Is antics bring to mind the description of King Leopold of Belgium in the 19th century as the “big-minded man in an insignificant kingdom.” Or what Shakespeare said of men who have grown too big for their status. The English bard described such persons as “man dressed in a little brief authority.”

Even out of power, Rochas Okorocha seems to be angling for a new position in Imo State. Such a position, for want of a better word, is “post-governor.” Others of his set are content to fade as “past governors.” He cannot be post-governor because the position is anathema not only to common decency but also to law.

 I would rather call him, in a burst of magnanimity, a “posterior governor,” which ossifies him in the back seat, in the shadows of Imo State politics.

Rather than depart in peace, he still revels in tumult. He says he left N42.5 billion in the purse, yet he had not handed over to his successor, Emeka Ihedioha. He started acting like a post governor, dictating what the money should be used for. He broke it down his comical way.

 He said N8.1 billion should go for the payment of salaries and capital projects. Was he referring to salaries he did not pay, or capital projects he did not do or he did not do well like a bridge in Owerri that he installed without rods. A death trap, a commissioned murder weapon against his own people.

Whereas even less than a month in, Governor Ihedioha has set in motion some road work, in spite of the fact that the handover notes reached him over a week after Okorocha departed power, or power departed him. He said he left N5.2 billion for pension arrears; the megalomaniac did not want to pay the pensioners these past years.

He was not only magnanimous to the old men and women, he was also so kind to the incumbent governor that he handed him all that money and wanted him to take the glory. The question, though, is, why is he praising himself like the proverbial lizard who fell from a tree?

I thought he wanted Ihedioha to get the glory, so why is he announcing it himself? He said he decided to leave it to his successor, especially the man who bested his in-law who was a parody of democratic candidature.

He said he loved education so much he left N7.6 billion to renovate schools and his heart so beat for the subaltern Imo people that he bequeathed N21.6 billion for rural roads. How many schools did he renovate in eight years? How many rural roads did he pave, or liberate from the wilds of dust and bushes?

 This man is playing “post governor” by rhetoric, and governor after the fact – a speechifying Excellency. By making himself a “a post governor,” he is admitting he did not govern while he was on the throne.  A “post governor” who could not hand over to his successor.

Even vehicles of government are not available. Governor Ihedioha still acquits himself in his own vehicles. Okorocha is basking in a rumour of his own arrest. It was a burlesque show of pre-emptive strike, to strike the EFCC before EFCC strikes him. Who knows, maybe EFCC is not contemplating him. The EFCC announced that he was not arrested. Was anyone afraid?

There was some hoopla of a shame of a monument that was being brought down. Maybe some of his ardent lovers still live in the past. They probably think Zuma’s legacy is so beautiful. Or maybe some lovers of Imo want his monument down.

Whatever the case, I believe the monument of Zuma should come down. It is a disgrace. Maybe Okorocha wanted the monument as an indirect monument to himself, so when people see the monument decades from now, they would ask, who put this here, and the answer would be “one Okorocha, who was governor.” It is a comedian’s conflation of legacy.

 His “bromance” with Zuma, be it homo-erotic or hero-worship, belies all the heroes of Igboland from Zik to Achebe. He did not refer to some of the rumpus he left behind. The doctors went on strike, and the new governor has put that to rest with the spirit of a peacemaker.

Ditto to the state polytechnic that now smells like an olive branch because the new man is not like King Leopold. The same thing cannot be said of the man in Ibadan,    who hit the wrong strides as though manically returning Oyo State to the tempest that Ajimobi quelled.

Okorocha wants to be a monument, because he is not monumental; if he is monumental, it is that he is a monumental failure. He is a perversion of what the Poet Lord Byron said of Greece after it had lost its glory and empire: “Immortal but no more,” or what the same poet wrote, referring to legacies that should expire: “I am more fit to die than people think.” An Okorocha would be what writer Walter Raleigh called “a monument to dead ideas.”

Governor Ihedioha has said the man did not hand over. Okorocha never had anything gubernatorial to say to that. Okorocha is still wounded by his loss, his inability to perpetuate family ties in Imo democracy.

He was one of the headaches that APC party chairman Adams Oshiomhole had when he wanted to turn democracy into family entitlement.

He acted against the Igbo grain. He wanted also to be a royalist in a democracy. Maybe because he had lived in the north for much of his life, he became a feudalist who wanted to impose a king. The Igbos resisted it against the white man. Now they have overthrown it with the thumbprint on Election Day.

By doing that, the people of Imo State embraced republicanism over royalty and decided they wanted a new man. It did not make sense for him to start playing governor. He is in a dream, and he probably thinks his delusion of grandeur would help him out.

He should allow the new man to settle and do the work the people set him out to do. He cannot overthrow the people’s mandate. He probably thinks he is one of the best gifts to Imo State politics. He once flirted with Nigerian presidency. He belongs to the poor class of political elite that Shakespeare loathed in his famous play, Hamlet. In that play, the tragic figure defined the politician as “the one that would circumvent God.”

He said it while viewing a gravedigger holding up a skull. Shakespeare meant that power is vanity. Okorocha should learn that. He could not hold anything sublime while in office. He could not keep his commissioners. He could not keep his deputy governors.  He could not keep his lips shut.