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At the heat of the Easter festivity, a friend of mine sent me a text message, "Have you heard the latest about your friend?" I could not understand him because we usually argue over many things and in most cases remain polemic in our views. It was later that I knew he was referring to news reports about the Imo State governor, Chief Ikedi Ohakim, who is alleged to be having problems with London police over charges of money laundering. As usual, I dismissed his insinuations and assured him that all is well with our governor.
I am so passionate about Chief Ikedi Ohakim’s administration and I’m not alone. My wife and my younger brother who’s a banker share this passionate view with me. We have always defended the young man (at least so he looks in his spectacles) because of the circumstances of his emergence to power as the governor of Imo State. My wife who hails from the same area with the immediate past governor, Chief Achike Udenwa, never gave Udenwa the kind of support she gives Ohakim. A very apolitical person, my wife adds Ohakim’s administration to our evening prayers. Her argument is that Ohakim is a child of circumstance and necessity who has come to redeem Imo State from bad administration. We have always defended the man at every occasion. Once our family friends who belong to different political camps with the governor drew our attention to the calibre of some of those that the governor appointed as Special Assistants and Advisers and their incompetence, we dismissed their argument, stressing that those were part of the burdens that Governor Ohakim inherited from the Udenwa administration for survival. That in due time, he will show them the way out. Even when some people mischievously linked the governor with the so-called 419ners in Imo State, this did not sway our sympathy and support for him. We took solace in the Igbo adage which says ‘no one being carried high up could boast of robust buttocks’. We always have every arsenal in our armoury to defend Ohakim. You can imagine our disappointment when last week the newspapers ran headlines on how the governor was quizzed by the London Police. When I returned home with the copy of the newspaper, I almost lost my dinner as my wife in a fit of rage refused to continue to do her cooking. She concluded that Imo State was under a kind of spell which only God can save. Here is a state created in 1976 but remains a toddler among her peers; a state which was so unlucky to have military administrators who turned the state utilities into items of merchandise which they sold to their cronies; a state where doctors and professors fight to be state commissioners and special assistants instead of living in the abode of the highly respected Ivory Towers; a state where the only booming business is politics; where young men sit at the ‘Mbari Joint’ and gyrate on an old school music rendered by new highlife maestro, Sunny, while planning on how to carry ballot boxes and rig elections. Yes, this is Imo State, my beloved State which garners substantial revenue from oil derivation as an oil-producing state but has nothing to show for it. Our support for Ohakim stems from our faith that God indirectly intervened to make him governor. That was our conviction. When we visited home last December, we commended his efforts in making the state clean. Cleanliness they say is next to Godliness. We had always argued with our brother politicians, some of who belonged to other political parties, that the man Ohakim is an Imo man and comes from the zone which is favoured for the governorship seat of the state and that he should be given the chance to contribute his own quota. Chief Ohakim, we went on, is a young man with energy and vision to bring about change. These were our arguments. The story of his arrest in London almost shattered this hope. We hope the story is not true and that the man is just being blackmailed by his political opponents. We recall here that when Ohakim scaled through the first election petition hurdle, we offered a thanksgiving service quietly in our Twelve Apostles Cathedral Church, Abuja. This is the extent of our wish for Ohakim. We must state however that our wish for Ohakim is our wish for Imo State. We want the state to move forward. Imo people who have suffered so much under successive bad administrations should have a new lease of life and partake in the democratic dividends as in Gombe, Lagos, Katsina, Ebonyi, Cross River, etc. The state has enormous human and natural resources to excel. All it requires is good governance. Imo is a peaceful state. In fact, it’s the most peaceful among all the Eastern states. We believe that the state will triumph despite its political tribulations and maladministration. We believed and still believe that Governor Ohakim has something to offer Imo people. We may not as humans be perfect in our judgement, but our optimism stems from the circumstances of his ascent to power. We believe there is a divine intervention and that divine providence should see him through. We pray. We pray. Oparah wrote from No. 13, Benue Street, Wuse, Abuja.
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