By Collins Opurozor
It is already public knowledge that within the past eighteen months, Hope Uzodinma of Imo state has borrowed nearly N70 billion. The Debt Management Office and Nigeria Bureau of Statistics have both affirmed that the total debt stock of Imo is now slightly above N205 billion, having risen from about N141 billion within these past few months. Yet, a peep into Imo state reveals an entity in disarray, where salaries and pensions are never paid, infrastructural decay widespread, health prospects getting poorer and mass penury becoming endemic.
Also, it is pertinent to add that under Uzodinma, Imo has received about N143 billion as local government allocations from the Federation Account. Today, it is bewildering that there is no project in any local government in Imo which Uzodinma would claim to have done with this gargantuan sum. Not even one!
The sources through which the Omuma-born politician fritters away Imo state resources as well as the humongous loans have remained quite unknown until now, except of course the known issue of the man’s obsessive love for private jets and expensive champagnes. Little did Imo people know that diamond wristwatches, each of which costs about 800,000 dollars, have always adorned Uzodinma’s wrists. Two of such wristwatches would amount to almost N1 billion. And Uzodinma wears them. Such insane and intolerable waste is part of what gulps public resources in Imo!
What makes this issue deeply provocative and evocative of mass outrage is that all the relevant rating boards in Nigeria have continued to rank Imo highest in all the indices of social misery. For instance, while the state leads the way in youth unemployment in Nigeria with 83%, the Imo also has the highest rates of infant and maternal mortality in the South East.
In prevalence of cancer, Imo similarly comes first in the South East and stands out as the only state without any state-owned cancer-screening center. The ravages of heart and kidney diseases are worsened by the absence of any cardiologist, nephrologist and pathologist on the payroll of the regime of Uzodinma. In short, it is not certain that Uzodinma has purchased a single tablet of paracetamol for any public healthcare center since he was imposed on Imo people. This is horrible!
The truth is not so much that Uzodinma’s policies have failed than that, across all sectors, Uzodinma has no policies, no programs, no plans!
Wearing a wristwatch of nearly N500 million even in the face of these realities has more clearly brought home the extent of disdain which Uzodinma has for Imo people. Thousands can die of starvation, and more thousands die of insecurity, nothing can stop him from pursuing fleeing pleasures and funding same with state resources. He is like the proverbial island of affluence in a sea of affliction, and, in practice of his sadism, his joy is the pain he sees everywhere in Imo.
But, very soon, Imo shall be liberated!
