Tag: Southeast governors

Sometimes, I feel disillusioned by some of the ineffective practices we borrowed from western civilization, particularly our system of government. Imagine for instance, if the type of democratic government practised in the Southeast is rooted in the audacious, egalitarian democratic ethos, as perspicaciously enunciated, in Things Fall Apart, the seminal work of Chinua Achebe. I recall the swift, democratic and effective gathering of the Umuofia clan to determine how to deal with the challenge posed by the people of Mbaino whose son wilfully murdered a daughter of Umuofia.
Without much ado, a decision was quickly reached, and a patriotic emissary and an eminent clan leader, Okonkwo, was sent to Mbaino to deliver the message of the people of Umuofia. According to Achebe, Okonkwo took his mission with the greatest sense of responsibility expected of such high office and “was treated with great respect and honour” by the people of Mbaino. In no time, he returned with the appropriate price, from the culprits. Compare Okonkwo’s patriotic sense of duty and efficiency, with the recent embarrassment, from the governors of Anambra and Imo states.
For reasons best known to them, Governors Rochas Okorocha of Imo State and Willy Obiano of Anambra State, instead of concentrating on the time-bound responsibility handed over to them, by the people of their respective states, choose to play the role of Unoka, who “was quite incapable of thinking about tomorrow.” I urge the duo and their brother governors from the southeast states to wake-up to the intense efforts of the governors of the states in the north and southwest to organise their respective people towards regional economic blocks.
As Okorocha and Obiano bickered, I wondered in agony, how such meaningless spat about who said what to the other, and who did what, will answer to the national economic emergency enveloping their respective states and indeed our nation. Instead of organising to save their people from the prevailing economic crisis, they engaged in play. I rebuke them in the words of Chika, the Priestess of Agbala, to the playful Unoka: “when your neighbours go out with their axe to cut down virgin forests, you sow your yams on exhausted farms that take no labour to clear.” In case they don’t know, the federation account, is increasingly, becoming like Unoka’s exhausted farms.
Not long ago, the governors and leaders of the northern states met in Kaduna to seek ways out from the pervading morass threatening the very existence of our country. Again, last week, the governors of the southwest states set aside their political differences, and meet for the second time in months, in Ado Ekiti, to further deliberate on how to manoeuvre their region, away from any danger, should the Nigeria ship, continue on its trajectory to self-destruction.
Instead of Obiano and Okorocha sitting down with their colleagues and other leaders of the region to brainstorm like the men of Umuofia to find answers to the challenge posed to the people of the southeast by a nation in mortal danger, they spend quality time and resources, placed in their hands by their states, to engage in egocentrism. The fact that the electorates who gave them such high office are hamstrung to quickly deal with their intransigence is part of my frustration with the system of government that we borrowed from the west.
Consider for a moment what would have been the fate of Okonkwo, the nominated emissary of the people of Umuofia, in Things Fall Apart, were he to have taken time off, the serious mission to Mbaino, to engage in meaningless cant and self-serving endeavours. Perhaps, the fates that later befell Okonkwo each time he committed nsoani is a pointer to how quick the retribution can come even for the highly revered in the society. Also, compare the efficiency of the criminal justice system of the Umuofia clan with the cumbersome and yet inefficient criminal justice system in practice in our country.
Sometimes I wonder, if our democracy had evolved naturally from our respective traditional systems of government; whether it was possible for instance, for the latest megalomania, in town, the former Group Managing Director of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Andrew Yakaubu, to own up to the millions of dollars and thousands of pounds, dug out from his house in the Kaduna suburb even as excruciating hunger, is ravaging his kit and kin. In my part of the country, an open, fair and efficient trial would have been conducted and after a guilty verdict, the chant of nzogbu, nzogbu, would rent the air and young men, as bailiffs, would march to exact retribution from the felon after which he is sent on a long exile.
Instead of Governor Okorocha seeking apologies from Governor Obiano, or Governor Obiano using disparaging words to describe Governor Okorocha, both of them should jointly and singularly issue apologies to the people of southeast and their respective states for engaging in frivolities while their peoples are undergoing, perhaps, the worst economic induced stress, since the failed second republic. They should also champion a resuscitation of the meetings of the southeast governors to chart a regional economic programme to lift their zone out of the prevailing national morass.
Such a meeting should find out the share of the southeast, from the nationally available megawatts of electricity, and how that has impacted on businesses in the region. Their meeting should set up technical committees to determine the energy needs of a prosperous southeast and proffer how to meet it. A perspicacious group of leaders should be working on ways to integrate a southeast industrial belt, feeding on, and supporting a zonal agricultural belt, in such a way that all their peoples would be winners.
The governors, who are arguably the leaders of the two richest states in the southeast – Anambra and Imo states, instead of bickering like market men suffering from a very ‘bad-market’, should be interested in how to develop an integrated transport plan that will include a rail line, which will run like a ring from the famous River Niger, in Anambra, through Imo, to Abia, to Ebonyi, to Enugu and back to Anambra, to effectively move her people and evacuate the agricultural produce, from the agricultural belt that they will create.
While working on the plan, to export a million tubers of yam to President Donald Trump’s country, the United States of America, as reported in the press, Governor Obiano, should encourage a cluster of agro-allied industries around the farms to turn the yam tubers into flour, chips and other by-products, that will be more cost effective to export to anywhere. Governor Okorocha on his part should also spare his energy to source for funds to complete the several roads which his administration has excavated in Imo State.
Let our leaders make no mistake: the ship of our nation is adamantly moving in a manner that can cause it great harm unless urgent steps are taken to change course. To save the ship and its people, our leaders “must cross seven rivers to make their farms.” They cannot like Unoka, “stay at home and offer sacrifices to a reluctant soil.” Each of them should: “Go home and work like a man.”