Pot calling kettle black

He said the chairmen leave their areas and relocate to the state capital “only to come back when it is time to share money.” Aliyu also said, “Local Government chairmen have turned themselves to dictators. Some don’t stay at their headquarters. They run their councils like personal kingdoms. Most of them don’t have fiscal discipline. […]

He said the chairmen leave their areas and relocate to the state capital “only to come back when it is time to share money.” Aliyu also said, “Local Government chairmen have turned themselves to dictators. Some don’t stay at their headquarters. They run their councils like personal kingdoms. Most of them don’t have fiscal discipline. If local governments in the country were doing well, the pressure on the states and at the federal level will not be there.”
This is a blatant case of a pot calling kettle black. All the things that Aliyu said local government are doing, are governors not doing ten times that? He said the chairmen do not stay in their areas. You governors, do you stay in your states? It is even good that the chairmen only go to their state capitals and hide there. You governors, are you not always in Abuja? You are looking for every small opportunity to run away from your state capitals. Meeting with president; meeting with vice president; economic council, council of state, governors’ forum, party executive committee, party convention etc.
In fact some governors virtually live abroad. They say they are going for seminars; tomorrow they say it is a meeting with investors; the day after that they say medical trip. There are some governors that go on pilgrimage every month. There is also one governor who said he must travel abroad in order to attend to his business empire, as if the state that he governors does not need attending to.
Governor Aliyu also said the local government chairmen have no fiscal discipline. Let me ask him; which fiscal discipline do the governors themselves have? Spending money anyhow; some of them buying private jets; others riding in limousines; sending plane loads of party supporters on junkets. How can you turn around and accuse the chairmen of the same things that your colleagues are doing? Is it because you know that the chairmen cannot open their mouth and challenge you? Is this not a case of a pot calling kettle black?

ID card for Northerners in Imo?

Every Northerner who plies a trade in Imo State must be screened by the state government and then issued with an identity card. This is official. One Faisal Lawal, who is Governor Rochas Okorocha’s Senior Special Assistant on Northern Affairs, stated this in Owerri.
According to Lawal, the screening has already started “with the aim of identifying every Northerner trading in the state. It also affects those engaged as security guards in all parts of the state.” He said the screening is in line with Okorocha’s ‘Know Your Neighbour” policy following the discovery of an IED in a church in Owerri. Okorocha also warned all Northern traders to stop entering the state with their goods at night.
This patently unconstitutional program of the Imo State Government is akin to the American state of New York ordering all Americans from the Deep South to be screened and issued with certain Ids. Or Indians from Gujarat being screened in New Delhi. Someone should remind Imo State Government that many Igbo citizens resident in the North have committed crimes over the years, some of them heinous, but no one screened all of them and issued them with discriminatory ID cards. Okorocha himself schooled in Maiduguri. What if BOSG had issued him with an ID card at the time?