By Amby Uneze
The Governor of Imo State, Hope Uzodimma, has continued to take a swipe at his predecessor over what he described as the deplorable state of affairs left behind for him to manage.
The governor, in a statewide broadcast to the people of the state to mark his 100 days in office on Monday, said that the circumstances of his taking over as governor did not give him the opportunity to set up a transition committee so as to prepare well for governance.
According to him, the situation was not helped by the sorry state of affairs he inherited, adding: “There was no handover note from the previous government to me. This left me with no definite starting point. In addition, I inherited an empty treasury and a disillusioned, disoriented and dispirited civil service.
“It was sad to behold the site of the Imo State Civil Service Secretariat. The roofs of all the buildings housing the civil service structure were leaking. All the blocks were dirty and unkempt. There was no water in the buildings just as there was no light.
“To describe the entire environment where our civil servants worked as reminiscent of an abandoned scary set of buildings in which no decent person can conduct any meaningful business will be a gross understatement. It was close to a piggery.
“Worse still, I inherited a public service sector that was riddled with corruption and fraud. The amount of Imo State money that was siphoned through a public sector corruption riddled payroll system was simply mind blowing. It was, to say the least, incredible.
“It was very painful to me that while Imo people groaned under the yoke of scanty infrastructural provisions and lack of efficient public service delivery, few heartless people were regularly siphoning huge sums of money from public coffers. Needless to add that these stolen funds could have been used to provide more infrastructure and services to the people.”
The governor noted that his 100 days in office had offered an auspicious moment to share and review “our journey so far since that fateful day of January 15, this year, when I was sworn in as the rightfully elected governor of our dear state”.
He said that the tradition of marking 100 days in office started by the administration of President John Kennedy of the US in 1963. Ever since, the commemoration of the first 100 days in the life of an administration has become a feature of democracy around the world.
He thanked God for the opportunity to contribute “our invaluable quota to the good governance of the state and its long suffering masses”, adding that desperate attempts by political jobbers to turn back the clock notwithstanding, “our commitment to turn things around for the better, remains unshaken”.
