Rochas opens the floodgate of grassroots politics in Imo

Given the need and urgency to engage the rural populace more actively in governance, the governor recently announced that local government elections will be conducted in the state come January, 2017. The announcement which was widely received with great excitement and jubilation across the state is indeed a welcome development and a fulfillment of His Excellency’s earlier promise to conduct local government elections in the life of his administration.

It is however pertinent to recall that Owelle’s burning desire to engage the rural people and ensure a broad based democratization of the grassroots through the conduct of local government elections had been truncated on a number of occasions by the actions of the sacked local government chairmen who had dragged the governor and the state to court over their dismissal. The chairmen who are all members of the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) have continued to politicize local government elections to the point that whenever the governor makes a pronouncement on his intention and determination to conduct the elections, these people would quickly revive their court cases, and, using the instrumentality of the law, hold the government to ransom...