By Declan Emelumba

Some lawyers are generally given to grandiloquence, hyperbole, and semantics. Unfortunately for them, the bombastic display at court hardly wins cases. What does is fact, hard facts, proven facts beyond reasonable doubt. Judges decide cases based on those facts, not on grammatical gymnastics.

So when I read the premeditated and venomous attack on the Governor of Imo State, Senator Hope Uzodimma, by one Chinedu Agu, I wasn’t surprised. Agu, let it be known, is not writing from a place of sincerity. This is the public lashing of a bitter soul, still reeling from political irrelevance after his stint as Personal Assistant to the Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice under the disgraced, short-lived and corruption-tainted Emeka Ihedioha interregnum. He speaks from agony.

He couched his bile in the garb of a “diary,” anchored on the just-concluded Nigerian Bar Association conference in Enugu. But it is nothing more than a string of satanic verses aimed at demarketing the very state of his birth. What we read was not a lawyer’s reflection, rigorous as one would expect, but the rant of a man burdened by envy and mischief. A man who, by his own admission, was more fascinated by the dinner of a Chief Judge than the development of his own state.

Agu’s animus shows in how he lampooned fellow lawyers from Imo simply for associating with Governor Uzodimma. His language betrayed a man bitter with colleagues whose rising political profiles clearly torment him. He presents himself as a public intellectual but fails even the simplest test of balance.

He raises four talking points:
1) That Enugu has better roads than Imo

2) That land administration works in Enugu but does not work in Imo.

3) That Enugu has a Chief Judge and Imo does not.

4) That police in Enugu are courteous while police in Imo are predatory.

Let’s unpack each of these fantasies, starting with the roads. First, how did Agu get to Enugu? Most likely via the 55km Owerri–Okigwe Road, which has been fully reconstructed under Governor Uzodimma. Even former Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, attested to its quality, no single pothole. Agu conveniently left that out.

He says Owerri roads are craters. Again, no specifics. Is he referring to the newly dualised MCC-Toronto Road? Or Chukwuma Nwoha Road? Or Lake Nwaebere, which used to flood real estate corridors before Uzodimma’s balloon technology put an end to that menace?

What about the Assumpta-Hospital Junction road? The stretch from Port Harcourt Road Junction to World Bank Market? The fully rebuilt stretch from Warehouse to Emmanuel College to Naze Junction? Wetheral Road? Douglas Road? Evan Enwerem Road? DSS Road from Onitsha Road to Amakohia?

Can Agu show the public the “craters” on these roads?

Or perhaps he hasn’t been through the Owerri–Orlu dualised highway, the Owerri-Mbaise-Unuahia road, the erosion solving Orlu-Mgbe-Urualla-Akokwa-Uga road or the over 100 other roads completed under this administration. But of course, it is easier to grumble in fiction than drive through fact.

To further his mischief, he claims to have moved freely around Enugu during the NBA conference. On what basis? Evening drives through Uwani, Independence Layout, and Trans-Ekulu. That’s his entire evidence. Three locations. And he claims to have “seen the city.” That’s like driving past the Fire Service intersection in Owerri and claiming to know the whole of Imo.

Now, on land administration. A lawyer practising in Owerri should know better. He knows what Rochas Okorocha did to land tenure in Imo. He also knows that Mr. Ihedioha empanelled a Commission of Inquiry, which Governor Uzodimma retained, and whose white paper he implemented. By that action alone, stolen lands were returned to their rightful owners.

Agu also knows, if he is being honest, that Governor Uzodimma took direct charge of the Ministry of Lands and initiated sweeping reforms that dismantled years of systemic rot. One of the most significant achievements was the establishment of the Imo State Land Information Service Centre, backed by legislation signed into law in 2021. Through this law, all landowners are required to recertify and document their properties under a fully digitised Geographic Information System (GIS), which is already live. All land allocation records have been harmonised into this digital format. The Centre itself, physically housed in a new ultramodern secretariat, is now complete and will be formally commissioned during President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s visit to Imo soon. The Ministry of Lands, now under a substantive commissioner, is fully operational.

So to claim, as Agu did, that the Ministry has been under lock and key for two years is not just dishonest, it is beneath the station of a lawyer.

Now let’s talk about police reform. Agu paints a cartoonish image of Imo police checkpoints. But again, he bore false witness. The Imo State Police Command arrested seven officers on June 17, 2025, for extortion, harassment, and misconduct. This followed an unannounced statewide inspection by CP Aboki Danjuma, prompted by public complaints. The affected checkpoints included major highways such as Owerri–Onitsha, Owerri–PH, and Owerri–Umuahia.

The police command has since introduced zero tolerance policy on illegal searches and intimidation, emergency reporting numbers for confidential whistleblowing, among other public accountability measures.

So yes, misconduct exists, as it does in other states. But Imo is cracking down, not covering up. Why did Agu not mention any of this?

Let us now address his third grievance: the Judiciary.

How does a supposed lawyer speak about the absence of a substantive Chief Judge without reference to the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended)? According to Section 271, The appointment of a substantive Chief Judge requires a recommendation by the National Judicial Council (NJC), an appointment by the Governor, and confirmation by the State House of Assembly. In the absence of a substantive Chief Judge, the Governor may appoint the most senior judge in acting capacity for a maximum of three months unless the NJC extends it. How did the governor violate this constitutional process? Or the contrary, Mr Agu will not admit to the inglorious clannish role he played in truncating the processes of appointing a chief judge.

It is public knowledge that Agu and his associates wrote petitions against a previously nominated Chief Judge, seeking to remove him. So what does he really want? To appoint judges through media tantrums or to follow due process? Or is he simply frustrated that the administration refuses to pander to sectional and narrow interests?

And of course, Agu won’t mention that before Uzodimma, Imo judges had no official vehicles, judicial officers were owed salaries and worked in subhuman conditions.

Today, under Uzodimma e-Filing, e-Payments and remote hearings are in place. There is a functional Judiciary Information System (JIS). Electronic dissemination of hearing notices, central court diaries, and an e-judgment portal now exist. A Small Claims Court has been inaugurated. Integrity reforms have led to disciplinary actions against compromised judges.

But for Agu, these things do not matter unless the Chief Judge organises a cocktail in his honour.

On the matter of security, does Agu want improved policing or a return to the lawlessness of yesteryears? In one breath, they accuse the Governor of being lax on security; in another, they accuse him of being too firm in reining in the threats. These contradictions are the hallmarks of those who will criticise anything they do not control.

Truth is, there is no empirical evidence that Enugu is safer than Imo. Reports of kidnapping, armed robbery, and other crimes continue to emerge from there too. But unlike Enugu, Imo has pushed back forcefully. Let those who doubt visit Orlu, Mbaitoli, and other former hotspots today and draw comparisons.

To the glory of God and the appreciation of genuine Imo people, Governor Uzodimma is delivering on the mandate he was elected, twice, to fulfil.

Thousands of civil servants and pensioners who promptly receive their entitlements monthly appreciate him. It was only last week that Imo workers erupted in songs of thanksgiving after Uzodimma became the first Governor in Nigeria to surpass the new national minimum wage by setting the least-paid worker’s salary at N104,000 monthly, up from the national benchmark of N70,000, with consequential adjustments applied across all other salary bands.

Today, hundreds of thousands of our people have been enrolled in the Imo Health Insurance Scheme, a legacy programme that will outlive this administration and improve lives for decades.

To say more, our roads are in use. The people who use them know better than a lawyer with a bruised ego.

But Agu, in his usual conspiratorial delirium, cannot find the Assumpta Flyover, cannot acknowledge the Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu International Conference Centre, nor the rehabilitation of Concorde Hotel. He sees nothing in the three state-owned universities, the two university teaching hospitals, or the transformation of Imo State University Teaching Hospital, which used to be described as a mortuary.

Even the “Light-Up Imo” project, which will deliver round-the-clock electricity across all 27 LGAs, means nothing to him. Nor does the Orashi Energy Free Trade Zone, with its billion-dollar potential. Nor the 30 million USD grant from the World Bank under SFTAS, awarded for transparency and fiscal discipline.

For someone who claims to love Imo, Agu’s blindfold is extraordinary.

And then he sinks to new lows by claiming that a single wedding shuts down Owerri. Really? This is pure malicious propaganda. The very intersections he claimed are “chaotic” were redesigned and modernised under Uzodimma’s successful junction expansion programme. The problem is not the roads. It is the inferiority complex of a man who cannot bear to see progress when he’s no longer at the table.

In the end, this whole charade failed to resonate. Even Agu’s readers called him out. His exaggerations were rebuked, and his partisan slant was exposed. Alas! Imo is rotting only in the depraved imagination of Chinedu Agu, a man gripped by envy, detached from fact, and desperate for attention.

So let him keep lamenting while the Hope train moves forward, steered by competence, driven by results, and backed by the people.

Emelumba is Imo State Commissioner for Information, Public Orientation, and Strategy.