Uzodimma and the Burden of Guilt

By Collins Opurozor

There is a line that recurs in any tirade churned out by Hope Uzodinma, Imo’s disputed ruler. He claims he met no money in the treasury of the State when he took over. For sixteen months, the man has continued to sing this old song, in the hope that the people would be hoodwinked and the ongoing financial hemorrhage in the State concealed. On May Day, he repeated the self-same embarrassing falsehood.

But, maybe Uzodinma does not know, what this piece of primitive propaganda reveals is his burden of guilt, having ruthlessly squandered the State’s scant resources in the past sixteen months.

Within his first twelve months in office, Uzodinma got a total IGR of N36.6 billion, capital receipts in grants and from development partners of N38.3 billion, FAAC allocations of N103.8 billion, which included 13% Derivation of N10 billion and Value Added Tax of N13 billion. In addition to the loans which have now totalled about N25 billion obtained only by this administration, the State further got about N32.1 billion as allocations to the Local Government Areas. All these came to Uzodinma in just twelve months. The big question is: What has he done with the humongous sums?

It is shocking, but let it be quickly added, that while Uzodinma yells to the high heavens that Imo State has no money, in a space of twelve months, his administration has squandered a total of N34.7 billion as overheads! This represents the cost of flying private jets, drinking champagnes and riding in lengthy convoys! This is what a man who has allowed the aged pensioners of the State starve to death spent on frivolities within a year. A calamity that is bigger than this administration has never befallen Imo State since its creation in 1976.

Again, within the period under review, the administration claimed to have spent N19 billion as subventions to IMSUBEB. In reality, that Board has been in shambles since the administration came to power, with no projects to their credit, and the staff frequently protesting the non-payment of their salaries. What a tragedy! Despite receiving about N10 billion as Derivation, Uzodinma never dropped a single shovel of construction sand in the oil-bearing areas of the State.

Further, N1.4 billion was budgeted for the procurement of equipment for the Imo State University Teaching Hospital in Orlu. Today, the place remains even worse than before. More painful is the fact that the administration appropriated the sum of N1.3 billion for the modernization of general hospitals in the State. Yet, no single general hospital was modernized, and none is today functional. On the authority of the budgetary provision, N600,000,000 was supposed to have been spent on providing health facilities in 147 health centers across the State, while N2.2 billion spent to revamp the Imo State Primary Health Care Development Agency. These sums have gone down the drain, as nothing can be found on ground anywhere in the State.

This same administration, which is a disaster-in-progress, also cannot account for the N2 billion earmarked for the Imo State Integrated Rice Development Project, neither can they explain the reason for failing to renovate the Imo State House of Assembly Complex despite setting aside N2.3 billion for it in the last fiscal year.

After failing to show what he has done with the whopping sums he has received, guilt now weighs heavily down on Uzodinma, and even his unending prevarications can only worsen his ordeal.

• Collins Opurozor is the Director-General of Imo State PDP New Media, and writes from Owerri.