Uzodimma told us in the early days of his administration, that he was not ready to reconcile with the Rochas family just for his political survival, that such would amount to a betrayal of the people’s trust. He boasted that he was going to recover every pin belonging to Imo State that Senator Okorocha and his family members allegedly stole from the people. During one of his meetings with members of his political family, he explained that he held a meeting with Rochas to demand a kind of plea bargain with him, which would see the former governor return some of the things he “stole”, in return for some leniency.
Uzodimma made us believe that an association with Rochas would be horrendous, because, according to him, Rochas ripped Imo apart and destroyed the very fabrics of public governance.
Hope Uzodimma told us, and the entire world that Rochas is a thief, that his “younger brother” stole Imo dry. He made us believe and desperately cast Rochas as the most horrendous person to have held public office.
Hope Uzodimma told us that Rochas is behind the killings in Imo State, that he is a financier of terrorists and terrorist activities in Imo State. His Commissioner of information, the pot-belly and toad looking Emelumba, went as far as giving us analyses upon analyses of how the prison attack could be linked to Rochas, because it fell on the eve of when the government was to start demolition and recovery of the many “stolen” properties of Rochas Okorocha and his family members.
Uzodimma vehemently propagated the narrative that Rochas Okorocha is the worse individual to have held the seat of power in Imo State. He told us that he has come to recover and rehabilitate Imo from Rochas’ eight years of destruction and bad governance.
Uzodimma made sure he demolished every single block in Rochas’ political structure in Imo State, and has, almost made the man, politically incapacitated. He went behind him to recruit most of his allies and foot soldiers, including those considered most formidable and closest to the former governor.
I daresay that if there was anything that Imolites were ready to support Uzodimma on, it was on that project to recover everything that Rochas “stole”. That was the most populist agenda that the 3R regime had, and he got all the support he needed from Imolites. Imolites were anxious to see him prove all his accusations against Rochas and recover everything he said Rochas stole, but as always, he failed woefully.
Rochas should have become a political pariah by now, given the enormous resources and propaganda invested by Uzodimma in his attempt to demolish and incapacitate him. But, it was obvious from onset that Uzodimma was not interested in anything that is beneficial, by any inch, to the public, but has always focused all his energy and passion to exerting political revenge and extracting maximum personal political profit from any situation.
Today, Uzodimma is celebrating the purported reconciliation and endorsement of his immoral, obnoxious, hideous and diabolic second term ambition. Obviously, the Omuma magician has succeeded in his goal with Rochas, he has boxed the old man into a corner where he is only gasping for political breath, and he feels it is the best time to lure him, apparently, with an offer of “amnesty”.
Before now, rumours had been rife that Uzodimma had returned most of the purportedly stolen lands and properties, earlier confiscated from Rochas, to him and his family members, and more than two years after he set up a committee to recover all that are listed on the White Paper as illegally acquired and criminally converted properties, nothing has been heard of anything done to recover a single block of these properties, except, of course, the Imo European University, which could have been the easiest thing for anyone to recover, given the brazenness of its attempted conversion by my uncle and former boss, Owelle Ndigbo.
In fairness to him, Hope Uzodimma might be everything bad, but he is certainly not given to the primitive acquisition mentality, that he would want to take some part of the alleged loots for himself, in return for amnesty to Rochas. The only thing that could have inspired this sacrilegious political rapprochement between these two sworn enemies is political convenience, and had Hope seen any valid path to victory without a Rochas endorsement, he would have kept a very clear distance from his Ogboko maverick.
Uzodimma is aware that Imolites have rejected him and nothing can see him win election, even in his own native Omuma, so, he is pushing hard to see if he can get all the gladiators on the same page, so that he will steal the election without much resistance. What he does not know, however, is that for every presumed gladiator he wins to his side, there are thousands of gladiators waiting in the wings to dislodge them.
