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| Rochas Okorocha |
The
most recognizable symptoms of clinical delusion is usually an obsession with
inanities. Bizarre developments in Imo lately should then be enough to so
classify Rochas Okorocha. It explains why a man owing workers salary arrears
and whose cheques to pensioners bounced and bounced, did not consider it
shameful to instead splurge hundreds of millions of naira on the erection of
bogus statues.
What
now complicates things is the apparent misreading of the dialectics of history
by the Imo governor by the reasons cited for his decision and crass exhibition
of a lack of sophistication in seeking to pass off a purely personal commercial
transaction at the expense of Imo taxpayers as something done to profit the
public.
Outgoing
Liberian president, Madam Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, is the latest foreign
leader to have a statue unveiled in her honour in Owerri after a lavish state
reception capped with bestowal of a local chieftaincy. Before her was Jacob
Zuma, the sleaze-prone president of South Africa.
Worse
still, Okorocha has threatened to unveil more of such gaudy statues in the
times ahead.
His
acute delusion shows in the fallacious argument that his monuments are to
perpetuate the memories of those he considers heroes and heroines. And the
cheapest of Okorocha's shots: his publicists boasted that the title bestowed on
Zuma was a strategic block to building kinship between the South African leader
and Nigerians in general and Igbo resident in the "rainbow country"
in particular. But that hardly counted last week when two more Nigerians were
murdered in cold blood in Johannesburg.
Incumbent
Ghanaian president Nana Akufo-Addo's statue is rumoured to be next to be
unveiled in Owerri. Presumably, Okorocha is also hoping to spread his business
tentacle there. But in terms of historical impact and monumentality, one would
have thought Jerry Rawlings towers above the incumbent.
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| Odion |
All
told, it is debatable if Okorocha's own yardstick can truly stand the rigor of
any ethical test administered by those who subscribe to values higher than easy
cash and idol-worshipping.
Without
taking anything away from the healing and reconciliatory spirit radiated by
Madam Sirleaf as post-civil war leader of Liberia, let it however be recognized
that true immortality - the durable type - lies in the immaterial.
History
reminds us that material things are perishable. Only fondness rooted in public
memory is eternal. So, in case Okorocha doesn't know, Sirleaf's best assurance
of immortalization is ultimately how much of her good deeds would get winnowed
into folklore to be told from generation to generation. Not by the golden
cenotaph in Owerri contracted out presumably at inflated costs.
Then,
the real ethical incongruity. On both occasions, no attempt was made officially
to conceal that the visitations by Zuma and Sirleaf had direct linkage with a
school foundation run by Okorocha as a private business.
In
the case of the former, the Imo emperor and his courtiers were so shameless
enough to even admit publicly that the foundation hopes to move into the door
of opportunities already opened by Zuma's visit. Using public funds to make way
for your private business is, in itself, corruption.
Alas,
such sleazy hands are the very ones now seeking to erect in Owerri monuments to
virtuous leadership and inspire generations yet unborn.
As
someone recently put it, little wonder then that Imo, once glorious, is now
truly calcifying from state to statue.
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