~ PARTY IS IN LOVE WITH HOODLUMS TERRORIZING THE STATE
Another string of hate messages seeped from the PDP this Thursday filled with evil projections toward Governor Hope Uzodimma and the general Imo populace. The goal, as with everything the PDP churns out, is to humiliate Uzodimma, but this one inadvertently achieved the opposite.
As we know, Imo is sober after unknown gunmen felled three traditional rulers on Tuesday at Njaba LGA. An utter sacrilege. Tragedy of this kind typically calls for rank closing because the enemy is a common one. We saw this in the UK barely a week ago as both Prime Minister, Borris Johnson, and opposition leader, Keir Starmer, rose above political differences not only to condemn the stabbing to death of a sitting member of parliament, Sir David Amess, but also to collaborate to forestall future attacks.
In Imo, PDP, the so-called opposition, views insecurity as an arena to politic and promote itself. While its self-acclaimed leader Emeka Ihedioha has his schedule packed with burials, hirelings jump into costume to spread disinformation, and stimulate anarchy at the slightest impulse.
As a hoodlums-loving party, the PDP will neither condemn specific criminality nor rebuke perpetrators, instead it will extol criminals and justify their actions. As if it weren't bad enough that it heaps curses on the governor for deploying state actors to curtail rogue elements, it even goes the whole nine yards to demand complete withdrawal of security forces. The latest articles to emanate from its secretariat repeat this same old factory noise with the addition of fabricated statistics.
We know that unemployment impacts security. What the PDP will never mention, however, is that the Uzodimma administration is taking sweeping measures to combat both. Just yesterday, the House of Assembly approved the governor's request to vire 31.9 billion Naira in the 2021 budget just to combat insecurity. By virement, the government transfers budgetary allocations from less critical areas into areas of urgent need, in this case security.
The PDP will not tell the world of the creation of thousands of direct and indirect jobs through ongoing mass road constructions statewide, or the rehabilitation of Adapalm and unblocking of legal hurdles towards the absorption of thousands of Imolites into its workforce, or the recent onboarding of young Imo people into critical MDAs including the Internal Revenue Service and the Imo State Water and Sewerage Corporation among others, or the plethora of interventions aimed at promoting start-ups in ICT and agriculture including the One Youth One Farm project or the direct disbursement of over 4billion Naira to thousands of SMEs.
It will not tell the world that had it not fled with over N19.6b of local government money, perhaps the Uzodimma administration would have had the necessary reserves to confront with greater efficiency the problems bequeathed by the renegade regime of Ihedioha.
The problem of Emeka's PDP stems from poor self-image mixed with a novel case of siege mentality. It can't seem to decide wether to set fire to the state out of spite or wait to seek reelection come 2023. It imagines that any progress under Uzodimma could only come at its expense. Under this unhealthy mindset, Imo's progress feels like an attack on its very existence.
May we remind the party and all those reaping from its enterprise of chaos that Imo is being rehabilitated, reconstructed, and recovered, and no degree of blackmail and disinformation will scuttle it.
Uzodimma has the mandate and permission of Imo people to take every step to solve the need of the hour and make our lives better, safer, prosperous.