Boki Local Government Area of Cross River State regularly gets embroiled in crisis over the ownership of oil palm estate in the area. This often leads to loss of lives and property.
For Mr. Victor Abang, who is from the area, the situation has persisted due to poor management of the matter by leaders in the area.
Abang, who seeks to represent the people of Ikom/Boki federal constituency in the House of Representatives on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), complained that the leaders have failed to live by example of eschewing violence.
“Part of the problem we have had has been the problem of leadership. Leadership particularly when leaders don’t show example. The young men look up to the leaders and rather than look for a solution you encourage them to violence,” he said.
Giving an insight into the origin of the problem, he said, “The problem of the plantation started when politicians started using the plantation to settle their supporters. So every politician now needed to get control of the estate, so they can now share plots to his or her supporters. That is the first problem of that. then the boys themselves got to a point where they were the ones who went to the farm to harvest and sell and then go and pay to one politician somewhere. So it got to a point when the boys themselves said no, they wanted to be their own masters and did not want to pay loyalty to anyone again. They took charge of the whole thing. Even the people who caused the problem, who created the monster could not go back to talk to the boys again.”
Abang, popularly known as Mature, said seeking lasting solution to the problem would be one of his objectives if he succeeds at the polls to represent his people.
“The problem of the oil palm estate is that the people who have the influence to talk to those young men when it first started we were completely excluded, they did not get us involved. So I think that like I said, when you live by example, you don’t sponsor violence, you don’t encourage the young men to violence, they will trust you. Like today I am running elections across party lines you see young men in other parties saying they will vote for me because of the things I have done for them,” he said.
He said a major means of checking restiveness would be the creation of job opportunities for the people of his constituency.
Top on his agenda, he said, will be an annual economic and investment summit expected to attract two or three industries to improve the value of crops produced in the area and ultimately take people off the market.
“Ikom and Boki are mostly an agrarian. There is plenty of cocoa and oil palm, but most of the time value is not added to them before they are sold. If they create a value chain where the cocoa is even further processed into powder, that could create some jobs in the industry doing that. If the oil palm can be further refined like it is done in other countries and refined to vegetable oil, it would also create additional jobs. So if you bring an investment summit and you bring people across the world and encourage the communities to be peaceful and friendly.
“Once we get the youths meaningful jobs, others would see that there is hope for them and when they have hope they respect you and you tell them violence is not good. I believe passionately if I succeed with the summit for four years, I believe that I would be able to have two or three industries coming up in that place and this would help take the boys of vices.
“I don’t want to go into empowerment of motorbikes. Empowerment should be based on needs assessment. Some of those motorbikes that are given are sold at the venue. Empowerment that I would do would be based on needs assessment. There are various skills acquisition programmes, we take young people to get skills and you get the tools for them. The money you use to buy a car, you can buy a set of four tools and empower people. Even if it is only POP designing alone the person goes to learn, they make money from it. Those are some of the programmes I think I can do to help reduce youth restiveness,” he said.
Abang, who has been a Special Assistant to three Senate Presidents, said he got positive feedback from the field during his campaign, said people need representation that is accessible.
“The people want a representative they can feel. There is something I found lacking and that is people have no access to their leader. Even when you come and make several promises and you go there and now discover that, you would not be able to meet those expectations the solution is not to avoid people.
The solution is to be available and you explain to them. For instance I made to promises throughout my campaign. One is that working with three senate presidents I was able to give people in Boki and nearby local government areas over 200 Federal employments. So I said well, this is the one I know how to do. As I go to National Assembly I would try to look for employment for the people of Ikom and Boki.
“Secondly because I have been that long in the National Assembly, I have some contacts, I would deploy them to the benefit of our people. Those are the two promises I made. I did not make any other promises. But when you have come and you have not been to the office, you begin to promise and earth and by the time you get to the office, the reality would not dawn on you that what you promised you would not be able to me and you begin to dodge. As a legislator, you can influence roads and projects to come to your place but they know it is not your primary responsibility. So they want to feel you and have access to you and once you are available to even explain to them that look these are our challenges, yes there are some pressure that come with it, but when you aspire to public office you should be ready for public scrutiny,” he said.
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