Francis Sadhere
Delta State Former Commissioner for Finance, Mr. Love Ojakovo has commended the Warri clean-up exercise being carried out by the Delta State Government, advising the State Commissioner for Environment, Hon. Frank Omare to give exercise a human face.
The former Commissioner stated this recently in his Warri based Office during an interview with our correspondent.
Hon. Ojakovo who lauded the effort of the state government in trying to clean-up Warri and environs, said cleanliness was not something that can be done by government alone, but a collective responsibility of the citizens.
“A clean town cannot be achieved by the effort of the government alone. The inhabitants of that town have to have the culture of cleanliness. I give a simple example of Calabar where I travel to often. If you walk on the streets of Calabar, you cannot throw something on the road because they have imbibed that culture long ago. It does not need a policeman or a commissioner for environment to tell them that they should not throw something on the road,” he said.
According to Hon. Ojakovo, the fire brigade approach of the government would not make the state clean, saying that what the government should do was to bring back sanitary inspectors who will go from house to house to enforce environmental sanitation like in the good old days.
He said; “Government cannot do it alone and the fire-fighting of government can only last for one or two weeks. In another one month, all those containers you moved from the streets will come back. They have been removed before, haven’t they? When I was in government, we did this kind of demolitions across the state. Where are we today, back to square one. So the people have a hand in it.”
“What I think should be done, apart from this demolition, is to have sanitary inspectors that we had when I was a young child and when the colonial people where still here. They monitored street by street, compound by compound and they even go to your house and check if it is clean or not and if it is not clean you will be arrested or made to clean it or pay a fine,” Mr. Ojakovo added.
Speaking on his fence that was brought down by the demolition team of Hon. Frank Omare, Mr. Ojakovo said that the action of the commissioner was vindictive, stressing that his property was not an illegal structure and wondered why Omare should demolished part of it.
Mr. Ojakovo exonerated Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan from what Hon. Frank Omare did to his fence, saying that he did not believe that Hon. Omare was sent by the Governor to destroy his fence.
He said; “First let me say I have been getting a lot of calls. I want to use this medium to disabuse the mind of the public that His Excellency the Governor was behind what Frank Omare did to my fence in Robert Road. I do not think so and I can say with all certainty that the governor is not involved, not aware and has nothing to do with it whatsoever.”
“Frank Omare, the Honourable Commissioner for Environment with all due respect, was carried away with the trappings of power. Frank Omare knows that that property belonged to a former Commissioner. The spirit of Espirit de corp should have informed him that even if the place was marked for demolition, he should not do it with fanfare. But then Frank Omare is aware that in 2011 the government marked that property for demolition. Frank Omare is aware that Love Ojakovo sued the state government and the matter was in court. Frank Omare is aware that the government was represented in court by the lawyers and solicitors of government. Frank Omare was aware that there was a perpetual injunction that the government or its agents or privy or whatever, should not tamper with the property,” he added.
The former Commissioner said that there was a perpetual injunction given by a competent law to the Delta state government preventing the state government, its agents, privy and others from tempering with the property that Hon. Omare demolished.
Part of the judgement read thus; “A declaration that the act of the 1st and 2nd defendants in taking steps to demolish the claimants structure, the wall of his generator house, the wall surrounding the transformer erected on the claimant’s property registered as No. 8 at page 8 in volume AT58 at the Lands Registry Office, Asaba lying and situated at No. 3/5 Robert Road, Warri is unconstitutional, illegal, unlawful, null and void.”
“An order of perpetual injunction restraining the 1at defendant and 2nd defendants, their agents, privies, servants or anybody whosoever acting on their instruction for carrying out any act or doing anything inconsistent with the rights of the claimant in relation to or connected with or touching on any property or structure erected on the claimant’s property registered as No. 8 at page 8 in volume AT58 at the Lands Registry Office Asaba lying and situated at No. 3/5 Robert Road, Warri,” the judgement reads further.
“What Frank Omare did was vindictive. It has no political undertone because even though I am not a politician I am still a member of PDP. I am not a politician running for any political position, but all of us human beings are politicians because when the time comes we are swayed to one side or the other. I am a PDP card carrier and I will work for PDP when the time comes. So it is not political, it is personal and I do not know why,” he added.
Asked if he was going to take the state government to court, Ojakovo said he was not ready to take anybody to court, saying it was only his fence that was brought down and that he was going to fix it back and let the matter die.
