Missing facts in Uzodinma‘s N106m contract fraud
In their obvious desperation to achieve a predetermined political goal, the panel which purportedly probed the award of government contracts did a shoddy job and left more than enough loopholes for their report to be fit only for the trashcan.
That is, if the titbits we are gleaning from different newspapers and online platforms are anything to go by. It will not be logical to excuse the panel’s obvious carelessness on shortness of time, because they had more than enough time to have done a more thorough and credible investigation, nor would it be correct to question the competence of the individuals that constituted the panel.
I may not know all of them, but Justice Iheaka should have done better, given his reputation and experiences on the bench. Justice Iheaka’s alleged personal and long-term relationship with Chief Uzodinma, notwithstanding, one expected the eminent jurist to have come out with a more thorough, fair and credible report.
Could it be that 2023 is coming too fast or it is seeming too sure that Okorocha will be a prominent determinant factor in the presidential race, that his detractors are in a blind haste to cook up something peppery and keep the political climate busy with the rein in Okorocha heat?
Yet, in this haste, many important details and facts were missed. Facts that would have helped make the report a little more readable and believable. There are salient questions that majority of Imolites would love to be cleared on before they can take whatever the contents of the report is, with the smallest pinch of salt.
How do you carry out an investigation on an issue without laying out the necessary pros and cons? A probe that has to do with contracts award and execution for a period of time should have captured the number of such contracts awarded, at what cost those contracts were awarded, how many of the contracts were fully executed and how many were unexecuted, and for the unexecuted and the uncompleted ones, what percentage of the contract sum was paid and what percentage of work had been done.
106 Billion Naira is a whole lot of money for anyone not to account for. But, how did this huge of amount of money get missing? And who really stole the money? Did the investigators trace this huge amount of money into accounts belonging to Okorocha or any of the appointees of his administration?
If so, then they have done a good job. Imolites, whose money was allegedly stolen would want to see the accounts into which these monies were paid in published and the names of those who operate these accounts exposed.
One of the ‘findings’ of the probe panel is that some civil servants “resisted intimidation by some high placed government officials to compromise on standards in the execution of contracts”.
Imolites would want to know the names of such civil servants. Such civil servants, if they really exist, should be rewarded and celebrated, while the names of those who compromised with the excuse of; “obedience to my superiors” should also be made public for the benefit of many Imolites who feel that this report is nothing but a witch-hunt against the former governor of the State.
It is known that the former governor had sued both the panelists and the State Government over his lack of confidence in both the constitution of the panel and modus adopted by the panelists in carrying out their probe.
Okorocha also regularly explained to the panelists through his lawyers that he was either indisposed to honor their invitations or cited the ongoing court processes challenging the activities of the panels for his absence at the sittings of the panel. Another reason for Okorocha’s refusal to appear before the panel was the panel’s reluctance to copy him the petitions necessitating the probe.
This report wouldn’t have been complete without the testimony of the accused. You don’t shave someone’s hair in his absence. When a jury’s impartiality is challenged by any of the parties, the most honourable thing for such jurist to do is to recuse himself from such matter. But, these particular set of jurists seem to have been very proud of their partiality in the matter which they were asked to investigate.
It is to Okorocha’s irrefutable credit that he initiated more than 3000 public works project during his time as governor. An impartial investigator would have done well to identify where these projects are located, their present condition and how much the State Government had expended on each of those projects.
There is no how, all the projects done by the Okorocha administration would have been substandard, for, even most of the facilities being used by the present administration were put in place by the Okorocha administration and are included in this over 3000 count of Okorocha’s project. The Oputa High Court Complex where the panel had some of their sittings was also fully built by the Okorocha administration.
Okorocha couldn’t have been the contractor that handled these contentious projects and even if the panel had reasonable cause to suspect that the former governor or some of his cronies have interests in the companies through which some of these contracts were awarded, the most reasonable thing would have been to publish the names of such companies, their details in CAC and other facts that would support such belief.
All over the world, politicians have deployed probe of their predecessors and political opponents as tools to ‘cut them to size’ or whittle down the political influence of those whom they see as rivals, or those who are truly rivals. However, good students of political history would appreciate that, most often than not, this strategy had boomeranged. Instead of damaging the popularity of the politicians targeted with such vindictive probes, such probes had sometimes, earned such politicians public sympathy and increased their public acceptability.
Even in the much respected and referenced America, records are rich with probes that could best pass as nothing but political witch-hunts. Probes initiated to scupper an opponent’s political ambition or to just splash some bad mud on an opponent’s reputation and acceptability.
The difference with such scenarios in advanced democracies, is that the institutions are strong enough to ward off unwieldy political interferences. Trump’s decision to use that strategy on Biden nearly cost him his job, and got him an infamous page on American history book as the third American President to be impeached.
However, unlike in some advanced democracies, most of such vendetta-inspired panels in Africa are too obviously ‘hatchetry’, too brazen, and almost always poorly executed. This could best describe the Uzodimma Panel Report on Contracts Award in Imo State. Following in the footsteps of other such panels, the Iheaka panel came up with a report that could best be described as incompatible with realities on ground, haphazard and which its recommendations can only be implemented in a Banana kind of Republic.
For instance, a good investigator would have have found out how much was budgeted for capital project in the eight years Okorocha was governor, that a whopping 106 billion Naira could have developed wings and flown away.
The entire setup would have also been more credible if the report stated how much of the budget estimate was implemented within the period and how much wasn’t. This fact would have given one a better background to begin to take the report of any missing money a little more seriously.
For instance, I do not think there is any year in the Okorocha administration where the yearly budget was up to 300 billion Naira, and the highest percentage allocation to capital projects has hardly exceeded 30 percent of the entire budget, each year. So, assuming that the Okorocha administration budgeted, on the average, 70 billion Naira per fiscal year for capital project.
That will give us about 560 billion Naira as the total amount budgeted for capital project in the eight years of Okorocha’s administration. How could 106 billion Naira have been ‘stolen’ in eight years, especially when we compare the unprecedented number of projects on the ground, with the sum of money being talked about?
In fairness to Chief Hope Uzodimma, he never left anyone in doubt about his assignment in Imo as governor. What he did not let out through his body language, he made clear in his infamous speech at the Government House during a meeting with some political associates when he stated that he was determined to put necessary machineries in place to stop Okorocha’s presidential ambition.
Many people also believe that this was the major reason Uzodimma was drafted into the APC, in the first place, and for which everything was done by his sponsors to impose him on Imo people as their governor.
It should therefore not surprise anyone that even with an unambiguous directive by a judge of the Federal High Court that the probe panels should stop their proceedings until a suit initiated in the Court by Senator Okorocha is done with, the panel hurriedly cooked up their report with an obvious intent to foist a fait accompli on the court and if not so, achieve their original objective of hurting the image of the former governor, for political reasons.
Governor Uzodimma has stated his intention to set up a review committee, whose recommendations he will no doubt, gazette in a Government White Paper. One would be deceiving himself if he expects anything different from the Review Committee. However, it must be stated that this whole thing is not being done to protect or project public interest, but to advance individual political ambitions and taint those who do not agree with the present government in dark colours.
