community.

How did you arrive at six million?

By the arithmetic of getting two thousand  taxable adults from each community who will pay the N3,000  levy, that gives you about six million naira.

And we are talking about over six hundred autonomous communities in Imo  that will pay this levy; so we should be looking at three point something billion Naira.

Traditional rulers  have been charged to raise the levy and they accepted it because of the  fear of dethronement.

Assuming we have a state House of Assembly that thinks about their people and representing them well, this matter will die there.

It is because of the way the House of Assembly operates that whatever Okorocha says is the law. He is both the governor and the lawmaker and everybody is forgotten.

So, the question is, how are these able-bodied men going to pay the N3,000 levy?

In these communities  where you find these men, what do they do ? Do they have any means of income?

For instance, at the rural level, the income level there is zero and their income level could not be more than N5,000  every month. So, you can see that they are only struggling to survive.

We are worried that there is recession in the country and  it is uninaginable to ask these people living in the communities to pay this N3,000  levy.  I ask, where do you want them to get it ?

To end it, we demand that the Imo government enlighten us on what they intend to do with the money.