Who Will Put Tony Okocha On A Leash?

Tony Okocha, the Rivers State representative on the Board of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) is paranoid and needs help. The only thing that appears to give him joy is an attack on the Rivers State Governor, Siminalayi Fubara. The man from Rumuigbo sees his position at NDDC as an opportunity to rival the state government rather than complement it.

For Okocha, who is also the Rivers State Caretaker Committee chairman of the All Progressive Congress, politicking is more important than service to the people. Two incidents confirmed Okocha’s notion of his task as the state representative on the NDDC board.

While on a visit to the APC-dominated Rivers State House of Assembly recently, he revealed without releasing any evidence that the Governor Fubara administration squandered over N144 billion received from the Federation Account between June and December last year.

Okocha also set the stage for the legislature-executive confrontation when he warned the lawmakers, threatening, “We want to warn that as a party, we will not hesitate to punish any member of our party who is in cahoot with these looters of our commonwealth.”

The state’s Commissioner for Information and Communications, Senibo Joe Johnson, immediately refuted the provocative claim as “baseless and illogical.”

A few days after his visit to the state assembly, he appeared on a radio programme to make the same allegation but changed the figures. Instead of N144 billion, he said the correct figure was “about N250 billion” from June to December 2023. He said after January this year, the figure had jumped to over N300 billion. Even when the presenter asked him for evidence, he couldn’t provide any, and instead said it was in the public space!

He claimed the money was squandered because he didn’t see any physical projects as evidence of any capital expenditure. He conveniently ignored the presenter’s interjection that the state government had paid off arrears of pension and gratuities and was doing other verifiable projects in the state.

I’m not writing to glorify Governor Fubara’s administration. But only an irresponsible opposition will trifle with the well-being of the state by elevating political gains above constructive criticism. If you want to take on the state government, make verifiable claims. Back your allegations up with factual evidence and hold the government accountable. But when you cook figures and make wild baseless allegations against a government, you’re a danger to the state and democracy.

If Okocha’s feral claims about revenue incomes for River State were annoying, his claim about a cholera outbreak in Suku Communities, Akuku Toru Local Council of the state, was even more toxic. He claimed a few days ago that the leaders of the communities wrote to him as their representative at NDDC that they had a cholera outbreak due to contaminated water. It was a deliberate shot at the state government to put it in a bad light.

How can communities within the state which have state government-sponsored infectious diseases surveillance officers not notify the state ministry of health about any outbreak? How can a responsible public official that is supposed to serve the state be deliberately provoking public unrest by lying to his people? It’s obvious that Okocha is on a Damage-Fubara-Mission in Rivers State through deception and subterfuge.

Of course, the Rivers State Commissioner for Health, Dr Adaeze Oreh, wasted no time in exposing Okocha’s chicanery. She responded with a statement denying any cholera outbreak in the state. She said, “Cholera, which is a water-borne infectious disease, is a notifiable disease warranting escalating reports from disease surveillance and notification officers attack and the community level “

Dr Oreh has the right pedigree. She is a trained medical practitioner and public health specialist who had worked as Senior Medical Officer at the Department of Hospital Services in Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Health. Dr Oreh also holds a master’s degree in Public health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

A state that has such a hands-on medical personality as the commissioner for health cannot ignore any infectious disease outbreak or fail to track it.

Okocha’s perfidy was exposed when he the radio presenter asked him questions about President Bola Tinubu’s administration. He had asked what the government was doing to tame hunger, warning that people were getting impatient. Okocha responded saying Nigerians must have patient. He said the government was not even up to one year in office, pleading it should be given more time to enable current measures yield the desired results.

Okocha’s response was shocking to me because he had condemned the Fubara administration which had spent similar number of months in office. So, if Nigerians are yet to see the impact of the Tinubu administration despite the funds accruing to the Federal Government after the removal of fuel subsidy, and Okocha is asking the people to exercise more patient, why did he not make the same excuse for the governor of his state?

For the sake of argument, let us accept there are no ongoing physical projects started by the Fubara administration, does that justify Okocha’s allegation of squandermania? As a former chief of staff in the state, he ought to know how the machinery of government works. If he was not playing politics of treachery, he should have brought out evidence to show what the state spent the money on.

He accused Governor Fubara of funding street processions and giving state funds to “fifth columnists and crisis-prenuers” without showing any proof! For a man who is supposed to understand the inner workings of government, Okocha’s allegations against Fubara are pathetic and regrettable. Someone at his level must promote the well-being of the people above partisan politics. If he sees his role at NDDC as that of a parallel administrator to Fubura, it may be time for Tinubu to kick him out of the agency.

He has been talking too much and picking meaningless fights. A wise politician is not the one who lies to get attention. He is the one who understands the nuances of public communication. He knows when to talk, and he talks he makes sense, not noise! Someone should put Okocha on a leash!

– Suleiman wrote from Abuja

Disclaimer: This article is entirely the opinion of the writer and does not represent the views of The Whistler.