Imo, a state in south-eastern Nigeria, is known in the traffic parlance as the Heartland of the East. The state has consistently produced the highest percentage of students enlisting for both the senior secondary school certificate examinations and the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) examinations. In the last decade, Imo State students have performed as some of the finest brains in the qualifying examinations. The state is one of those whose mainstay is virtually the educational sector, to an extent that it has a state-owned university that can boast of being among Nigerian institutions attracting students from as far as Ghana and Benin Republic, and Sokoto State. It houses some of the most-highly rated tertiary institutions, such as the Federal Polytechnics, Nekede; the Federal University of Technology, Owerri and one of the Alvan Ikoku College of Education, which is degree-awarding, being affiliated with the top-rated University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

Imo has one of the highest numbers of female lawyers, just as it can be stated without any fear of empirical contradictions that there is no village in all of Imo State without an academic professor. The state was in the times of military dictatorship known as the state with the highest percentage of public petition writers, to an extent that those who govern the state were usually mindful of their public and private conducts. But the people of the state have lost the motivation for petition-writing, thereby emboldening politicians to turn the state to a state of poverty and gross underdevelopment.

Imo State, in terms of politics, has been lucky and unlucky at the same time: very lucky to have produced a governor who has entered the pantheons of political history as the best in terms of infrastructure and human capital development, known as Dee Sam Onunaka Mbakwe, of the Second Republic. It was Mbakwe that started the building from scratch of the now prestigious Sam Mbakwe Cargo Airport. It was Mbakwe that replicated the aggressive agro-allied industry that marked Old Imo State out then as the food-basket of Nigeria. It was Mbakwe that introduced policy frameworks for massive rural infrastructural advancement and community self-reliant economy. Imo people will not forget erudite lawyer-turned-politician, Sam Mbakwe, in a hurry. He had a special pride of place in Imo State history.

In Igbo cosmology, the appellation Dee or its relatively connected term, Mazi, is a title that only revered elders in parts of Igbo land are entitled to by virtue of their accomplishments that are beneficial existentially and empirically to the greatest number of people. In Arondizuogu, someone whose father is alive can’t bear the title of Mazi, but will only be called Nwa-Mazi. This is grounded in the African value system of respect for elders.

In the same vein, you can’t be identified as Dee or Mazi in the real sense of it if you are not a worshipper of the goddess of truth.

What do I mean by being worshipper of the “goddess” of truth? This precisely has no relationship or nexus with idol worship, but simply implies that you must be somebody who is honest in bad and good times.

In that context, the man Dee Sam Onunaka Mbakwe is today recognised nationally as the best governor to have come from the East, just like the wise men from the East recorded in the Christian Holy Bible. He remains the benchmark and reference point when discussing good governance standards.

He was a governor in a political platform that did not control the federal government, but he was able in the late 70’s to early 80’s to implement aggressive developmental blueprints that saw to the evolution of several projects in the then-Imo State, which comprised of present-day Abia, part of Ebonyi and the entire Imo State as it is now.

Also, Imo State has been unlucky to have churned out in quick succession, a bunch of never-do-wells and opportunistic political predators as governors and legislators since after Sam Mbakwe: These took turns to remarkably under-develop the state to a sorry state.

The last eight years has, however, become particularly remarkable in the sense that the state has gone from bad to worse due to crass misgovernance and outright looting of the priceless resources of the state.

Imo, in the last eight years, has become a laughing stock in the Nigerian nation, to a ridiculous extent that it has become a reference point on how bad governance can increasingly result in a failed state. Imo State under Rochas Okorocha reached such a low that it has become one of the biggest heavily-indebted states in the federation; to an extent that it may take Imo almost half a century to recover from the consequences of Governor Rochas’s misgovernance.

The Debt Management Office (DMO) recently said the domestic debt stock of the country’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) stood at N3.5 trillion as at the first half of 2018.

The figure indicates that the states and FCT increased their debt stock by about N200 billion or 6.0 per cent over the N3.3 trillion recorded at the end of December 2017. According to data released by DMO on its website, Lagos State has the highest debt-stock at N517 billion or 17 per cent of the total debt-stock of states.

The data showed the domestic debt-stock of the other states among the top five during the period under review: Delta (N223 billion), Rivers (N191 billion), Akwa Ibom (N179 billion), and Osun (N136 billion).

The states with five lowest debts are: Anambra (N2.6 billion), Sokoto (N25 billion), Yobe (N27 billion), Kastina (N31 billion), while Ebonyi and Jigawa States have N34 billion each.

The other states are: Abia (N57 billion), Adamawa (N67 billion), Bauchi (N78 billion), Bayelsa (N123 billion), Benue (N93 billion), Borno (N78 billion), Cross River (N125 billion), Edo (N69 billion), Ekiti (N118 billion), Enugu (N61 billion), Gombe (N42 billion), Imo (N85 billion), Kaduna (N76 billion), Kano (N95 billion), Kebbi (N54 billion), Kogi (N114 billion, Kwara (N40 billion), Nasarawa (N70 billion), Niger (N40 billion), Ogun (N105 billion), Ondo (N51 billion), Oyo (N88 billion), Plateau (N122 billion), Taraba (N60 billion), Zamfara (N70 billion) and FCT (N94 billion).” As you read this, Imo has surpassed Lagos State.

It is for this poor governance status of the Okorocha administration that millions of Imo State indigenes resolutely decided to vote out the self-imposed governorship successor and the son-in-law of Rochas who, incidentally, was for over five years the de facto deputy governor, even though he occupied the post of chief of staff. In real terms he called the shots much better than the de jure deputy governor. He has allegedly amassed so much wealth by virtue of his closeness to the governor who is his father-in-law. Most people alleged that he has amassed a lot of assets both within and without the state, even when in reality he never worked anywhere else since after his youth service. Rochas introduced the term Iberiberism to ascribe to those who think he isn’t performing optimally. But that term, which means foolishness, has come to define his eight years stint in office. Imo people say his administration is styled after Iberiberism and, therefore, the voters decided to reject him; which, in effect, marked the end of Iberiberism in Imo State, with the landslide victory of Emeka Ihedioha of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) against Okorocha’s son-in-law of the Action Alliance party. Imo has, therefore, made history by resolving to end Iberiberism and, indeed, achieved Iberibexit. Imo State voters have achieved what even the British government and people can’t achieve in over three years, because the policy of Brexit is becoming the albatross of the British Prime Minister, Theresa May’s government.

May had to resort to all kinds of last minutes tactics, and recently called on British lawmakers to “come together” and vote her Brexit deal through, following months of uncertainty and division.

“I am convinced that the time to define ourselves by how we voted in 2016 must now end,” May wrote in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph, referring to the country’s referendum on membership of the European Union (EU).

“We can only put those old labels aside if we stand together as democrats and patriots, pragmatically making the honourable compromises necessary to heal division and move forward.”

In the article, May argued her deal “honours the result of the referendum, addresses the hopes and fears of all sides, and is the very best deal negotiable with the EU.”

She said its rejection by MPs, who have twice voted it down by a massive margin, had opened up “a range of undesirable alternatives,” including the risk that the UK could crash out of the EU without a deal.

“Voting against no deal does not of itself change the legal reality that, as things stand, a failure to agree on a deal ultimately means we leave without one,” the Prime Minister cautioned, adding that without an agreement “the way ahead is one of uncertainty and ongoing, perhaps permanent, division.”

One rebel conservative MP, Esther McVey – who resigned from May’s cabinet in order to vote against the government on Brexit – said yesterday she would now support the PM’s deal.

“Theresa May – the government and parliament – connived to take ‘No deal’ off the table,” McVey told Sky’s Sophy Ridge, meaning that the choice MPs face is now May’s deal or ‘no Brexit.’”

Therefore, Imo State people should be praised for making a decision to end Iberiberism and for following through with this resolution. It is hoped that the incoming government of Ihedioha would not take Imo back to the era of Iberiberism, which has crippled development in the state, despite its potentials for becoming a pivotal state for rapid technological advances and innovation in Africa. Imo State shall never return to the Years of Rochas Okorocha’s locusts.

•RIGHTSVIEW appears on Wednesdays and Saturdays, in addition to special appearances. The Columnist, a popular activist (www.huriwanigeria.com, www.emmanuelonwubiko.com), is a former Federal Commissioner of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission and presently National Coordinator of Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria (HURIWA).

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