Ohakim’s Contentious Carrot

Governor Ikedi Ohakim of Imo State

A flurry of attacks trail Governor Ikedi Ohakim’s controversial 10,000 job creation scheme, as critics dismiss the exercise as a scam
By Chidiebere Onyemaizu
Perhaps, in his quiet moments, Imo State Governor, Ikedi Ohakim, ponders over why the opposition in the state and his critics hardly view any of his policies and actions in positive light.
But then, if there is any state Chief Executive in the current political dispensation who has somewhat grown thick skin to endless verbal assault from opponents, it is the Imo State governor. Still smarting from the criticisms that assailed him over the controversial Nworie River project awarded at billions of naira, Governor Ohakim is swimming in another highvoltage controversy, conditioned by yet another contentious policy of his.
This time it is the Imo 10,000 job creation scheme. The scheme, rather than attract Governor Ohakim kudos has instead turned out to be a source of severe knocks. When the Governor initiated the job scheme last month, he had hinged the big idea behind it, in the wordings of a plethora of newspaper adverts heralding the commencement of the exercise, on “executing a socio-economic agenda geared towards revitalising the economy and restoring infrastructure in the state… with emphasis on industrialisation and enterprise, youth empowerment…”
Also, during the inauguration of the scheme, the governor made it clear that the 10,000 jobs being offered to Imo youths was not a political ploy as adequate budgetary provision had been made to accommodate the attendant fiscal demands. But the more he laboured to justify the scheme and explain his good intentions, the harder the knocks that came his way.
As far as Ohakim’s critics are concerned, Ohakim, popular as Ochinawata. (He who reigns at a young age), is simply playing to the gallery. Besides that, Governor Ohakim is being accused of deceiving Imo youths into parting with N2,000 each exchange for non-exisitng jobs.
Essentially, the sticky point in the 10,000 job saga is the caveat attached to the offer: “Interested candidates are required to purchase scratch card at the cost of N2,000 from the UBA, GT Bank, Zenith Bank, Union or Bank PHB.” A seasoned consulting firm, KPMG, is said to be handling the recruitment exercise on behalf of the state government.
Those who allege fraud in the whole scheme insist that it is immoral for the Ohakim administration to ask prospective job seekers to pay for jobs they have not been given. They are of the view that there is no borderline between such arrangement and that offered by 419 job agencies and recruitment centres who swindle unsuspecting but desperate job seekers of their money under the guise of linking them with companies that need their services.
Ziggy Azike, a lawyer and All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP) flagbearer in the 2007gubernatorial poll in the state is one such Ohakim critic who insists that the 10,000-job creation scheme is a smokescreen to defraud Imo youths.
His position: “The scandalous, heart wrenching and cold-blooded attempt by Governor Ikedi Ohakim to con the desperate and destitute 300,000 unemployed youths of Imo State of N600,000,000 is the latest gambit by a government that has shown crass disregard for prudence and creativity in governance… the Ohakim government has continued to out-perform itself in public deception and propaganda as the entire essence of governance.”
Azike, who hails from the same community as the governor, wondered why Imo state is charging the youths N2,000 before they are offered jobs, whereas Akwa Ibom State government that is running a similar project is not asking for a kobo. The legal practitioner cum-social crusader went further to lament that “in Ohakim’s advert, the Imo State Civil Service Commission is not mentioned, yet our investigation reveals that as at the date of the publication of the advertisement, KPMG had not received a mandate letter… it is unfortunate that the Imo job centre has turned into a scam centre…”
Azike, among other posers, wants Governor Ohakim, to urgently provide answers to the following:
*What is the workforce of the present Imo State Civil Service?
*How many months arrears of salaries is he owing civil servants?
*Have they been regularly paid their salaries as at when due since he came into office?
*How many industries has he commissioned to absorb 10,000 new workforce?
*The few youths who may be “employed” in this gambit, will they not be deployed and dehumanised to become thugs and political militia like his vigilante force?
While calling on KPMG to, in his words, “immediately distant themselves from what is clearly a fraud,” Azike emphatically declared that there are no 10,000 vacancies to be filled and that Governor Ohakim cannot show capacity to pay the new workers as he is owing the existing skeletal workforce many months of salary arears and other entitlements.”
Aside the 10,000 job saga, Governor Ohakim’s opponents are, also accusing him of non-performance. For example, describing him as a “bill board governor,” Patrick Onyebuagu, a community leader in Amagu, Oru East council of the state, posited that the major achievement of Governor Ohakim since coming to office is the erection of bill boards bearing his face all over the state with the inscription, “The New Face of Imo.”
For Onyebuagu, the lot of Imo, people over the last three years of the Ohakim administration is actually in his (Onyebuagu) words “ugly face of infrastructural decay and neglect.” He sited the deplorable condition of the Nempi–Amagu–Akuma–Awo–Idemilli, Akatta–Amagu–Ubulu and the Amagu–Ubulu–Awo–Idemilli roads, as examples of such infrastructural decay and neglects. Onyebuagu wondered why the three roads which transverse three local governments in the state – Oru East, Oru West and Orsu – and then linked with Ihiala in Anambra state, have not featured in Ohakim’s IRROMA (Imo Rural Roads Maintainance Agency). “If Ohakim indeed represents the New Face of Imo, he must prove this by constructing these roads. The roads are death traps,” he lamented.
The governor and his supporters are, however, not keeping quite in the face of these myriad allegations. For example, contrary to Azike’s insistence that there are no job vacancies in the state’s civil service, Governor Ohakim stated that the creation of the job oppournities were long over-due, as for the past 10 years no formal exercise has been done to that effect.
For labour leaders in the state, however, by creating the job opportunities for 10,000 Imo graduates, the governor has etched his name in gold. “What makes a man popular is not how much wealth he has acquired but the element of human sympathy therein” a spokesman of the labour leaders told Governor Ohakim during the last May Day celebration.
Chris Asoluka, a management consultant and former Finance Commissioner in the state told The Source that the problem with Ohakim’s opponents is that they view everything from the realm of politics. He therefore frowned at attempts by the governor’s opponents to politicise the job scheme initiative. Insisting that Governor Ohakim means well for Imo state, the former Commissioner who was also a member of the House of Representatives explained that the choice of KMPG was aimed at sorting out serious candidates from unserious ones, as well as to avoid charges of favouritism and nepotism. Asoluka dismissed allegations and insinuations that the exercise is a leeway to defraud Imo youths, telling The Source that there was nothing shady about the job creation scheme.
The Source’s efforts to get Dr. Amanze Obi, the Imo State Commissioner for Information and Strategy respond to the controversies surrounding the 10,000 job saga proved abortive as SMS and calls to his GSM line were neither replied to nor answered.