By Oguwike Nwachuku
Last week, Governor Hope Uzodimma took a step that will go down in the history of Imo State in particular and Nigeria at large as the first Governor to raise the minimum wage of civil servants across Labour Unions from N70,000 to N104,000.
The consequential adjustments for other categories of workers in relation to their
take home pay; medical and non medical, universities/tertiary institutions, teaching and non- teaching staff, were accordingly effected.
It was a decision that took many unawares, especially the Imo workforce and their restless leadership.
Since the pronouncement was made, joy unprecedented is the best way to describe the feeling of all the workers.
But trust Onwa Oyoko, he did his homework properly as regards the source of funds for the payment and it’s mode of sustainability before making the pronouncement public.
That, of course, puts paid to the mindset of the early bird attention seekers ahead of 2027 who think the reason for the salary raise was political.
Many of them are already on the loose with gibberish pieces that obviously betray the source of their thoughtless interventions. I shall return to this shortly.
Regardless,the additional good news on the Imo State minimum wage increase is that the process of the payment is already in full gear. With improved Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), and enhanced allocation from the federation account plus the type of infrastructure that will promote Imo’s economic development under Governor Uzodimma, and even after him, the State will be good to go.
However, it must be borne in mind that no sooner had the Governor dropped the heartwarming news on the wage hike than the report reverberated across the country.
The latest information is that the Imo State wage raise had resonated with other States in Nigeria. While another Governor from the South East followed the footsteps of Governor Uzodimma and raised his own minimum wage to N90,000, workers in another State in South West wrote their Governor demanding nothing below N150,000 as minimum wage.
In the coming weeks, this developing copy would have taken proper shape, and to the extent that the men would be separated from the boys.
What that means, is that the Nigerian workers will be in a position to know the Governors who have the competence, capability and capacity to pilot the affairs of their State and those who don’t. Put differently, the workers will also be in a good standing to determine the Governors who have incorporated openness, probity and accountability in their leadership agenda.
The bigger picture arising from Governor Uzodimma’s decision to increase the minimum wage of his workforce is that in the future, the idea of incessant agitation by workers for minimum wage raise may no longer be fashionable if a sitting Chief Executive of a State could do so without being prompted, but solely based on evidence of improved revenue of his State and ability to pay. It also means that a worker can be at liberty to decide which State to approach to render his or her service.
Therefore, those who are wont to input political consideration into what took place in Imo State had better think twice or better still, hide their faces in shame.
Two other issues attracted my attention during the week that just ended. The issues were canvassed in writing, either online or in hardcopy by Sam Onwuemeodo, Ezenna C. Okoro and Chinedu Agu. They all wrote from where they appeared.
Ezenna Okoro’s, ” Uzodimma’s lopsided appointments,” was published in The Nation as a letter while Sam Onwuemeodo’s, “The appointment of a total 32 Commissioners by His Excellency,” was posted online.
Obviously, Onwuemeodo and Okoro wrote on the same subject and may have got their briefing from the same source. If they didn’t get the briefing together at the same time, they must have received it differently, but as the same topic.
I am sure the briefing must have taken place in someone’s living room, dinning table or better still at an eatery because the texture of their lamentation suggests those are the likely places the briefing could have emanated from.
Like I said earlier, the bond between Onwuemeodo and Okoro in their write ups is their interest in who Governor Uzodimma appointed into his cabinet. What is ailing them is that the Governor may not have met their personal expectation or the expectation of the person(s) who briefed/recruited them to do the writing.
But Agu’s piece dwelt on his idea of infrastructure in Imo State, and not what is on the ground and which has largely met the desire of the generality of the Imo people who are witnesses to the enormous infrastructure decay that was Imo State when Governor Uzodimma took over power in 2020.
For the avoidance of doubt, I have been reading my brother Sam Onwuemeodo for some time now, mainly not because of the subjects he discusses, but for the fun of his usual pay-off: “We shall continue to clap for Jesus.”
No doubt, Sam Onwuemeodo remains one of the few journalists I know of in Imo State who received proper training in the practice of journalism. Therefore, he ought to know what is factual and what is hearsay.
He shouldn’t belong to the genre of media practitioners who were thrown into the mix by the currents of the socalled citizens journalism that makes everyone using an Android phone a journalist. I am talking about media practitioners who do not know what it takes to follow a peg to ascertain it’s veracity or not.
Properly honed journalists, I believe like Sam Onwuemeodo, also have fair knowledge of what the law says about those occupying public offices, the same way they are expected to know a little about any subject under the sun as Journalists.
But I am worried that Brother Sam may have forgotten all the rules, nay all the ethics, and now follows the rules set by politically inclined persons and not the sector he has always been part and parcel of.
If the axiom “once a soldier always a soldier”, is anything to go by, how come Sam’s temporary sojourn in a political environment has tweaked his mindset so dangerously from what has been his life?
How can he allow himself to be mired in the labyrinth of political propaganda and subtle blackmail all in the name of telling the Governor who to choose and from where for his cabinet?
If Sam recognizes the right of the Governor to appoint whoever he desires to be in his cabinet how come he chose to travel the lane of clannishness, by insinuating that the Governor did not appoint Commissioners from Aboh Mbaise and Ezinihitte?
“The Governor has the prerogative to appoint Commissioners. He has the right or privilege to appoint whoever he wishes, Commissioner for ‘anything’, ” he wrote. Really? So what has the Governor done wrongly?
Who has carried out a study that shows that those appointed as Commissioners, and from what ever area, are more relevant in the scheme of things in a particular government than those not appointed in the same stead?
Okoro, like Sam, who claims to have written from Awa in Oguta, was also promoting clannish politics instead of recognising merit, capacity, competence and general good of the entire Imo citizens regardless of where they come from.
But unlike Sam, Okoro’s worry or the worry of his mentor was that more persons were appointed from Oru Nation. And the question is: is there any of the appointees from Oru Nation in Governor Uzodimma’s government who does not have record of excellent performance that is rubbing off on the entire Imo State in the assignment given to him?
Back to Sam Onwuemeodo’s piece, to the best of my knowledge, Governor Uzodimma’s government has many sons and daughters from Mbaise Nation who are active in his decision making processes for the greater good of the whole Imo State.
They include but not limited to the Deputy Chief of Staff in charge of Administration, Dr. Pat Ezeji, the Principal Secretary to the Governor, Dr. (Mrs) Irene Chima, yours sincerely, Oguwike Nwachuku as the Chief Press Secretary/Special Adviser Media, Dr. Tony Mgbeahuuike (Commissioner for Livestock Development), Dr. Elias Emedom
(Commissioner for Special Projects), Mr. Anselem Anyanwu ( Commissioner for Budget, Economic Planning and Statistics), Hon. Mrs. Ngozi Pat Ezeji ( SA, Strategy and Development), Comrade Austin Chilakpu
(SA on Labour Matters), Ms. Doris Tony- Anyanwu (SA/State Coordinator NEPAD/ AUDA/ APRM), Chief Perry Opara (SA Political to the Governor), Mr. Sam Nwaobasi (SA Programming, Monitoring and Implementation), Mr. Eze Obinna (SA Narcotics and Illicit drug Monitoring), Chief Mike Uzodimma (Federal Commissioner, Public Complaints Commission), Engr. Bede Opara (Chairman, Imo State Electricity Commission), Prof Ikechukwu Dozie (Vice Chancellor, KO Mbadiwe University), among others.
It will therefore be the height of ingratitude for Sam Onwuemeodo to malign the Governor for alleged marginalisation or exclusion of the Mbaise Nation in his appointment.
I therefore challenge him or any other Mbaise son or daughter to tell me which Governor of Imo State, before Governor Uzodimma, was this generous in the appointment of Mbaise sons and daughters into their government.
The beauty of the mode of appointment of these Mbaise sons and daughters is that the Governor knows them one on one and reached out to them personally based on his conviction that their capacity, competence and thought line were in sync with his concerning a greater and better Imo and not a State where clannishness and division reign.
It is rather unfortunate when those who ought to think a united Imo State are at the forefront of fanning the ember of disunity, all in the name of politics.
The average, and true Mbaise son or daughter is that person who is desirous of seeing a united Imo State where there are infrastructure for every Imo citizen’s use in the area of good roads, water, electricity, hospital, and schools.
The true Mbaise sons and daughters are interested in how the available infrastructure development the Governor is building in Imo State will engender the much desired spike in economic activities that will bring out the best in them in a competitive society.
They are happy they have a Governor who is making a difference in that area in Imo State, building roads linking all parts of Imo together, hospitals that will take care of the people’s health needs, schools our wards will be proud to say they attended, electricity that will help to energise the businesses of the people, and place our youth in a position to pursue their dreams in today’s competitive society where emphasis on digital employment and economy is paramount.
Back to Chinedu Agu and his hallucinatory write up, I do hope he lives and works here in Imo State. If he does, I leave him to his conscience about the infrastructure situation in Imo State and other issues he has outrightly and mischievously misinformed the public. Be rest assure that rather than think you were undermining the Governor and the State under his watch, you have only succeeded in projecting your as one worse than a prodigal son.
If any one is tempted to take Agu seriously, not when it is said he was part of the government that was declared illegal by the highest court in Nigeria. What that means is that Agu is still rueing in the fate that befell him and his cohorts more than five years ago, and since his has, in particular become a psychological issue, may take long before it heals.
But is it not surprising that Agu has continued to hurt himself even when his masters are celebrating the changes in Imo State under Governor Uzodimma across all sectors contrary to their expectations?
At the risk of sounding immodest, if after seeing the roads from Owerri – Okigwe, Owerri- Orlu, Owerri- Mbaise- Umuahia, Orlu- Akokwa- Mgbe-Uga, Assumpta Flyover, the Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu International Conference Centre, the more than 120 solid roads scattered across the nooks and crannies of Imo State including the capital city, the balloon technology drainage control system that removed Owerri from a perennial flooded capital since 2020, the three General Hospitals at Omuma, Oguta and Ohaji, the Imo Digital City, the Alvan Ikoku Federal University of Education, the Imo State Polytechnic Omuma, the Federal University of Technology Owerri Teaching Hospital, the Imo State University Teaching Hospital, among others, and pretends not to see them, then his blindness must have graduated to something more than physical.
I made the point years back that there are people who are deliberately blind over the good work Governor Uzodimma is doing in Imo State. It goes without saying, therefore, that Agu belongs to that category of persons whose blindness is not just self inflicted but borne out of hatred for the Governor.
But who cares? So long as majority of Imo people, the reason Governor Uzodimma was overwhelming elected in government are happy, let the likes of Agu continue to rue over a lost political opportunity that can never be salvaged, not even with their renewed political propaganda and blackmail ahead of the 2027 elections.
.Nwachuku, Chief Press Secretary/Special Adviser Media to Governor Uzodimma writes from Owerri.
