Weeks after outrage, Okorocha’s second erection causes row

Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State is set to unveil the statue of another African president, weeks after a national outrage over the unveiling of a multi-million naira statue of President Jacob Zuma of South Africa.
Okorocha’s latest statue, a monument of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia, is scheduled to be unveiled on November 9.
The statue and two others, including that of Zuma are occupying a pride of place at Freedom Square on Wetheral Road in the Imo State capital.
Zuma’s 30-feet statue was said to have cost a whopping N520 million.
Already, the plan by Okorocha to unveil Johnson-Sirleaf’s statue is causing another row in the South-East state as residents wonder why the governor has a penchant for erecting statues of foreign presidents.
Mr. Johnson Okoroafor, a civil servant, said: “This is beyond the ordinary. The governor is owing us salaries. I hope this is not a curse”.
A trader on Wetheral Road, Emeka Ozumba, declared that “it is only God who can rescue us from this statue-erection governor. People don’t know that he is using all these presidents for business”.
Okorocha displayed Johnson-Sirleaf statue on his twitter handle: @GovernorRochas, saying that the Liberian leader would be honoured during her visit to Imo on November 9.
“The Liberia President, Mrs Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, is set to arrive our dear Imo State for a two-day working visit on Thursday, 9 Nov. 2017,” Okorocha twitted.”
On October 15, Okorocha unveiled Zuma’s gold-cast monument, drawing intense criticism from critics nationwide.
The critics accused the governor of spending huge money on `meaningless projects in a state that had not been able to pay workers and pensioners as and when due’.
The critics also cited various corruption cases linked to Zuma and the recurring killing of Nigerians in the former apartheid enclave, arguing that giving such honour to Zuma was wrong.
They wondered why Okorocha would choose to honour Zuma, ignoring South African anti-apartheid icons, including Nelson Mandela, Oliver Thambo and Walter Sisulu.