Imo State: From Iberiberism to Hopism

The history of Imo State did not start with Rochas, the Owelle of Abuja. It started with Dee Sam Onunaka Mbakwe, who was so concerned about the deprivations and privations of his people and so committed to the Imo Project that he was not ashamed to become the first and only weeping governor in Nigeria. (Prof Ayade appears to be mimicking him!).

However, I have chosen to start this story of Imo with Rochas, The Owelle of Abuja, whom I know when he was a ‘small’ Rochas in Jos long before he became a ‘big’ Rochas at Abuja and an enviable public speaker. The beauty of this our business is that you have the right to decide the delimitation of your study; you are only required to justify your decision and beyond that, nobody can ask you: ‘why did you start and stop here, and not there?’

Recently, I met a woman engaged in a verbal ‘fight to finish’ with a road side onion dealer over prices. The ‘akshon’ spirit in me was aroused and I decided to go straight to PMB to ask him ‘whats-gwan’; after all, onions are not imported and the price is not subject-regulated deregulation. I went with Ibom Air. One of the things we have not settled in Nigeria is whether Government should be involved in business or not. And so, while central and other subsidiary governments are selling their criminally mismanaged businesses (or rather dashing them to their cronies), others are building new ones. Anyway, the beautiful hostess announced that due to Coro, they would not serve any refreshments but that we would all receive bags of goodies as we exited. Its long I patronized any of our airlines and so, I expected an Ibom-made hamper. As we landed at Abuja, the Center of Unity, which is being managed by select people from a select part of our country, and where the indigenes (whom I thought were compensated and resettled then, have suddenly become so visible), we were given a beautified paperbag containing a miserable piece of cake and fruit-juice, the size of which would not be enough for a 3 month old. The bottle of water was so small that I kept it as a memento. Funny enough, the paper-bag obviously cost more than its content.

Anyway, the author and finisher of fake news and hate speech used some ‘amotekun’ means to know in advance that I had come on an EndSARS mission and as such, I was not even allowed to cross the city-gate. My journey was aborted and I ended at Katampe, a suburb at the fringes of the city. When I could not devise another strategy for getting to the rock, including ‘ikwu-ikili’ (flying invisibly, witch-like!), I decided to get to my village to ask from ‘amaehulu’ why they were able to decipher my motives from afar and why the ‘ikwu-ikili’ failed. I decided to go through Owerri and boarded DanaAir. That was when I appreciated the generosity of Ibom Air. Dana-air used the same Coro and the need to minimize contacts as an excuse to offer us nothing except another miserable bottle of water, which they placed at our disposal before we boarded the plane. I asked the airhostess why they could not monetise the refreshments since that would guarantee zero contact and she got confused. Since they had all our phone-numbers, they would have credited us with N1000 airtime in lieu of refreshments! It was as simple as that! I am still trying to get across to Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority and the Nigerian Consumer Protection Council over the matter. Any way, we landed at Owerri Airport and on my way out of the airport, I saw it: A large billboard of the Supreme-court Governor, with the shouting inscription: ‘HOPISM; Where government meets the people’. It also had a 3R subtitle: Recovery, Rehabilitation, and Reconstruction. I saw many of such before I left Owerri that day. Ha! ‘Hopism’? And then, I remembered ‘Iberiberism’! Who did this to my brethren in Imo State?

Rochas did not set out to espouse Iberibesism as his political philosophy but he somehow got around polularising the term to the extent that it stuck. Iberiberism simply means first-class foolishness (the type they call compound-fool) and according to Chidiebere Iwuoha, the term described those Rochas ‘regarded as foolish people in their ways of life or those doing things that were not in tandem with what he was doing’. This included those that opposed the candidacy of Nwosu, his in-law or those in APC who thwarted some of his political shenanigans (Bear with me; I am not used to big words but this one just smuggled itself in and the Customs officer around looked the other way!)

When I thought about Rochas and his days at Imo State, I believed that he behaved ‘iberiberistically’, in some ways, the most visible of which was stealing ‘ opendentially’ by converting Imo State into one huge family business run by Rochas and Wife and Children and siblings and in-laws et al. His wife ‘controlled over four ministries’ (as revealed by Rochas himself in December 2016); His in-law, Uche Nwosu was the operational Deputy Governor before he made him the gubernatorial candidate. The sister, Ogechi was Chief of Staff Domestic Affairs and was in charge of Christmas Decoration Project before being the first Commissioner for Happiness and Couple Fulfilment in Nigeria, nay, Africa. In his practice of Iberiberistic ‘familiocracy’ he learnt from Eduardo Santos (who named his daughter as head of Sonangol, the Angolan State Oil company); Trump (who made his son-in-law, Kushner, a senior adviser); Nguema of Equatorial Guinea (whose son was the VP and Minister of Finance); Museveni of Uganda (who promoted and appointed his son a special adviser); the 86-year-old Juggernaut of Mauritius who suddenly realized that ‘the time has come for the country to have a young leadership that represents the future’ and the only qualified person was his son, Pravind. Other acts of Iberiberism ascribed to him included construction of 27 gigantic general hospitals in 27 LGAS, none of which was completed, equipped or staffed, demolition of markets, erection of statutes including that of the multi-wived Zuma, several substandard projects and the failure to fulfill his promises.

In Theory, Hopism is Government of Hope by Supreme Court for Hopists. In practice, Hopism is the politics and policy of Quantum Leaps as in when somebody leaps from the 4th Position to the first. It is a triplejump process facilitated by judicial mathemagics

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