Stanley Uzoaru,Owerri

Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State has attributed the country’s major challenges to bureaucracy, adding that the practice has destroyed most of its good initiatives thereby  keeping the nation in perpetual bondage.

Governor Okorocha stated this, on Tuesday, when officers from the Nigerian Army College of Logistics led by Gen. Richard Duru paid him a courtesy call at the Government House Owerri.

The Imo State governor also noted that the nation’s Army have been able to come out of the problem of bureaucracy to get to the extent they are.

The system which he said was inherited from the Colonial Masters, has done the nation more harm than good.

“Sometimes therefore if you need to succeed, you must bend the rule but don’t break it to enable you achieve your goal. The trend has done a lot of harm to the system and has drawn the nation backward to a very large extent.

“I’m told that you have been round the whole City to see for yourselves what Owerri looks like. And being in a School, I’m sure you are here to further acquire knowledge and see how things are done and how progress is made in a very given institution and if I had enough time, it could have been my pleasure to give a lecture as to what you must do in life to prove leadership in whatever form or in whatever place you find yourselves.

“But let me say that the things you have seen so far are products of vision and passion. When I came in 2011 as governor, for those of you who may have known the Owerri Capital City, can agree with me that there was nothing to write home about this City in terms of infrastructure, but it took vision to change the landscape of Owerri and to bring about these projects you have seen.

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“We have done over 2,000 projects since we started in Imo State and I’m not counting this building as one of them and whatever you see within Owerri, it is either built by this administration or rebuilt by this administration just to meet up with our vision for now. So the driving forces there are passion and vision”. Governor Okorocha said.

He continued, “Everyone that must succeed as a leader must have passion and vision. Vision unites with your spirit. Passion is the inner force that propels you to act in a particular manner. So you must love what you do. I love what I do. I love Imo State, love being a governor and I love seeing changes in the society. So it’s all about passion. When you have passion, to sleep is not your programme and to rest is not your programme. So, hard work is the secret of any leader.

Governor Okorocha said further “Power in the hands of a lazy leader is Power wasted and leaders must learn to take responsibility. If College of Administration and Logistics is not doing well, hold Major Duru responsible for leadership. So you must show leadership in whatever you do. If you love passion and vision, then the sky is your limit”.

According to him, “Since I came in as a governor in Imo State, I have never checked how much we have in our bank account or how much is coming from federal government. Imo State is about the middle line in the subvention scale of Nigeria.

“What some States get in one month is what Imo State gets in 14 months. But I do not look at money to do what I do. The moment anybody in leadership position begins to look at money to guide what he does he can never make progress because money is never enough. So you don’t check salary, you don’t check how much have been allocated.

“Our government in Nigeria is a lover of recurrent and a hater of capital and this is what has kept us down. These are always at war with each other. Recurrent is always easier to deal with but here, we insist that capital projects must take 65 per cent of the total income of the State. This is how we are able to manage waste and what you call corruption,” Governor Okorocha explained.

In his speech, Gen. Duru, who led the officers, said they were in the state for research, adding that they had also seen the exciting business potentials in the state at various locations, promising to report back areas where it would benefit the military in Nigeria.