THE impetus for this
essay rests on the contents of the front-page news-story in the
Daily Sun of Friday, March 8, 2013 entitled, “Imo: APGA unveils
plot to sack Okorocha, Speaker”. According to this news
report, the ImoState chapter of the All Progressives Grand Alliance,
APGA, has alleged a plot by the Presidency and the Peoples Democratic
Party, PDP, to sack the Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha and to
distort the activities of the Imo State House of Assembly.The
impeachment moves against Okorocha and the Speaker are allegedly
geared towards derailing the on-going investigation by the state
legislature over allegations of financial gratification leveled
against the Deputy Governor, Jude Agbaso, by one of the major
contractors handling the state government road projects.The issue
here is not about the efficacy of the news report on the
on-going plans to remove Governor Okorocha and the Speaker of the
state legislature, Ben Uwajumogu, from office. What is happening now
as alleged by the Imo State chapter of APGA is just a new but little
addition to a major and unfolding impeachment scheme that started in
2012.The main scheme remains the reported design of using the
services of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, by
some of the forces rooting for the realisation of the second term
ambition of Mr. President to manipulate members of the Imo State
House of assembly into removing both Governor Okorocha and Uwajumogu,
the Speaker of the Imo State legislative house, from office. Of
course, the thinking is rife that without the arrest, prosecution and
possible imprisonment of Uwajumogu, on alleged charges of road
contract scams, the removal of Governor Okorocha from office will be
a pipe dream.The general thinking in the political circles that
matter at Abuja is that Governor Okorocha remains a major stumbling
block that must be removed if Mr. President is to realise his second
term ambition in 2015. This thinking is predicated on two grounds.The
first is that Governor Okorocha’s presumed presidential ambition or
support for any of the opposition presidential candidates in 2015,
will dim Jonathan’s chances of realising his second term ambition,
especially given the demonstrated strength of the Igbo bloc vote in
such an election. The second is that even if Governor Okorocha
decides not to contest the next presidential or gubernatorial
election, his achievements (sacrifice of security vote, prompt
payment of workers’ salaries, free education at all levels, massive
road development, etc) will rubbish the performance profile of the
PDP at both the state and federal levels to the extent that Mr.
President’s so-called achievements will count for nothing in
determining the outcome of the 2015 elections. So, head or tail,
Okorocha has been marked for political destruction.The first
dimension of the plot to remove Governor Okorocha from office started
many months ago with the use of the media to rubbish the hard-earned
and upwardly mobile reputation of the Imo State Government, and also
to project the Governor as a person whose style of governance, as
well as entrepreneurship and philanthropy as a private citizen, is
based on fraud and duplicitous behaviour.The basic aim here has been
the use of the media to attire the Governor in the garb of a
confused, dictatorial and under-performing public official so as to
gradually replace the genuine songs of praise and the goodwill of
millions of people who have benefited from the graceful personality
of Owelle Rochas Okorocha as a public or private citizen, with
questions of, or doubts about, his sincerity, uprightness, visionary
goals and capacity to develop Imo State. Some of the moles and fifth
columnists in the Imo State Government, including a few
commissioners, special advisers and other personal aides, have
continued to stall all efforts aimed at redressing the bad media
image, for instance, of Governor Okorocha and his programmes.THE
second dimension of this plot started last year even before the
Sunday Punch report of January 6, 2013 revealed Governor Okorocha as
one of the eight governors being discreetly investigated by the EFCC
over fraud-related activities. Since September 2012, the EFCC has
reportedly been on a surreptitious investigation of Governor
Okorocha’s management of the public funds of ImoState, especially
as it relates to the disbursement of Imo State Local Government
funds, the N47 billion loan from the banks and the N13.3 billion Imo
Bond fund.The climax of this aspect of the plot was the arrest and
detention of the Imo State Commissioner for Finance and the
Accountant-General of the State by the EFCC. Of course, the unending
trips to Abuja by these two officials, after they were granted
administrative bail by the EFCC, are expected, in the long run, to
lead to the exposure of Governor Okorocha’s imagined financial
misdeeds, as well as paint him in the colours of a corrupt
public official that is ripe for impeachment.The third dimension of
the plot started some weeks ago when operatives of the EFCC stormed
the Imo State House of Assembly but failed to arrest the Speaker,
Deputy Speaker and some other members of the legislative house. The
EFCC raid, which was supposed to kick-start the plot to remove
Governor Rochas from office, ended up with the arrest of the Clerk of
the Imo State House of Assembly, Chris Duru.The failed attempt to
arrest members of the Imo State House of Assembly by the EFCC, on the
ground that Governor Okorocha took loans without the approval of the
same ImoState lawmakers, appears to be a ruse to get them into EFCC
custody.However, once inside the detention cells of the EFCC at
Abuja, the arrested ImoState legislators are expected to be
persuasively compromised or coercively intimidated into commencing
impeachment proceedings against Governor Okorocha. The use of the
EFCC, especially during the Nuhu Ribadu era, to illegally and
unconstitutionally impeach some state governors to the sadistic
pleasure of General Olusegun Obasanjo, may be in the offing for
Okorocha as a veritable means of realising the second term ambition
of President Jonathan.As the Igbo will say, “it is only a tree that
will hear of a plan to cut it down and will do nothing to avert the
event”. The design to remove Governor Okorocha and Speaker
Uwajumogu from office is now stale news. The news reports, especially
in the Sunday Punch of January 6, 2013, and the Daily Sun of Friday,
March 8, 2013, have dutifully informed the public about the alleged
plans by some forces in the Presidency and the PDP, including some
fifth columnists in the Imo State Government, to realise the
political destruction of Governor Okorocha and Uwajumogu.The
pertinent question remains: What is to be done to undermine the
intended plot to remove Okorocha and Uwajumogu from office? Of
course, there are some well-articulated thought processes and
strategies (information gathering/analysis, performance profile
assessment, media projection/response and court cases, etc) which
implementation have the capacity to stem the intended impeachment
moves against Governor Okorocha and Hon. Uwajumogu, the Speaker of
Imo State House of Assembly.The immediate critical endeavours to stem
the purported impeachment moves against Okorocha and Uwajumogu must
include the following action plans. The first is that Governor
Okorocha must set up an Information Gathering and Analysis Centre,
IGAC, whose personnel will deploy the services of cultivated
contacts in the Presidency, the PDP, the anti-corruption agencies,
the Imo State Government offices and parastatals, to discreetly
collate information on the continuously evolving plans and strategies
aimed at removing his good-self from office or down-playing his
achievements as the governor of Imo State.The second is the setting
up of an Imo State Government Strategy Committee, a kind of
think-tank, that will not only appraise issues and challenges of
governance as they manifest in Imo State and suggest solutions, but
will also be executing periodic assessment actions on the performance
profile of commissioners, special advisers and heads of government
parastatals to ensure that their activities do not undermine the
realisation of government’s developmental goals. Nobody from the
executive arm of government should be a member of this committee,
because no useful purpose will be served by allowing commissioners,
advisers, etc, to appraise their own performance.Other issues to be
urgently addressed border on judicial actions. The Governor should
ensure that the Imo State Government institutes a court case
challenging the powers of the EFCC to pry into its books and public
accounts in the name of fighting the corruption war in Nigeria.This
is against the background that the activities of the EFCC in Imo
State undermine the constitutional powers of the Auditor-General of
the State and that of the Imo State House of Assembly, guaranteed in
sections 125 (2), 128 and 129 (1) of the 1999 constitution (as
amended).As a matter of fact, the Imo State Government should sue the
EFCC for damages for illegally and unconstitutionally presenting its
chief executive (Gov. Rochas Okorocha) to the Nigerian public and the
international community, as a corrupt public official when no report
from the Auditor-General of Imo State or the Imo State House of
Assembly has indicted him for corrupt practices or the mismanagement
of public funds.The court judgement restraining the EFCC from
arresting and prosecuting Dr. Peter Odili over his mismanagement of
the public funds of RiversState between 1999 and 2007 validates the
points canvassed in this discourse.
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