There is this brightness on the face of Governor of Imo state, Senator Hope Uzodimma. Almost always, he is clad in designer’s spotless white fabric. It makes him feel pretty good personally and politically like a man at the top of his game. Yes, he is. He does not look like a leader weighed down by the streams of darts and misinformation thrown at him by reactionary political opponents looking for vengeance . Some people may not like to hear this, but the confidence and knowledge Gov Uzodimma exudes these days is the result of the realisation that the state he has presided over the past four years is working which history will assess his legacy. Unknown to his critics , success has a pattern. So is failure. You can glean that from the vision of a leader. Uzodimma has chosen success over failure. It means using power to achieve great things for the people.
In real terms, it means that performance is a key factor that can fill a leader with a genuine self-confidence, and his authority comes from the public belief in his ability to govern, as well as his judgment to make the right decisions in critical areas that matter to the people. For Uzodimma, setting expectations is important, but effective implementation built on trust has been crucial to the success of his policies and programmes in the past four years. Truth is, in public office, there is a lot one person can do if he wants to leave a worthy legacy. For many years in Imo state, trust in political leaders has been in short supply. But, as Gov Uzodimma revealed during a stakeholders meeting two years ago, the secret of his success rests on his solemn prayer to God before the 2019 governorship poll that if God would make him Governor, he will use the opportunity to impact lives and development of the state.
He says he wants to set a worthy example in leadership and governance in the state. Now he can point to many landmark projects that are his creation, his gift, and the benchmarks of his leadership. Perhaps he has disappointed many of his political adversaries who gave him little chance to record the kind of accomplishments he has done so far. In the words of the state Commissioner for Information, Public Orientation and Strategy, Hon Declan Emelumba, “one remarkable thing about him(Uzodimma) is that he doesn’t promise what he cannot do or that which he does not wish to do. He says what he means and means what he says. To him, leadership is, and governance transcends mere exercise of political and economic power. It requires commitment, honesty, compassion , and dedication”.
Sometimes, such commitment and dedication to one’s job comes with a heavy price . In recent times, Gov Uzodimma has come under a barrage of misinformation, spin, outright lies and deceit. You may have noticed this funny, stream of completely made-up stories, ostensibly to harm his reputation and diminish his accomplishments and legacy. Fake news is not new anyway. In record time, the phrase has morphed from a description of a social media phenomenon into a journalistic cliché and an angry political slur without being fact-checked. Cheap access to the internet means false stories can spread in a matter of seconds and minutes. Gov Uzodimma has been a victim of this unverified, false information by devious, unhinged minds. Recently, a cloned fake story against Uzodimma that earlier appeared on ThisDay of August 27, 2021, resurfaced in the social media. The screaming headline is: “Shocker: Uzodimma declares free marriage between Fulani settlers and Imo ladies”. The fake news added that Uzodimma had “promises to pay the bride price for the Fulani herdsmen who choose to marry Imo ladies, and that a N1million fine awaits any father who refuses to give consent. This is a completely made-up story that doesn’t worth the ink and paper on which it was written. The state government had since debunked the allegation. It described the sponsors as those who lost the recent Local Government election in the state.
The governor “does not even have the power to compel any lady outside his biological children to marry anyone”, Mr Emelumba said. Sponsors of the fake news are still on their small cluster of websites, dishing out misinformation. Last week, they came up with yet another tissue of lies. This time time around, with a fake video that Imo state government has agreed with the Federal Government to settle Internally Displaced Persons(IDPs) at the National Open University of Nigeria(NOUN) study centre at Nsu, in Ehime Mbano local government of the state. The report caused much anxiety in the state. It may be recalled that on April 24, 2021, unknown gunmen attacked the governor’s country home in Omuma in which two security guards were reported killed before the gunmen were repelled. Whatever the fake news purveyors wanted to achieve, Uzodimma needs not to worry much. He’s not the only public figure who had suffered such attack and falsehood. Even the Catholic pontiff, Pope Francis has been a victim of misleading and disingenuous reports aimed at staining his public image . Perhaps the grudge and grumpy political opponents of Uzodimma have not recovered from their painful loss in the last two governorships polls in 2019 and 2023. Despite all, Uzodimma is winning. He has overlooked the bitterness of his traducers and is focusing on what matters to the people. He has been busy laying out long-term goals, along with short-term benchmarks of progress for his legacy for which he will be judged. The refusal to be distracted has enabled enabled Uzodimma to develop a story line that people can understand and support.
Those close to him say his effective leadership style comes from his experiences in the private sector where he managed human and material resources, and the 8 years spent in the Senate during which he chaired the Committees on Aviation(2011-2015) and that of the Customs & Excise. It was to his credit that the nation’s import-export tariff protocol was cleaned up and the loopholes which led to hefty revenue leakages were plugged. These feats may have prepared him on how to navigate the labyrinth of governance in Imo state. First is the economy of the state.
Perhaps the biggest agricultural project is the N350bn Adapalm in Ohaji/Egbema local government. It’s the largest oil mill in West Africa. It covers 140 hectares of land. Before now, the oil mill had been moribund for decades.The state government had since paid off debt owed Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria(AMCON). A new management put in place. Adapalm currently produces 100 metric tons of high quality red oil daily. It is estimated to employ 35,000 workers in addition to the thousands of other informal jobs it will create along the distributive chain in the downstream economic sector. This is good news for the state which has seen its Internally Generated Revenue(IGR) on the rebound, from N600m monthly to now N1.2bn.
It means the economic picture of the state looks markedly more optimistic now than when Uzodimma assumed office in January 2020. According to data, the Ministry of Digital Economy, set up in 2022 has engaged more than 20,000 youths in the state in various digital skills such as software development, cyber security, data analytics, web design and development, networking and virtual assistant machines.Currently, Imo state tops the chat on entrepreneurial and education index in the country. According to data from Ministry of Education, Imo state ranked first on the log of states with most students admitted into Nigerian universities to read medicine in 2022, with 512 students. It’s closely followed by Anambra state with 453, and Abia state with 348 students. Until now, junior civil servants are enjoying air conditioned staff buses. Also, Permanent Secretaries in the state are proud owners of official cars. This is Gov Uzodimma’s explanation for the gesture. “My shared prosperity agenda is behind the government’s decision to provide official cars to all Permanent Secretaries, something that has not happened in the last 15 years or more . It also informed our provision of staff buses for junior civil servants , just as it’s the motivating force behind our acquisition of land for the building of low cost houses for Imo workers”. He said in no distant time, every worker in the state will have his own house at affordable cost.
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