Within the last two weeks or so, Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State has found himself embroiled in some controversy. During the burial church service of erudite legal icon, Justice Chukwudifu Oputa in his country home Oguta, the first son of the late Justice, Charles Oputa alias Charly Boy reportedly snatched the microphone from the officiating priest after he had called on Okorocha to speak thus preventing him from addressing the distinguished audience. Charly Boy rationalized his action on the grounds that he did not want his father’s burial to be politicized.
A visibly enraged Okorocha was said to have maintained his cool and later left the church with his entourage. Charly Boy’s strange conduct no doubt, took the audience by surprise and adversely affected the entire burial arrangement as many of those in attendance did not bother to follow the corpse to its final resting place.
Imo State government has since been griping over the incident. It did not only deprecate Charly Boy’s conduct but has gone ahead to adduce reasons why he acted the way he did. In a well publicized statement, the state government went at length to show that before the burial day, there was no misunderstanding between Charly Boy, the Imo State government or Governor Okorocha. The only matter, for which the government initially disagreed with the Oputa family they said, was the burial programme which the government considered lopsided and subsequently set up a new committee that came up with a more befitting programme.
It therefore came to the seemingly inevitable conclusion that Charly Boy “acted out an ill-motivated script drafted by some politicians from the state, based in Abuja who have sworn to disturb the peace of the state”. For the government, those who sponsored this ‘coup’ inside a church were intimidated by the hilarious ovation that greeted the earlier introduction of the governor and they feared a repeat should Okorocha be allowed to speak.
The state government is within its rights to view the matter the way it chooses. This is especially so given that the incident showed no respect for the office of the governor. If Okorocha is seriously piqued by that treatment, his feelings ought to be appreciated. He is the governor of the state and deserves all the respect that goes with that office. To have been publicly prevented from speaking at that occasion and inside the church, Charly Boy showed scant regard for his high office and should be condemned by all right thinking people. It was a bad example of how to pay last respect to his distinguished father.
Yet, it is difficult to swallow hook, line and sinker the claim by the government that his conduct was the outcome of a script crafted for him by politicians from Imo State in Abuja. If Charly Boy could be so induced to sabotage the burial of his father, he should solely take the responsibility for his action.
Before that day however, the state government had entered into an altercation with Charly Boy over its claim that it had doled out about N20million to the family for the burial. The issue was within the public domain.
Since after that burial, Charly Boy has granted press interviews in which he made clear his grouse with the government. He told anybody who cared to hear that the family was angered by the manner the state government went public to announce its monetary contributions for the burial. He was also not enthused that the government never made any contact with him before Okorocha went to their family house in Oguta shortly after his father’s death and in his absence. All these are matters of public knowledge.
If Charly Boy has given these as his reasons for the unruly conduct, simulating imaginary enemies writing a script for him to embarrass the governor strikes as a very cheap proposition. It is also curious why the state government ignored these grouses when it claimed it had no issue with Charly Boy prior to the incident. Yet, all these cannot justify the treatment he gave the governor at that church ceremony.
That government is also mired in another controversy over its alleged plans to register and issue identity cards to northerners in the state to guarantee free movement. The matter came up in the senate with the upper chamber condemning the plan. It went ahead to call on security agencies not to cooperate with the Imo State government in this nebulous plan.
The state government did not take kindly to the reprimand, contending that it came after it had refuted the existence of the plan. It asked for apology from the senate and accused political opponents of being the purveyors of the purported registration plan.
But the senate rebuffed that idea of an apology with some of its members insisting there was sufficient evidence to show that such a policy was in the offing. Amidst this, there was the speculation that the plan to register northerners was at the instance of the northern community as part of their contributions to ensuring their ranks are not infiltrated by dangerous elements in the wake of heightened security concerns in the state.
If this was so, the state government ought to have owned up to that reality. Had it done so, perhaps, the anger that attended the matter when it came up at the senate would have been considerably staved off. The state government would have saved itself the embarrassment of denying a plan which some of the senators said they had sufficient evidence of its existence. As things now stand, that government has not succeeded in disabusing the minds of the public that there was smoke in the matter without fire. Neither is it being implied that it had no plans to safeguard the state in the wake of the discovery of bombs planted within a church premises; the arrest 486 Boko Haram suspects in Abia State, among them, a wanted kingpin of the terrorist cell.
There is everything to suggest that the state government, confronted with the new security challenge may have been tinkering with several safety options. That may have included the idea mooted by the northern community. But as soon as it became a matter of public knowledge, it rushed into denying its very existence. That is where it got it wrong. It would have gone ahead to clarify the genesis of the idea which was yet to be adopted instead of out rightly denying it. It is the manner of denial rather than the idea itself that turned out the greatest undoing of that state government. As a government, it is bound to make mistakes. Not each and every of its policy will tally with public expectations. When the situation calls for it, the government should not run away from robust public debate on some of its policies.
The Okorocha’s administration must cultivate the habit of standing by and defending its policy decisions instead of this quick resort to easy escape routes or heaping blames on phoney enemies when they run into problem. Not long ago, the same government had signed into law a bill from the state assembly which gave legal backing to aspects of abortion. The church kicked against the law. The next thing the governor did was to coax the House of Assembly to reverse itself as if that piece of legislation emerged from the blues bereft of the rigours that should usually go with it. Such hasty and temperamental reversals speak a lot of the depth of rigour that goes into policy formulation and implementation in that state.
