For two weeks, Chief Hope Uzodinma has been in Abuja. Some say he has been there flexing and enjoying himself. Others say he has been hanging around Aso Rock, waiting to be allowed to take pictures with President Muhammadu Buhari. In any case, he has been in faraway Abuja chasing shadows and blowing the scant resources of the state. The man is “baffing up and chopping up in Abuja”.
Although he was just last week sighted in Anambra in a whirlpool of merriment, he however went back to Abuja without stepping a foot into Imo. And this moment has defined the real Uzodinma: a modern reincarnation of Emperor Nero who fiddled while Rome burnt!
While almost one-third of Imo territory has been deserted as a result of insecurity, Uzodinma was in Abuja yesterday thumping his chest and congratulating himself, saying he only waved a magic wand and normalcy returned to Imo State. Which normalcy? What else could be more unfeeling, more unsympathetic and more unremorseful than for a supposed leader who has left his state in tatters and left his people with broken limps, bruised souls, shattered residences and shuttered businesses to claim that he has given them a better life? What could be more shameful, too?
This week, an unresolved dispute between the regime of Uzodinma and independent petroleum marketers has led to the closure of all fuel stations in the state. And yesterday, Owerri people witnessed new agonies of indescribable height. At Amakohia in Owerri yesterday, a man was crying openly and inconsolably, cursing the day he was born in Imo State. His only child, a girl, had died because he could not find a vehicle to rush her to hospital.
At World Bank area in the same Owerri, a pregnant woman slumped yesterday after trekking a very distance to access antenatal care. Her fate remains unknown till now. At Douglas Road last night, people slept in the open, in the smite of the cold after they had struggled under the scorch of the sun, because they could not find vehicles to take them home. Owerri is now shut down. Homes are now starving, kids weeping, parents helpless. No kerosene, no gas to cook!
Why does Hope Uzodinma take so much pleasure in watching Imo people weep? Why is he bent on punishing them onto destruction and death for not electing him as governor? How does this man sleep at night? The next most cruel thing in history, after Cain killed Abel, is the tragedy to which Uzodinma has subjected Imo people.
Imo weeps!
