OPINION

 Amaechi & power supply

By Odimegwu Onwumere

No matter how inane any government is there must an area it will improve on squarely. Without reservation, Governor Chibuike Amaechi-led government of Rivers State is improving in the area of electricity supply. At least, many of the towns can attest to enjoying electricity, though it might not be uninterrupted.

 With what we are seeing now on power generation, his pledge that the residents of the state would be provided with uninterrupted power supply beginning this December might not be out of place. But whether this will bring food on the table of the impoverished residents cannot be ascertained. And how the stable power supply would economically empower the people as the government swaggered is a puzzle.

The provision of stable power supply is very important in any given environment no matter the angle we may look at it. Electricity supply helps in designing a people and their city with creative initiatives for entrepreneurial development. Amaechi knows this when at the Future Symposium for Young & Emerging Leaders in which personalities like Obiageli Ezekwesili, Kayode Fayemi, Pat Utomi, amongst others who spoke at the Shell Hall, MUSON Centre, Lagos on March 19, 2012, he said that the young people were pointing their blaming fingers on the wrong people.

According to him: “The basic problem is that the Nigerian economic system is flawed. The Arab spring was started by someone who was ready to stick his neck out. You all just gathered here as children of the rich to take over from your fathers.” What flawed the system and why has it not been resuscitated? In what was characterized as a revolutionary Symposium for Young and Emerging Leaders well thought-out by The Future Project should kick off a discussion in Rivers youth with an appealing label to action and should be enhanced by the authorities. Like someone at the occasion pointed out: “This is no time for dead clichés. This is not a gathering of politicians gaming for a piece of the pie; this is a hall pulsating with energy. Let us talk sincerely to ourselves about our own challenges, let us start a discussion that will not end.”

If we must talk of our challenges in Rivers State, we must express our delight that the young youth have dropped guns of their shoddy agitation. So, would it not be good that the politicians in the state dropped politics and face reality with action? Amaechi had also in a lecture on 29^th March 2012, where his Osun State counterpart, Rauf Aregbesola; and National Planning Minister, Shamsudeen Usman, were among those who gave solutions to the nation’s outraging picture, talked of ways to make Nigeria great.

While reportedly he messaged that nations struggle with one another and struggle to devise sources of competitive benefit, it could be said that a country does not develop at once, but with developments coming from the villages to the towns of every state, a country can develop. However, Amaechi must be commended for at least reasoning that our nation should struggle for competitiveness in development with the need to attract tourists, factories, companies, and talented people and find markets for Nigeria’s exports.

This is why Amaechi must make sure that the uninterrupted power supply that his government has promised is achieved, because China, India, Brazil, Singapore, which they said, used to be on the same economic pedestal with Nigeria, didn’t develop on the pages of the newspapers. By achieving the necessary things required in the state, there will be no need clamouring for branding, but the works and achievements on the ground that are people-oriented will speak for the state.

Odimegwu Onwumere, Poet/Author, Media/Writing Consultant and Motivator, is the Coordinator, Concerned Non-Indigenes In Rivers State (CONIRIV); and Founder, Poet Against Child Abuse (PACA), Rivers State