File photo: Professor Chidi Odinkalu delivers keynote at GOCOP second anniversary conference
Former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, NRHC, Chidi Odinkalu, has observed that people of the South East cannot move forward with the leadership style of the Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha.
Speaking at the first Imo Good Governance Lecture held in Owerri, at the weekend, Odinkalu amongst other reasons, alleged that pensioners in the state were “forced to surrender their money.”
According to Odinkalu, ” the question is that how many people are satisfied with the state of Imo state. I remember when the last election was taking place and there were people who were prepared to kill for the governor. I mean the current governor. Where we are today everybody is regretting.
“Pensioners are being forced to surrender their money as a precondition for getting anything at all. Regular workers are being owed and they are required to sign away a significant chunk of their salaries.
“All the so-called roads are undone and in tatters and indeed have become a danger to a lot of people and insecurity has risen. The government does not appear to have the attention span of the serious responsibility of government.
“I am sure the government means very well but sometimes we got to admit that people may be on the wrong job and I think he is. I wish him very well but the thing is that we cannot continue to keep the wrong people in the wrong job.
“I say here, Imo state is the most educated state in the country, highly globalized and internationalized. It needs to begin to think of the kind of leadership and structure that will reflect the awareness structure of it demographics.
“Listen, if we Igbo are to compete at the Nigeria level in a manner that makes our people rise up with dignity then we can’t continue to have this type of level of governance. We got to say no to it.”
