Consideration For Economic Growth Should Override A Governor’s Detestation Of An Opposition Leader.
Monday(Orie)11-11-2024.
Politics should be driven by ideologies, vision and principles. It should tower above sentiments and personal prejudices.
This is where the difference lies between the Black Man’s understanding of Politics and the White Man’s perception of what Politics should be. While the White Man thinks of policies and projects that will be of immense benefit to the Masses within a polity, not minding the number of Members of Opposition in the area, a black man will not wish to deploy Government resources for the development of any place where there is a prominent member of the opposition, even if such a project would be advantageous to the overall economy of the State Government.
Ariaria-Umuiku-Isi-Asa Road is a road that has a lot of economic potentials for Abia State Government. The about 10 or, maximum, 12-kilometre Road leads to Omuma, Eche, Ikwerre and Ahoada Local Government Areas of Rivers State, and further goes up to Yenegoa in Bayelsa State.
Apart from the Abia sections of the Road, the Road is nylon tarred from Omuma Local Government to Yenegoa in Bayelsa State.
During dry seasons when the Abia sections of the Road could be managed for minimal access, traders use the Road to access Ariaria International Market at Aba from both Rivers and Bayelsa States. The volume of haulage on that Road is always enormous.
As a Member of the immediate-past State Executive Council led by Governor Okezie Ikpeazu, Ph.D, I made a case for that Road. I informed the Governor of the economic significance of the Road to Abia State, and the Governor assured me the Road would be captured as one of the Rural Roads to be executed using Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing Project, RAAMP, for which Abia State Government under him had paid the required Counterpart Fund.
On two different occasions, the then Officer in charge of RAAMP in Abia State, Dr John Babington, went on an inspection tour of the Road, and the Road was eventually captured as a Road that would be done through RAAMP, not because of Sir Don Ubani but because of its potential economic benefits to the State Government.
People had heaved a sigh of relief when Governor Alexander Otti awarded the Road for construction early this year. But no sooner had the contract been awarded than the Governor abandoned it because, according to some speculations, he had realized that the Road passes through the Community of the Man he hates the most in his life, Sir Don Ubani.
Except for primitivity, incivility and porosity of thought mechanism, Governor Alexander Otti should not decline to thinking in this very unfortunate fashion. To start with, there are more that ten thousand eligible voters that live along that Road. So, what the Governor wants to achieve is that those more than 10,000 voters should perpetually suffer just because he has pathological animosity against Sir Don Ubani!
This is pettiness taken to high. The Governor should stop being narrow-minded. He should learn to be broad-minded enough to realize that construction of Ariaria-Umuiku-Isi-Asa Road will be a very formidable way of increasing the Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, of Abia State. Anything short of this understanding amounts to sheepishness and undue exhibition of inferiority complex.
Sir Don Ubani; KSC, JP,
Ihemba/Ahaejiejemba of Umuiku-Isi-Asa Autonomous Community, Okwubunka of Asa and Oke Amadi Gburugburu, is a former Commissioner for Information and Strategy in Abia State and writes from his beautiful nativity of Asa land situated between Aba in Abia State and Port-Harcourt in Rivers State.
