A call has gone out to the Imo State Governor, Owelle Rochas Okorocha, to tender his resignation forthwith or be impeached by the State House of Assembly.
Making the call yesterday, frontline rights group, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), said it became necessary “to avoid the imminent and looming danger of total breakdown of law and order and to salvage the state from further economic downturns due to the absence of effective checks and balances and lack of financial prudence.”
The group in a media statement jointly authorised by the National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, said it feared that “the increased but unprecedented mass poverty in Imo State could precipitate social anarchy in the immediate future.”
HURIWA also tasked the Imo State House of Assembly “to shake off its notorious toga as the ‘Assembly of executive bootlickers and sycophantic house boys of the Imo State Governor and embrace their constitutional roles as those elected through popular mandates to provide the much-needed checks and balances through quality oversight responsibilities over members of the Executive and Judicial arms of government with the fundamental focus of providing quality good governance to the suffering million s of Imolites.”
According to the statement issued in Abuja, the nation’s capital, “HURIWA is shocked that there’s indeed a docile and dysfunctional state House of Assembly in Imo State whose members pursue their selfish financial enticements even as the so called chief executive allegedly embarks on reckless misapplication of public funds in pursuit of vainglorious adventures to paint himself as father Christmas in the North by building free schools for internally displaced persons when in fact majority of children of school ages in Imo State are not just internally displaced persons due to mass poverty but the public institutions known as primary and post primary schools have become derelict and threatens the constitutional rights to life and right to quality education entitled by the pupils by the clear provisions of chapter four of the Nigerian Constitution of 1999 (as amended). Governor Okorocha has done no single durable rural infrastructure across Imo State but fritters public funds on media propaganda, claiming some phantom achievements and other frivolities such as the meaningless and bogus foreign trade missions by the governor and over 100 of his hireling and sycophants to Turkey at public expenses even when pensioners haven’t been paid in over two years.”
HURIWA condemned what it called “the twin evil plots of the current administration in Imo State led by Mr Okorocha which are targeted at mortgaging and selling off prized public assets to cronies of the Governor, who had spent all his growing up years in the North West of Nigeria, and also subterranean gang-up by Governor Okorocha and his bootlickers to retrench through the backdoor a majority of the legitimate workforce of Imo State after the so called concession of basic public services in the State to friends and affiliates of the All Progressives Congress-produced governor.”
The rights group said its call for the immediate resignation of Governor Okorocha :is anchored on the unambiguous reality that the Imo State administration as currently constituted is parasitic, idle and have perfected underground methods of mismanagement of the financial resources of the state which has in the last two years made the state insolvent and unable to meet up with the funding obligations of the state to the few indigenous people that currently work in the Imo State civil and public services.”
Said HURIWA: “Imo State under the current dispensation has become a failed entity and the dysfunctionality has precipitated high crime rate, mass poverty, mass hysteria, break down of basic socio-economic infrastructures of roads, educational facilities; health facilities and even the payment of the meagre pensions to the elderly retired indigenous elders who gave out their best in the service of humanity and Imo State makes it imperative that Governor Okorocha should quit for lacking constitutional legitimacy any longer and for proving beyond the shadows of doubt that he does not have what it takes to transform and turn around the fortunes of Imo State.
“The Governor must tender his resignation and be investigated for alleged diversion of Imo State resources which are used to set up private educational institutions in some northern states and for collapsing the economic vibrancy of Imo State. Let the Imo State House of Assembly do the needful by beginning an impeachment process should the state governor insists on staying on and further destroying what is left of Imo State.”
•Photo shows Governor Okorocha