Can VoN DG tell Nigerians his achievements in agency and leave Okorocha alone?
Since President Muhammadu Buhari gave an indication of contesting in 2019 presidential elections, the Director General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON), Mr. Osita Okechukwu seems to have forgotten his primary assignment at the federal agency and assumed the position of pseudo-campaign manager at the detriment of the agency he was appointed to grow.
Senator Ben Murray-Bruce, in one of his outbursts at plenary queried “Who is listening to Voice of Nigeria”. VoN is transmitting in Short Wave (SW) Frequency which had been overrun by Frequency Modulation (FM) and modern radio sets hardly come with SW and even when it comes, VoN is hard to tune because of lack of requisite investments needed at the agency which it has not gotten.
Broadcast analysts had expected the appointment of Okechukwu in VoN to serve as a turning point at the agency but there has been nothing to show for the yearly budgetary vote by the federal government in the agency as the radio is still missing in the radar of radio stations listened to in Nigeria.
Rather, the DG has been found to be attacking every South East politician who he felt that is anti-President Buhari ahead of 2019.
Analysts say time has come for National Assembly to find out from every appointee during screening what level improvements the nation will expect from him on a yearly basis so as to serve as a way of measuring their performance.
Besides, such caveat has become very important to track some appointees like VoN DG, Mr. Osita Okechukwu.
Since recently, Okechukwu has been attacking the Imo State Governor, Owelle Rochas Okorocha, saying he is demarketing the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the South East region of the country.
According to him, “Governor Okorocha to be honest with you, he was the one that brought the problem in the APC. I pleaded with him not to run for presidency and that there is a zoning convention and that the zoning convention has a moral weight even though it is not a law”.
“If you had listened, when Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu got into negotiations with President Buhari, I told him that he is going to give over 1000 delegates from the South West. It paid off. I told the leadership of the APC not to promote Okorocha in the South East.
Okechukwu said “Anybody promoting Okorocha is demarketing the APC because you do not go to a community and start defending a notorious boy or girl. If you go to a community and the girl you want to marry is the one that is notorious, then on the marriage day, the people might not attend. It is customary.
People would be asking you why did you marry the girl; they will tell you that the other girl is better. Governor Okorocha knew that former Governor Ikedi Ohakim ran into trouble with the Catholic Church in Imo State and the same Catholic Church, you Okorocha are at war with them again. So, how can you get votes around there? Where will you get the votes? It is just like going to Kano and fight with the Muslims. How will you get votes there?
“So, that is it; I am not saying this to castigate him; I have great respect for him but I am also pleading with him to retrace his own steps; go back and appease your people. I am not from Imo but go back and appease your people. But anybody who is promoting Okorocha is not helping the Igbo people and the APC.
“Anybody promoting Okorocha as the face of the APC in the South East is not helping the party. Maybe the person does not want the APC to do well in the zone. And it is Okorocha that made himself unpopular in the South East; it is not Osita Okechukwu. He is demarketing the APC and he cannot change because he is suffering from what is called narcissism,” Okecukwu, DG of VoN said.
