Protests Trail Okorocha’s Maiden Broadcast

Governor Rochas Okorocha’s maiden broadcast to Imo people on Monday, June 6, 2011 has continued to generate varied reactions, one of which was the protest march by some of the 10,000 Imo youths whose appointments to the state civil service were suspended by the governor.

In a quick reaction to the broadcast, these employees had converged at the Imo State Secretariat Complex along Port Harcourt Road, Owerri to protest what they perceived as gross injustice against them. Some of them who spoke to the press said they were not politicians and so nobody should play politics with their employment. All they asked for, they said, was to be given back their jobs, their only source of livelihood at the moment.

While addressing the aggrieved youths, the Imo deputy governor, Sir Jude Agbaso, had assured them that nobody was taking away their jobs from them. Rather, because the process through which they got employed was faulty, they had no real jobs at the moment. As such, the process needed to be reviewed so that they could be given proper employment.

Meanwhile, an insider source in Imo Government House told Pushful Pen that a committee has already been constituted to look into the matter urgently, while the affected graduates have been directed to go to their various local government councils with the necessary credentials, including their letters of appointment.

In a related development, some of the 305 councillors in Imo State who were dissolved alongside the chairmen of the 27 local government councils also demonstrated in Owerri, the state capital, to protest their dissolution. They were not allowed anywhere near the Government House, and so took to the major streets. In the process, about 100 of them were nabbed by the police for disturbing the peace of the state. Reacting to this news, a cross-section of Nigerians have blamed the councillors for going to demonstrate on the streets instead of seeking redress, if they feel aggrieved, through a court of competent jurisdiction.

On why the governor dissolved the local government councils, political analysts opine that even though the governor had cited administrative ineptitude, the dissolution may not be unconnected with the fact that the governments at the councils were illegal since they were not issued with Certificates of Return on election.

Even though there are rumours that few days to the end of his administration, ex-Governor Ikedi Ohakim had issued the chairmen and councillors with the Certificates through the Imo State Independent Electoral Commission, ISIEC, analysts still wonder whether such issuance, if it is true, was acceptable by law.