Rochas Okorocha Says Boko Haram Can Be Defeated In 2 Months

The governor of Imo State, Chief Rochas Okorocha, has said that the menace of the dreaded Boko Haram sect could be stopped in two months, only if visionary and efficient leadership is encouraged at the highest level of power in Nigeria.

Okorocha, who stated this on Friday, during a dinner he organised for media executives and nominees from across the country, who were in Owerri for the Nigeria Media Merit Award 2014, noted that the problem had remained intractable because some people were benefiting from fighting the insurgents.

However, he said no president of Nigeria had plans to fail in governance, noting that leaders of the country since independence never had bad intentions.

What he said went wrong was the leaders’ inappropriate usage of both the human and material resources, which he said also, contributed to government’s inability to tackle insurgencies in the country.

“No nation is poor in terms of human and material resources, the problem has always been about leadership,” Okorocha said.

He advocated a bottom-up approach to power, stating that this is what will reduce excessive power of the president which hinders power distribution among the federating units.

“The president is too powerful while the masses continue to suffer. We need leaders who can give jobs to the people. Vision is very important to surmount most of the challenges facing the country, this is why my administration placed great premium on education by making it free from primary to university levels,” Okorocha said.

He, however, said that decentralisation of power was germane to solving the challenges facing the country.

The governor, who challenged also journalists to rise up to the challenges of their profession, admonished them to ask political leaders about their activities in government, noting that “the media profession has lost the culture of investigative journalism.”

“I’ve always waited for an opportunity to confront journalists on their role in the leadership question and the need for the fourth estate of the realm to engender good governance by tasking would-be leaders on plans they have for Nigeria,” Okorocha said.