Governor Rochas Okorocha has been reported as saying that he will not hand over to anybody above fiftyyears of age. Anothervariant of his theory is that he will retire everybody above that age from active politics in the state by the time he is leaving office.At the recent annual conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in Owerri, he repeated his age limit pronouncements to the total consternation of the learned gentlemen.
An altercation that ensued between the governor and the chair of the NBA led Okorocha to describing the former as “bereft of ideas,” a statement that further infuriated the lawyers who came from all over the country. Initially, many thought thatthe age ceiling talk were restricted to Imo audiences. But extending it for the consumption of outsiders, especially legal practitioners who are conversant with the extant laws of the land, is to carry an obvious joke too far.
Okorocha’s posturing is worrisome not because he possesses the power or capacity to implement his laughable age law but for the mere fact that it makes a mockery of the entire Imo collective. Apart from entailing some contradictions over his own leaks on the potential beneficiaries of a succession plan being put together exclusively by him, the age ceiling talk is at once a deliberate andinadvertent portrayal of the entire people of Imo state as ignorant, timid and a people who have given in to the idiosyncrasies of a fellow who seems to have convinced himself that he will be the sole determinant of who will be the next governor of the state.
Apart from being a sad commentary on a people reputed as one of the most sophisticated in Nigeria, Okorocha’sutterances on the 2019 Imo governorship transition has led to negative prognosis on the shape of things to come. It has made the rest of the country to wonder if Imo is no longer part of Nigeria.
The constitution and the extant electoral laws have clear provisions on age requirement for people vying for elective offices. They stipulate minimum requirements, not maximum. Therefore, Okorocha’s maximum age ceiling would baffle every knowledgeable Nigerian. Has Imo created its own constitution and electoral laws?
Today, there is palpable fear in the state of a major upheaval, a fear predicatedentirely on the perception that Okorocha has narrowed down his choice of a successor to a certain relation of his and will stop at nothing to achieve that goal. Every adult resident of the state would reel out a list of Okorocha’s close allieswho he has “promised” to hand over to. But they will quickly tell you that going by the governor’s own rule on age, over 98 per cent of those to whom he has made such‘promises’ are either already over fifty years of age or will have gone beyond fifty by the time the 2019 general elections are held.
It is hard to tell how the promise list originated but the names are on the lip of every knowledgeable adult Imo citizen, especially those residence in the state; and this notwithstanding the fact that the governor has oftendenied that he has anointed anybody. Apart from the fact that, as an indigene of the state, I share in the shame associated with such a retrogressive development,I have a particular interest in the age ban matter.
Among one of the most celebrated promises to a would-be successor is the one made to my kinsman, Mr. George Eche, the current Secretary to the State Government.Okorocha had sometime last year at a gathering populated mostly by people from my local government area, Ngor Okpala, where Eche hails from, expressed sentiments over the perceived marginalization of my area in the scheme of things. He went ahead to state that he would like to pick a successor from there. Besides that Eche, then newly appointed, was present, reports had it that the way the governor spoke left no one in doubt that he was telling our people that Eche is a son in whom he was well pleased and a likely successor.
Ever since, speculations over Eche’s prospects as the next governor of Imo state have been quite high, of course. Agreed, there are a few other persons from my LGA who have governorship ambition and who, one-on-one, would scale higher than Eche, but nothing can diminish the excitement of a people in learning that one of their own has the chance of being anointed by the very powerful governoras his successor.
To be sure, not everybody in Ngor Okpala would be enamored but I can beat my chest to state that most of the skeptics are merely watching and will key in at the appropriate time.Now, Eche, from very authentic records, is already over 50 years of age. So, where lies Okorocha’s “promise” and the hope of my people? Is it going to be a dashed expectation for an innocent people who, unlike many others in the state, did not lobby the governor to express such sentiments and even raised their expectation in the direction he did? Needless to say, my people are watching.
It is also not likely that the good people of Mbaitoli Local Government Area are finding the age ban funny.Except for a handful of individuals in the area, the people have had their eyes fixed on the governorship in 2019 through their son, Prince Eze Madumere, Okorocha’s deputy. Like Eche, Madumere is also above 50years of age. We can go and on but by the time we go down the list, the only two fellows that will be remaining on Okorocha’s fabled succession plan are Hon. Chike Okafor and Mr Uche Nwosu, the governor’s Chief of Staff.
Even so, I understand that Okafor will be over 50 by the time of the 2019 general elections;which leaves only Nwosu, a son-in-law of the governor, on the list.It is said that he will be less than 50years old by May 29, 2019. The governor may recruit more people into the list but for now, a simple rule of the thumb analysis, which leaves Nwosu as the only man standing, has left tongues wagging.
A majority of Imo citizens are left with no other conclusionthan that the age ban is tailored to suit the objective of installing Nwosu as the next governor. While the general discomfiture caused by that is understandable, let me hasten to state that I do not necessarily share in the thinking that Nwosu stands disqualified to be governor in 2019 simply because he is Okorocha’s son-in-law.As an individual,he is a bone fide citizen of the state and has the right to aspire to any office whether or not his father-in-law is the governor. God forbid, what if his wife, Okorocha’s daughter, divorces him tomorrow?I can see somebody spring up from his on her seat to say “tell them” but there is a caveat.
For, if I go by my own theory that Nwosu,ordinarily, has the right to vie for any office, then Okorocha’s age ban falls flat on its belly because it means that Nwosu can vie on his own merit without his father-in-law resorting to the age ceiling trick. It is a cheap antic which, as I have noted earlier, ridicules the entire people of the state. It is also a hollow idea that merely creates animosity within the APC, especially among those in the governor’s list of the would-be successors; and heightenstension in the entire Imo polity.
But since, as we have seen, the governor has no powers to implement the age ban, why should the peace-loving people of Imo be made to go through unnecessary anxiety arising from such shenanigans and a banal idea?
As far as I am concerned, Okorocha lost every sympathy or understanding from the people over his right to make inputs on who succeeds him the moment he came up with the idea of the age ban because they see it as an affront on their collective intelligence. By that simple suggestion, he portrays the people of the state as uninformed and cowardly. As a matter of fact, it is not uncommon to hear some people argue that the governor believes that he has conquered the entire state.
To play the Devil’s Advocate, however,the age ban weakens the chances of his son-in-law whom many say is a “nice guy.” If I were Nwosu, I would ask my father-in-law to withdraw the age ban tactics. Not even his fellow youths are enamoredof it because it lacks sophistication.
Needless to say, they can hardly be impressed with the claim that the age ban is to empower them. Of course, the more politically conscious among themhave already bought into the idea that the age ban is meant to achieve a pre-determined objective.
