A civil rights advocacy group, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has tasked the new Governor of Imo State, Senator Hope Uzodinma, not to commence the governance of the state with convoluted distractions of some misplaced probe of past administrations, but to implement deliberate people-centered policies and programmes.

This, the rights group counselled, would win the hearts and minds of Imo citizens who see the judgment of the Supreme Court that brought him to power as dubious and inexplicable.

“The new man in Imo State should convince the people that he is not an usurper of their mandate but a child of special circumstances. He needs to win public trust and confidence which are waning massively in Imo State since after that unethical Supreme Court judgment throwing up the new status quo in the Imo State Government House, Owerri,” HURIWA said Thursday in a statement.

The rights group asked Governor Uzodinma to settle down to the core task of rebuilding the devastated state by the systematic implementation of law-based developmental blueprints, rather than engage in shadow boxing, and the soap-box drama of pretending to be fighting corruption.

“We urge the Supreme Court’s produced governor to work for Imo people and not for his spiritual warrior, Rev Father Ejike Mbaka, or for the Abuja establishment that purportedly waged internecine war that led to the substantially illogical and unsound judgment of the panel of the Supreme Court that eventually truncated the tenure of Governor Emeka Ihedioha and rocketed the candidate who came fourth in an election to the position of the winner. The new Imo state Governor should build upon the ground-breaking and extraordinary developmental blueprints already being put in motion by his immediate predecessor.

“Imo State people want a Governor who will sustain the policy of transparency, open government and accountability. Imo people want a Governor who must continue to a logical conclusion, the World Bank’s assisted rural roads works that are already going on which crisscrossed virtually all senatorial zones of the state.

“Imo needs a silent worker whose good works should speak for him and not a talkative. Imo does not need a noisy governor who governs only in the media just like Rochas Okorocha,” HURIWA stressed.

It also warned the state House of Assembly members to resist the temptations of massively crossing over to the All Progressives Congress (APC), the political party of the newly minted Governor and abandon the political parties under whose ideologies and programmes their elections were made possible.

The group has charged the voters to recall any member of the state House of Assembly that would behave like a political prostitute and cross carpet into All Progressives Congress (APC) the party of the new governor.

“We are not opposed to systematically probing the administrations of the past especially that of Rochas Okorocha that has nothing on ground to show for spending eight years as governor, but we think the governor should let the anti-graft bodies to do their independent investigations and retrieve all public assets and cash stolen allegedly by the officials of the past administration prior to the brief period of governor Emeka Ihedioha. “The Imo State governor must restore trust and public confidence. This is important to guarantee legitimacy of his authority.

“Hope Uzodinma must resist any attempt to introduce settlements for Fulani herdsmen known as Ruga because most people in Imo are saying that Abuja produced Hope Uzodinma as Imo governor to implement the anti-people’s policy of taking over ancestral lands of the people to set up RUGA settlement for strange herdsmen.”

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