Ala Igbo Can Develop Despite Noticeable Flaws In The Nigerian Constitution

GREAT IMO JONATHAN

I have come to believe that leadership is our major problem across Igbo states. You can imagine that in the last 3 months alone, Abia State Government received close to 35 Billion Naira from various income sources but there is no improvement whatsoever in the state. Abia State Government, a year plus ago, shamelessly claimed that it spent 6 Billion Naira plus, to repair 4 kilometres of road in Aba, whilst the FCT administration, despite current inflation rate, awarded a contract for the construction of 12 kilometres of road in Abuja at the sum of 2.8 Billion Naira. Meaning that Abia State Government on the average spends about 1.5 Billion Naira for construction of 1 kilometre of road, whilst the FCT administration spends about 200 Million Naira for the same length of road.

Yet, the quality of work we see in Abia State is poor. In the last 4 years, the government of Abia State has collected over 400 Billion Naira from various revenue sources but cannot boast of 100 kilometres of roads built in all of these 4 years.

Abia State does not even have a common government house, the state is being administered from a rented property and not even ordinary salaries and pensions are paid. You can imagine if 20 Billion Naira was well utilised, Umuahia, the state capital would have been built into a beautiful city and a government house in addition would have been erected because it is such a small city.

Honestly, what we have currently as a government in Abia State is A CEREBRAL GANG OF FRAUDSTERS.

Seeing the commendable effort of Peter Obi in developing Anambra State in 8 years and the good job being done by Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State, it is my honest believe that if our leaders spend our resources judiciously, Ala Igbo with the creative ingenuity of our people will become a place to envy in Nigeria. We have a lot of potentials that could be harnessed to create something magnificent for ourselves. If those who are agitating for a separate country can join hands with other and deploy their energy in pushing for accountable and quality leadership across Igbo states, we will succeed in building our region. If they occupy local government offices and state government houses to demand for open, transparent and accountable leadership from our local government chairmen and governors, we will succeed in getting them to develop Ala Igbo because we have the numbers to overwhelm them. And then we can say we are ready for self governance.

Nde Igbo must begin to make deliberate effort to resist bad elements from coming into government, both as governors, legislators and local government chairmen. We must at the same time deliberately seek out quality hands amongst us, from all over the world and from across political parties to lead our charge. Those in power must be made accountable. They must be consistently monitored and guided on the path to quality service delivery, because it is our common patrimony that they are managing and not their personal resources. Including legislators who are now pocketing funds made for constituency projects by the federal government; they must be monitored.

Nde Igbo must make those in government realise that they are our servants and not our lords. Especially, Igbo elites both home and abroad, who may not be interested in holding political offices, must rise to the occasion to demand quality leadership across Igbo states and make efforts to ensure that those in power does not treat our resources as if they belong to them. They are not doing us a favour; they are in charge of our collective progress and must be subject to our collective aspiration.

Furthermore, we have to challenge lazy sycophants who make our leaders feel at ease in their deplorable performance. We must resist them whenever they try to shut people who criticise those in power up. They are lazy parasites who depend on hand outs from poor performing leaders. We must not allow them to intimidate or blackmail us from demanding quality governance because of their mediocrity and selfishness; we must put them where they belong.

We have all it takes to develop our states; we must resist those who insist we should focus our attention on the failures of central government whilst they use constitutional lapses as excuse for looting resources currently available to us. What we are getting from the federal government may not be that much but we must make the best of whatever that comes in. WE MUST MAXIMISE EVERYTHING. We are viewed all over the world as a people that make incredible things out of nothing, we must not disappoint ourselves.

Ohanaeze and other Igbo groups must now make it a priority for all states across Igbo land to have a world class master plan that is relevant to the future of their states. And we must come together to develop an integrated master plan for the Igbo region; especially with an education curriculum that will give our children edge in the competitive world.

In addition, we must insist on action plan from the states, which is the only way to monitor their deliverables.

Enough of excuse, Igbo leaders should wake up and play their ‘Expected Role’ in the development of Ala Igbo.

I believe that we can make it happen in 6 years.

Chukwu Gozie Ala Igbo!

Great Imo Jonathan writes from Umuahia, Abia State.