A Very Shameful Endorsement
By UbongAbasi Ise
“… it’s a terrible shame that
politics has become show business” – Sydney Pollack
Could it be that standards
have fallen in our society to the extent that a naff government administration
that
The latest news in town is that Akwa Ibom South,
popularly known as Eket Senatorial District, is endorsing Mr. Udom Emmanuel for
another term in office. Methinks that all that should matter to Eket Senatorial
District at this stage of its life is Ibom Deep Seaport project which is believed
that, at completion, would produce a multiplier effect and have strong bearing on over the two-third of the senatorial
district consisting of 12 local government areas. Therefore the commitment of the Governor
towards the completion of the project should have been the sole determinant of
endorsement for reelection. Through Ibom Deep Seaport project, the life of the
senatorial district could have been progressed remarkably from economic and
socio-political periphery which it is currently placed now to the Elysian field
of industrialization. The senatorial district could have become the emerging
economic hub of Nigeria. Indeed, Ibom Deep Seaport, a lofty project conceived
during the era of Obong Victor Attah, could have been a hatchling of the
administration of Mr. Udom Emmanuel, the son of Eket Senatorial District. And
Mr. Emmanuel could have used the project as a multifaceted opportunity to begin
charity at home: attract both domestic and foreign investments to his domain;
build state-of-the-art infrastructures in the senatorial district around the
project; create wealth for his people, and open up the senatorial district as
the core of the state’s concentric economic geometry. Of course, Ibom Deep
Seaport in the southern part of Akwa Ibom could have served as the springboard for
job creation that would drastically collapse the towering height of
unemployment in Akwa Ibom State. With a world class seaport side by side with
active tenements and emergent industrial layout in Eket senatorial district,
Uyo and Ikot Ekpene would have been depopulated. This is where job
opportunities would have created themselves. Unfortunately, the governor allows
the laudable project to die slowly on the table of gunky politicking, thus
leaving the promising senatorial district in a dystopic state.
The way things appear is that: it is either the
shameful endorsement of Mr. Udom Emmanuel to extend the inept and clueless
governance beyond 2019 is foisted on the good people of Eket Senatorial
District or it is organized by aliens from Mars and Jupiter who may not be used
to the vagaries of earthly weather of bad governance. Outside these, the grand
endorsement rally may be a nature’s way of arranging a triumphant entry for the
son of the soil whose cold drab administration is heading to the Golgotha of
death come 2019.
What Mr. Udom Emmanuel and his acolytes might not have
considered is that all the gusto about the endorsement rallies are just a show
of mediocrity to the sane-minded people because endorsement for continuation
could only be predicated on the ground that a leader records set of
achievements unprecedented in the history of the geo-political arrangement
under his control. When Mr. Udom
Emmanuel points to road projects, boasts of equipping hospitals, and probably
runs jingles on electronic media to tell the world how workers are paid their
salaries, one needs to wonder what else could be the basic responsibilities of
an elected government to the people. When the Governor goes about vainglorious
about small factories founded on the sweats of private concerns, one also needs
to question if Akwa Ibom people have reduced the frequency of going Aba, Onitsha,
Lagos, Cross River State and Northern Nigeria to bring in essential products
and food items. If the overdependence on commodities produced outside the state
has reduced, then this could have shown how instrumental the industrialization
agenda is. But sadly enough, we have not seen the influx of wholesale traders
to our dear state which, normally, should have been the betoken of
industrialization, neither do our people stopped taking subsisting trade routes
leading to other parts of the country to purchase their merchandise. It is sad
that industrialization in Akwa Ibom is not something of reality, but some
article for the news, and ingredient of politics.
With Mr. Udom Emmanuel, the PDP is repeating the 2015
pattern of history that led to its losing of power at the centre. The party
handlers seem to be measuring the party’s popularity on the basis of mammoth
crowd. Maybe that was why the venue of Udom’s rally was fixed at his backyard
in Onna where his own kinfolks would forcefully throng the stadium in order to
make it thick and perhaps, equalize the attendance record set at APC’s rally in
Ikot Ekpene recently. But overwhelming popular response to endorsement rally
could be a mere mirage that has no consequence on the actual electoral result.
Prior to 2015 general elections, the PDP at the national level was inebriated
by endorsement rallies. Despite the early morning disaster of Monday 14th
April 2014 where bomb blast occurred in Nyanya, the suburb of Abuja, which
claimed over 70 lives of Nigerians while 124 others were critically injured,
Dr. Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP, the following Tuesday, were dancing skelewu at a political rally in Kano
primarily to solicit for support ahead of 2015 elections. As Mr. Udom Emmanuel is
busy dancing at Onna stadium to please Eket Senatorial District constituents,
the insecurity has forced the indigenes of Ukanafun, Etim Ekpo and Ika local
government areas out of their ancestral homes, and today they have become Internally
Displaced Persons in Abak, Ikot Ekpene and Uyo. The state government has done
nothing concrete to address the plights of the affected persons, instead the
govermentarians are dancing at the political rallies forgetting about
governance.
Dr. Goodluck Jonathan and PDP, ahead of 2015
elections, were preoccupied by endorsement rallies without minding the public
outcry on missing $20 billion oil money; they did not mind Minister Abba Moro’s
culpability over the swindling and death of job seekers. The then ruling party
paid deaf hears to the wide condemnations trailing the police pension heist as
well as the Malabu oil scandal. Despite all the endorsements PDP received left,
right and centre, majority of Nigerians were rational enough not to vote for
the continuation of corruption, and the 16 year rule of PDP was swept away by
the APC. What a shame?
In Akwa Ibom, shame will be on a government that
turns the state to the miserable world of joblessness where our noble youths
are expected to follow politicians about and beg for lifeline.
Shame shall
be on an administration that promised 1000 youths training in Oracle Database Software Management but later turned its back on them.
Let shame be
upon government that denies civil servants their promotion arrears and leave
grants while withholding their promotion letters.
Shame on government that plays unfair politics with
the pensions of retired workers that toiled in their heydays to make the state
a better place.
May shame prevail on the government that performed
ground-breaking ceremony in 2015 for the establishment of the Automobile
Manufacturing and Assembling Plant in Ikot Ukap Itam in Itu local government
area only to leave the site for reptiles and wild animals to inhabit.
May shame strew the face of a government that plays
with the sensibilities of the good people of Akwa Ibom State over spurious
industrialization and wicked propaganda.
Yes! I am
UbongAbasi Ise. For comments, send SMS
to 08189914609 | ubongabasiise@gmail.com
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