When last year, Senator Rochas Okorocha was paraded like a common criminal over the botched attempt in recovering properties confiscated from him by the Hope Uzodimma administration in Imo State, there were many who felt that the incumbent administration had taken to political banditry in its faceoff with the former governor.
There were, however, many others who felt that Okorocha did not deserve mercy. Many said so because of the gravity of the allegations against him. Others for the imperiousness with which Okorocha acted when he was governor.
That imperiousness and imperialistic tendency was in the view of many seen in the botched attempt in transmitting power at the end of his eight-year rule to his son through marriage.
However, in the opinion of many, the law of retributive justice was getting back at Okorocha. Observers will not forget that the parade of the former governor took place just about a week after one of the most convoluted and devious political schemes of the Okorocha regime was laid to rest; to wit, the impeachment of Okorocha’s first deputy governor, Jude Agbaso.
Agbaso was impeached supposedly for receiving a N450 million bribe from a contractor. The spinless Imo State House of Assembly, then under the speakership of Rt. Hon Ben Uwajumogu turned its face away from the banking records that showed that the supposed bribe was actually transferred by the contractor into his own company’s account.
Off course, Okorocha did not carry out the politically heinous crime of hanging a crime on an innocent man alone. The Speaker of the House at that time, Uwajumogu apparently benefited from the spin off as he was lifted to the Senate. He died in mysterious circumstances six months into his term in the Senate at the age of 51 in December 2019.
The immediate beneficiary of the devious plot, Prince Eze Madumere, a long time political associate of Okorocha’s who replaced Agbaso as deputy governor was to suffer the same fate that befell Agbaso when in 2018 he was also subjected to his own impeachment ritual.
What Okorocha did to Agbaso, nay the Agbaso political family who helped him in coming to power as governor in 2011 underlines the arrogance many governors bring to bear once they are in office. Their deputies are often the most persecuted and deprived except in very few cases.
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