Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State has raised an alarm over what he described as “mind-boggling corrupt practices being perpetrated by the state’s civil servants,” running into hundreds of million naira. To this effect, he has threatened to slice through the service with a long knife.
The governor also disclosed that many civil servants in the state were benefitting unduly from different entrenched forms of graft, which he said had resulted in one person drawing salaries and wages seven times in a month with seven different names.
Briefing journalists at the Government House, Owerri, after returning from Turkey, where he had travelled with a 100-man delegation on a business and investment promotion drive, Okorocha vowed to block all revenue leakages more seriously now than ever, declaring an all-out war on ghost workers and phoney pensioners in the state.
He said based on recent verifications his administration carried out, he was shocked to discover that non civil servants were collecting more salaries and pensions than real civil servants and pensioners.
“After the ongoing verification, permanent secretaries, directors and accountants found culpable would be summarily dismissed, and made to refund all the money deemed to have been embezzled,” the governor warned.
He stated that the financial sleaze in ministries and parastatals was responsible for the state spending 90 percent of its monthly allocations on salaries of workers and political appointees, who he said only constitute about 1 percent of the state’s population.
He also maintained his stance on privatisation of some of the state government-owned parastatals and agencies.
“I don’t have any reason why I should be paying N2 billion annually to staff members of Imo Water Board, and yet, no single person in Owerri or Imo State drinks water from there.
“Tell me why I should continue to pay N4.8 billion annually to Imo Hospitals Management Board, and yet, nobody enjoys any service from the numerous hospitals in the state.
“If I use N2 billion, I’ll give every household in Owerri metropolis borehole; while N4.8 billion will be enough to take care of the health of generality of the people in the state for one year.
“This is the same scenario with other government parastatals and agencies in the state,” Okorocha said.
Meanwhile, he disclosed that his administration was carefully reviewing the activities of companies that were granted concessions to manage Adapalm (Imo Palm Plantation – IPP) and Imo Transport Company (ITC), to see whether or not they could be allowed to continue to enjoy the concessions, saying the concessioning of the companies had not truly yielded needed results.
He assured that he was determined to realise a new policy mantra of ‘one community, one factory project,’ for which he said he took some industrialists from the state to Turkey for them to key into the vision.
Meanwhile, he has assured investors and business operators in the state that his government would do the needful by providing necessary infrastructure that would make their businesses succeed.
According to him, N5 billion had been deposited with the Imo State Microfinance Bank for communities in the state to access loans at 7 percent interest rate per community to set up a factory. In the state’s industrialisation policy, each community must have a cottage industry where it would produce some products and employ some youths.
He informed that the state government would fund the factories, while the communities would manage them as a first phase of job creation policy.
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