Re: Rochas has vindicated Ohakim Anyone who doesnt have appetite for the truth and stomach for facts should not bother reading on. Anyone who is allergic to honesty and reactive to sincerity should manage to pass. When you dislike someone so much to the point of denying even his existence, you run the high risk of making him more important, successful and progressive than he estimated to be. I will start my series on how Rochas continues to vindicate Ohakim today issue by issue. In 2011 at Assumpta, Ikedi Ohakim boldly asserted that education is not free in any part of the world. This was contrary to Rochas loud offer of free education. Most people believed Rochas partly and largely because people would believe anything they choose to believe no matter how improbable. Im sure Rochas was surprised at how easy his product was to sell. Today, only the intellectually wretched believe that free education in the true sense of the term operated in IMO state for a day. Ikedi Ohakim, in spite of the fact that the schooling public have been tutored mostly free of the burden of school fees, has stood by his assertion that free education is not possible. I imagine that by the time Ohakim was challenging Rochas offer 3 years ago he did not conceive in his mind that monthly income of the state could jump from 2 billion he was used to to 11 billion Rochas now enjoys. What has baffled me is that Ohakim as at yesterday reiterated that free education is impracticable. I make no effort to peddle untruths in public for the sake of partisan association hence Tony Izuogu will not sell a lie to launder anyones political image. I hereby state that there is no free education in IMO state; there has never been and might never be. We neither need it. Im sorry, Ohakim was and is right. What then do we have in IMO under rochas? In a bid to appear to be keeping his promise of free education, Rochas did a number of forensic, as it were, manipulations. It is a less offensive brand of Ponzi scheme...if you like, a rob-peter-to-pay-paul strategy. It is a smart one though. Rochas did the following and more to bankroll his Russian gift of free education: 1. Increased acceptance fee of new intakes of state tertiary institutions 2. Created an admission quota system in favour of non-indigenes in the ratio of 7:3 so that one non-indigene pays for the cost of 2 indigenous students 3. Deducts between 1-20 percent of salaries of civil servants 4. Doubled auxiliary costs like textbooks and the like 5. Suspended subventions to the institutions 6. Required students of tertiary institutions to pay so-called scholarship activation fee of twenty thousand naira So, when you subtract the cost of running the educational system from total income from the above measures and more, you have a positive differential. In order words, the Rochas free education is a profitable business...the output is by far greater than the input. One important fact is that he is actually not robbing Peter to pay Paul. He is taking from Peter and Paul to pay Peter and Paul less than what he gets from them. Parents, largely civil servants, pay the school fees by the deductions from their salaries and allowances. Every car owner in IMO also puts money unwillingly and unknowingly into this good business of free education. Third party insurance premium for cars and other state-controlled vehicle documents have been increased by at least 50% and paid to the state government. Dont crucify me yet. Rochas Okorocha is street smart, ingenious in his way and clever...to have planned and executed this scheme...beside the ethical questions. My dears, we are in reality paying more for education than we did when we paid school fees. I have presented the facts loosely. My question therefore is: Has Ohakim not been vindicated? I know what some people will ask, why didnt Ohakim do this in his first tenure? Simple answer lies in the nature and character and management profession of Ohakim. He prefers to call a spade a spade and he refuses to promise what he is unwilling to give.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 18:10:26 +0000