Funeral services, now thriving enterprise in Imo —Ohakim

The immediate past Governor of Imo State, Chief Ikedi Ohakim, has expressed concerns that “funeral services are now the most thriving enterprise in the state”.

Ohakim, who is the gubernatorial candidate of Accord Party, AP, made the observation yesterday, at a town hall meeting in Owerri.

“Imo State now has, as at December 2018, 180 morgues, from the 18 we had when I left office in 2011. It is now clear that funeral services are now the most thriving enterprise in the state”, Ohakim said.

After showing the audience “the sordid pictorial decay in all the general hospitals and water projects” he left behind, Ohakim said: “I have the moral burden, political, economic, social and spiritual responsibilities to the people of Imo people and humanity at large, to challenge and address the wasteful, treacherous, deceitful, capricious, autocratic, totalitarian and perceivable draconian malady that has entangled Imo State, between 2011 and 2019.”

While debunking the allegation that he embezzled N8 billion, through Nworie River Dredging Contract, Chief Ohakim also said that the dredging with three bridges was a Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, Federal Government project.

“Two bridges in the contract, at Egbeada and Nekede roads, had been completed before I left office. However, for reasons best known to Rochas Okorocha, he neglected or was unable to follow up on this environmentally impactful contract”, Ohakim said.

The AP governorship candidate accused Okorocha of “ignorantly or deliberately destroying the flow of Rivers Nworie and Otamiri, with poorly constructed culverts, instead of bridges in utter contravention of engineering design”.

Ohakim was also irked that “the traditional institution has been debased, frustrated and caged by Okorocha”, even as he viewed same as “a desecration of our cultural norms by the present administration”.