By Collins Opurozor
Today, media reports quoted Chief Hope Uzodinma as saying that the insecurity in Imo could be traced to the activities of convicted criminals who got state pardon in the past. Speaking through his commissioner for information and reported by Vanguard Newspaper, Uzodinma has now elected to sing a new song over a social malady which his mental capacity has proven inadequate to address.
Less than three weeks ago, this same Uzodinma fouled up the media spaces with unfounded tales of how his perceived political foes have been masterminding the insecurity in Imo. He further promised to unmask the identifies of the political enemies in a matter of days. And days have rolled into weeks, yet the Omuma-born chief has not unmasked anybody. In a rather shocking development, he turned around and accused his commissioners of being moles, enablers, and willing tools for terrorism, and threatened to ensure they were exiled away from the State. He made real this threat by sacking twenty of them.
One would have expected Uzodinma to immediately arrest all the sacked commissioners whom had openly accused of being associated with insecurity. He never did that. And more pathetic is the fact that one of the principal suspects and sacked commissioners, Fabian Ihekweme, in a bid to hoodwink the public and divert attention, began to demand that the opposition in Imo should up speak against the very same insecurity which he has been accused of masterminding, sponsoring or, at any rate, enabling. These people have reduced Imo to a theater of absurdities!
It is also deeply suspicious that this accused ex-commissioner currently operates under the auspices of Uzodinma’s media hirelings named Hope Media Ambassadors. It lends credence to every insinuation that his views reflect the position of both Uzodinma as a person and that of the regime in Imo. The perplexity now is: Why would Uzodinma deploy a terror suspect to churn out infantile accusations against the opposition? Is there anything they are not telling the people about the insecurity that has engulfed Imo State? Imo people have reasons to be scared right now!
Beyond his ungubernatorial and boastful utterances, Uzodinma has no plans to address this festering plague, and his actions are emblematic of a man who seeks to profit by our collective agony. What else can explain the fact that in the face of the ravages of insecurity, Uzodinma and his footsoldiers have instead chosen to lazy about within Government House? They host fruitless political meetings with party members, and he has unapologetically refused to step a foot in any part of the State to reassure the people and to dramatize the preparedness of state apparatus to address the situation. Something is obviously wrong somewhere.
Worse still, what long-term plans does he have to create the conditions that will minimize people’s exposure to situations which predispose them to crime and fertilize insecurity? He has nothing! More so, what efforts has he made to build broad-based engagements with the people with a view to hearing from them and understanding what the issues might be? No efforts! Rather, he is holed up in the House, only jets out to Abuja every now and then. Every security, just like every politics, is local, and until there is a governance that connects with the people and feels their heartbeats, the dispute regime in Douglas House will keep on groping in the dark and stumbling, and yet looking for whom to accuse of pushing them.
So, as Uzodinma has serially failed to secure Imo people and has always confessed to it by seeking for scapegoats to blame, Imo people must realize that just as the government takes the credit for whatever successes the society records, the regime in Imo, which pockets over N500 million per month as security votes, must be held accountable for this catastrophic failure to secure our people.
Please note that the opinion expressed by the writer in this article does not reflect the position of the publishers of www.newsbitsng.com
