I wept last week because of a young man’s very touching plight. I wept because i lacked the power to do anything for this young man. I was on the perilous Umuapu-Owerri Road heading to Owerri to pick up copies of Uche Ogbuagu’s Ka Opuo CD’s. Ogbuagu an Owerri based entertainer gave reasons in that CD of why Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo should be voted out come April 2015! Some of his reasons are what i have since been shouting about.
I pulled up at a filling station along the Umuapu-Owerri Road to buy fuel. A small voice cut through my ears to my very heart: “Buy recharge card! Buy recharge card!!” As I turned to look at the owner of the small but familiar voice, the very person I saw carrying a small bag and flashing to me about six or seven ‘cards’ was no other person but Ibe.
Ibe is from a town close to my own, a graduate of Imo State University Owerri. I have not seen him for a very long time . He was among the 10,000 Imo State Civil Servants popularly known as Ohakim 10,000 jobs that Governor Rochas Okorocha sacked on the 6th of June 2011.
Seeing Ibe selling recharge cards in the same Owerri where he graduated made me scared. I thought about other members of the 10,000 jobs and what they are passing through, and oh, what a dreadful, scary thought! My heart bled. I struggled with tears.
I gave Ibe more money than he could make from selling recharge cards in one week and drove off. Even as I write now, I can still hear his voice saying “Buy recharge card! Buy recharge card!!” My heart bleed for this young man and several other graduates like him such as Jennifer, out there forced into the streets by Governor Rochas Okorocha and Rt Hon Benjamin Uwajumogu in such a richly-endowed State like Imo.
I will never forget my friend Jenifer. I have told you this story before. Situation demands here that i say it again. I remember the first day when she walked into my room drunk. That was in 2012. She sat down. ‘I’ve come’ she said, ‘to tell you the latest news about Rochas Okorocha ,your Governor in Douglas House, Owerri. He is sacking more workers. After the 10,000 workers, he has sacked another 30,000 workers ’
Jennifer was among the 10,000 sacked graduates. Today, she hates Rochas with a passion for making her and her sister unemployed. She took up the vodka drinking habit when she lost her job and she is jobless till today. I feel sorry for her. Okorocha overlooked the fact that the average Nigerian worker has four dependents – at least two living with him and he removed food from the table of the masses that voted him into power.
Jenifer said something that day that is true today. ‘’This is not what we bargained. All the things we were told during the 2011 election, all the love we chased, all the good campaign promises, what happened to them?’ ‘We now have an Imo state of unemployed youths; Imo state were minimum wages are denied workers, Imo state were workers are owed salaries, Imo state were the people are being denied employment in spite of their potentials; Imo state of escalating executive lawlessness, Imo state were LGA funds are looted, Imo state of disregard for constitutional rights. Government in Imo today is Owelle only . Those in government today are suffocating. The teachers are suffering. The civil servants are suffering. Business men are suffering. Even the traders are suffering. What we have now in Imo State is the more you look the less you see’ she said
I know that God will one day judge this callous, ultra selfish and thieving Governor and Speaker of Imo State who have cornered the commonwealth of Imo to themselves and their thieving cabals such as Uche Nwosu and Jude Ejiogu. We now live in a State where about ninety percent of the State’s resources are in the hands of one percent of the population. Chai! Ka Opuo! Biko nu! Ka Rochas Okorocha Puo!
Okorocha’s administration is an embarrassment to Imolites, if not a disaster. He now sends thugs to beat up the people of the state for protesting legally. Last time his thugs beat up widows. Recently his thugs beat up men of God that organized election debate for Governorship candidates.This man sees Imo State funds as some unfortunate but richly-endowed whale washed ashore by sea waves, which he can outsmart everyone and freely rush onto with sharp knives and large basins to cut and carte away as much as he could, before the fish totally rots away. As i write he has with the help of Benjamin Uwajumogu carted away over 175 billion naira Imo LGA funds. That is why I once called Uwajumogu the Bertie Smalls of Imo State.
Bertie Smalls was an English armed robber who was active in the 1960s and 70s; a time considered as the golden age of British armed robbery. Smalls committed his first robbery when he was 15. He committed his life to crime. Before 1970, Smalls already had a string of high-profile robberies to his name, and was a respected figure in the London Underworld.
On the 9th of February, 1970, Smalls led a gang from the Wembley Mob, in the East End of London, to rob a Barclays Bank branch in Ilford. The gang successfully got away with £237,736, a record at the time. Most of the team left England on various routes. Smalls, himself, boarded a train to Paris and from there went on to the Costa del Sol, where he read English newspapers looking for police updates about the robbery. The police made an early breakthrough, with an informant naming Smalls as the leader of the gang.
Our own Bertie Smalls, Mr Benjamin Uwajumogu, the Speaker of the Imo House of Assembly uses his pen as his crime weapon. He stole 3 billion naira Imo tax payers money as revealed by his former media aide Citizen Ikenna Samuelson Iwuoha. He teamed up with the Ali Baba governor , Owelle Rochas Okorocha to loot Imo dry and to sack 10,000 Civil Servants of the State. These men are the International thief- thief number 1 and 2.
Uwajumogu used the proceeds of the crime to acquire several properties in Nigeria such as : N500 million naira Asphalt plant along Onitsha road Owerri,15 mansions along Chief Ben Uwajumogu Street, Federal Housing Estate Umuguma Owerri – West LGA,Jasmine Hotels and Suites behind Imo Concorde Hotel valued at over N70 million, over 200 plots of land located in Owerri West LGA,N400million naira Mansion at Ihitte /Uboma,2 other mansions at Ihitte/Uboma,Mansions in Aba and Umuahia,N760 million naira Crush Rock Industry in Ebonyi State,N500 million naira private hotel in Abuja,N750 million naira private hotel in Lagos. Even the Imo State liason office in Abuja was sold to him for N70 million naira which he has since converted to his private hotel.
He allegedly send boys to deal with Citizen Samuelson Iwuoha for exposing his shady deals in the House of Assembly and when his boys killed someone in Samuelson’s compound ,he framed Samuelson for murder and dumped him in prison since June 3 , 2014. The Relative of the deceased have since told the world that Samuelson has no hand in the death of their son but at the orders of Uwajumogu the Social Crusader is still in jail.
Bertie Smalls even promised some persons 500,000 naira each to locate me so that he can frame me up too and dump me in prison like he did to Samuelson Iwuoha. Taa! God pass them!. They are playing God! About 5 persons have been murdered so far in the Imo State House of Assembly. Who knows who killed them? Of course the Police in Imo under Mr Abdulmajid Ali will never investigate the death of the 5 persons in the Imo House of Assembly. They never carried any investigation when Samuelson was shouting of threat to his life and when assassins stormed his compound all the police did was to arrest Samuelson and his wife and dumped them in prison at the orders of the Speaker. Abdulmajid Ali is working for Okorocha. These criminals we have in Douglas House Owerri must go! Ka Opuo! Ka Rochas Okorocha Puo!!
-Kenneth Uwadi, Mmahu-Egbema, Imo State, Nigeria
