By
Sylvester Ikechukwu Onyema
GOVERNOR of Imo State, Owelle Rochas
Okorocha recently unveiled one of the seven statues standing alongside each
other in Owerri, and the uproar is deafening. My guess is that he unveiled the
least controversial of them, which happens to be a statue of our own dear Jacob
Zuma, the world renowned saint president of Imo country, who ruled the country
between 1905 and 1961. It was he who brought free education..erh..emm..ehh..
Oh, what gibberish, I'm sorry; I think my
knowledge of history is on the decline. Please can someone remind me who Jacob
Zuma is please! Is he the present president of South Africa? Is he the one that
the former president of his nation, Thabo Mbeki was recalled for by the ANC
National Executive Committee in charges of corruption? The same one involved in
Schabir Shaik's conviction for corruption and fraud? The same one that the
Constitutional Court (South equivalent of our Supreme Court) unanimously held
to have failed to uphold the constitution of his country, resulting in a call
for his resignation and an impeachment attempt? Space and time will fail me in
listing the criminal charges standing before the person of Zuma, but albeit,
those are not relevant in this instance and therefore are not in issue.
Fundamental issues are; what Jacob Zuma
represents to the Imolites in particular and Nigerians in general; the
Governor's motivation to have so honoured him with a statue in the state, and
lastly, who do the rest of the six statues represent?
In ascending order, it doesn't take rocket
science to make a good guess at who the rest of the statues represent; one
American, one Ghanaian and three Nigerians judging from the national flags with
which they are covered with, although the personalities are yet to be revealed.
As for his Excellency's motivations, I think we can only make a good guess at
the unveiling of the rest of the statues, at which the link will become clearer
and probably definite.
My suspicion is that the unveiled, JZ, is
the least controversial of them all. And as for what JZ represents to the
Imolites and the Nigerians? Well, he is
an everyday African politician in faraway South Africa. The most a typical Imolite remembers about
the nation in personality is the man Nelson Mandela and in times is the time of
the apartheid. Another thing the Nigerian readily remembers is the xenophobic
killings that razed up properties and lives of Nigerians in that country in the
current administration of Jacob Zuma.
Our memory in Imo and possibly Nigeria
fails us in exactly identifying definite steps taken by JZ, the president to
put a stop to the menace, except the regulars. Possibly, he represents a great
deal more to the Governor Okorocha, although the Governor would have done well
to honour him by erecting such statue in his country home or his private
residential quarters. But how do you blame the Governor, isn't the whole state
his constituency and the resources whimsically at his beck and call.
Our pleas to our political leaders have
become so monotonous and regular that there's also now, a course in *the act of
ignoring the people and their voices* that one must pass before he becomes a
politician. From the workers unpaid salaries to the deplorable state of the
roads, neither the recurrent nor the capital projects are in shape. But at
will, the Governor will unilaterally sink state resources in erecting statues
just after he threw a flamboyant birthday bash with resources from the same
source. The irony is, whether the rest of the workers get paid or not, the
first state worker, the Governor gets paid lavishly and promptly too.
Again, the people are only good in analyzing
the polity in lengthy write-ups like I'm just doing, scribbling quirky lines
like some others do, or just reading both, like you are doing now, all on
social media, print media, visual media, audio media and the likes. Give it
time, they'd entertain us with some other bizarre drama and the current one
immediately falls into the oblivion of the annals of our undocumented history.
But like the previous slaves ‘in chains’
broke free, the present slaves *in political ignorance* will also break free.
And when the freedom days come, they shall do more than analyze. Their votes
shall speak, unequivocally, and the malicious course of ignoring the people's
voices will go into extinction. Until then Imolites, should just wait to be
entertained with the remainder of the statues. It's the nation we inherited.
Onyema, a political
activist writes from Lagos (08032436809)
smith
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