By Ikechukwu Orji
LAGOS JANUARY 23RD (URHOBOTODAY)-I used to have problem with Governor Rochas Okorocha’s style of governance until I visited Imo State during the Christmas period. I was surprised at what I saw on ground. Owerri, the state capital is cleaner and better. The young man has constructed more roads and the capital is lot better than what I used to know.
This is huge departure from the clownish governance of Ikedi Ohakim and Achike Udenwa. Now, I am so proud to be from Imo State and infinitely proud to have Okorocha as my governor. He is one of the most illustrious governors in the country today. The business of managing the economy, creating jobs, fighting corruption, and removing the remnants of corrupt political godfathers is moving in the right direction under him.
The free education policy of the governor is not a sham at all. I took my time to investigate this matter and I am pleased with what I found out. In fact, in Imo State at the moment, it is pretty difficult to get a house help because just about every child is in school because of the free education policy of okorocha’s administration. My Cousin that’s a medical student at the Imo State University has stopped paying school fees thereby reducing the financial burden on the family. This is a step in the right direction because governance is about affecting the lives of the poorest of the poor. Any policy that can have such a trickledown effect is quite commendable because of the level of poverty in the land. That is why I will keep praying that Jah should bless Okorocha. He needs all the encouragement he can get. We need to cheer him on to do more because there is still room for improvement.
Much of what goes on today in Nigeria as governance is simply grotesque drama. Our leaders are only interested in hoodwinking the masses instead of offering them quality service. I may not be a textbook economist but I am a roadside economist. I Judge the efficacy of government policies by observing people on the streets and in the rural areas. I judge by the quality of infrastructure, the state of our roads, hospitals and quality of education. Using all these as a touchstone, It is obvious that we have had a long run of ill luck in leadership. A lot of our government officials are only interested in amassing wealth and stashing huge amounts of cash abroad at the detriment of our local economy. The problem with Nigeria is not corruption but the type of corruption. There is no economy in the world that did not develop on corruption. In the developed world, corruption is internalized and production but here it is externalized and destructive. We steal and keep outside thereby destroying our economy and empowering those of other nations. But here and there, we have some people in governance we have a pretty accurate fix of what needs to be done. And Okorocha is definitely one of them.
My prayer for him is that he needs not be distracted. He should keep his vision rightly focused, his will fully engaged and self-discipline intact. He should not allow anything to weaken his morale and distort his judgment. Okorocha should always understand that a leader engaged in trying to bring about a transformation will find himself living in an environment hostile to his intentions. The system he is trying to reform, after all, is the established one. The Old order, as old orders always do, will be fighting for its life and thus will be engaged in doing everything possible to stop any new system from emerging. A transformational leader has to be sure of what he wants happens and extraordinarily strong-willed in seeing it does.
Why are some people trying to deny the fact that Okoroacha is a great leader of our time? Is it out of envy or shortsightedness? But I am glad that he has a knack for ignoring destructive criticism. He feels neither threatened nor moved by such critics. I will end this article by quoting a great American president, Theodore Roosevelt. “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again….who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly.”
By Ikechukwu Orji
Orji is a Lagos based Media consultant and Journalist.
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ikechukwuorji@yahoo.com