By Steve Osuji
NEVER AGAIN: Some days are simply crazy. On some days, it would seem Lucifer himself is about, cavorting, getting tizzy and wreaking havoc on hapless earthlings.
This seems to be what happened on January 14, 2020 in Imo State… someday, sometime in the future, a reasonable head would memorialise this day for a greater Imo essence and he would inscribe on a totem: NEVER AGAIN…
Never again shall we be visited by an ogre we dread the most. And we shall say a sombre amen. The day shall be framed in our annals as a moment of sobriety and quiet self-renewal.
THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT: Tuesday, January 14, 2020 was quite uneventful at dawn for a big judgement day. Not many knew that the Supreme Court was pregnant with an earthquake. It had been deferred by 24 hours. That ought to be a telling augury but we didn’t see the devil at the corner pub getting drunk!
Then the day wore on gingerly, the session grew long and much wearisome… the eminent jurists on the gilded bench apparently had a large fishhead to contend with. They probably were making silent supplication that the cup would pass over them…
But alas! the Wisemen of law couldn’t escape. They pronounced a judgement that triggered an earthquake…
AND NIGHT FELL AT NOON OVER IMO: it’s a tough deal when jokes become reality. It’s of course difficult to comprehend, but worse, it’s like a nightmare playing out over an interminable sleep.
On this day, Governor Emeka Ihedioha ceased to be governor. Hope Uzodinma became governor. The judgement came at the dusk of January 14 and a surreal darkness enveloped Imo and lingered through a long night.
Perhaps it was a bad dream that would dissipate at dawn. But it was stark reality that came with the dawn of Wednesday, January 15th, 2020.
That reality has walked the Imo landscape till today. Indeed, that dark reality is one year old. Today marks the anniversary of a wuthering epoch in the annals of Imo.
Since January 14, 2020 the Supreme Court has not rested her glass of water, the new Supreme Court-enacted governor has been out on a limb and Imo has been on extended recession; Imo seems to have embarked on a journey into a dusty oblivion.
The judgement was lofty only in its infamy; every good ear that heard it tingled.
The judiciary practically usurped the duties of the electoral umpire and worked the polling results. But their numbers would not add up. That didn’t matter, they adopted the flawed numbers all the same!
An historic pronouncement was derived from illegible and one-sided evidences. And suddenly, the last became the first! Could this be the was the bible purported it? Not likely.
Nonplussed and confounded by its own subterfuge they succumbed to the remonstrance of the watching world and accepted to do the unthinkable – to review their own FINAL judgement.
But the Supreme Court had already ran itself into a jurisprudential cul de sac, a legal catastrophe that is nigh impossible to extricate itself from.
So making a pronouncement on her hitherto FINAL judgement, the court lapsed into tritedom, she tells the world that her January 14 judgement was albeit final as she had no powers to sit in APPEAL in her own final judgement.
But the moment was REDEEMED, almost, by a dissenting voice Justice Chima Centus Nweze who told his colleagues the jarring truth: this judgement could actually be overturned. And then he dropped the clanger: that the January 14th judgement by the apex court was a “wonder that shall never end.”
Till today, the court is still marinating in its own sauce. This is of course, a recommended case study on institutional atrophy and consequent metastasis.
AND IMO SLIDES INTO THE NETHERWORLD:
This column had noted long ago that the difference between Emeka and Hope is akin to day and night. That was 100 day after January 14. Now one year on, that assessment may well be too charitable. We have drifted into a most darkling situation. And guess what, it seems a most comfortable habitat for the new kids on the block.
All the foundations of public works laid in seven months by Emeka have been uprooted; social contracts meticulously procured were torpedoed. Our barbarians left our gates and overran the land, it seems.
Long-routinised acts of statecraft have been made to seem like rocket science. In a digital age, you would think emoluments management and pension matters would be taken for granted. Nay, these have preoccupied and defined the state government for one full year.
What about other finer arts of governance like inspiring the people and putting them on the carousel of hope? What about multilateral engagements, that interface that engenders smart capital for development? What about our local councils and wards where grass has grown over rural enhancement constructs initiated by Emeka? Meanwhile their allocations never ceased for one day?
EPILOGUE: OF HOPE AND MIRACLES: So many questions…one year after, one has only an imagery of people scurrying about in the shadows like giant mice. It’s a starkly anti intellectual environment we have in Imo State today, a bizarre island without a lighthouse. Well, there are three more years left… let us pray hard for miracle and grace.
Osuji is a columnist.