By Odimegwu Onwumere
It is becoming glaring everyday that Governor Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers State
is turning a new leaf. Unlike in his first tenure he didn’t and was not caring
about the common citizen, entirely. This time, he is making sure that the
wealth of Rivers State ends up evenhandedly on the area
of facilities. With his incessant power supply and sundry concerns in majority
of the areas in the state, it could be deduced that he is trying in making sure
that the common man has a sense of belonging in his state.
Today, the residents are happy in
calling themselves citizens of this state, unlike before it was so unbearable
and difficult to even ply most of the roads in the state. We can infer that
most of the roads we were shouting on top of our voice have been fixed, but he
has to warn the defiant contractors. At least, with the fixing of the roads,
the poor are also enjoying. This shows that nothing lasts forever. The
frivolous politicians in the state should also be cautioned. Without calling
them to order, their habit can anger the poor in the state to commit suicide.
Rivers State
today has known peace, even when people talk that corruption is like a sport
among the Nigerian political mobsters in public offices and that Nigeria will
never know any peace until when the right people are voted into office. Amaechi
is now exhibiting a sane human mind, which exhibits that the residents should
expect good governance from him. Something new is happening in the state. He
has stopped composing tales by the moonlight, where he gave promises upon
promises. He is now marching his words with action. He is not again, dribbling
away on insubstantial things.
We have observed that Amaechi was
not settling anybody, but the state. Rivers
State is now a serious
state, not in a serious state. Without any doubt the state has woken-up
from slumber and is no longer operating like one under a curse. Amaechi has
woken up to show the state that it is naturally blessed by God and the
wickedness of the people will never bring her down. Again, the State
Government has assured that the Mile One Market in Port Harcourt is completed because it said
that it’s released the entire fund for the job and stores apportioned to
traders, who were relocated to a temporary site in 2007 when the project
started.
But while Amaechi is projecting these,
we advise that his Commissioner for Works or the authorities concerned should
be rational in delivering the market and their duties between the indigenes and
non-indigenes. The government should always be fast with projects,
especially, the new site of the Rivers State University of Science and
Technology, Omagwa. In the area of human capital development, Amaechi should
ensure that he delivers properly than we read on the newspapers.
The special overseas scholarship
programme which we heard is basically the Governor's vision should not fail in
delivering more and quality human capital development for the state. He
must make sure that the oil multinationals in the country he has urged to
relocate their headquarters to states that produce the oil did not fail, in
order to create employment and development opportunities for the people in our
state.
His promises to assist, after
sympathizing with victims of the fire incident in Igwuruta that claimed the
lives of six persons and destroyed property worth about N150m, should not be
swept under the carpet. He should make sure that the petroleum tankers that ply
the roads are checked regularly to ascertain their workability capacity. Some
of them are in bad shape, and it could be one of such, which crashed at
Igwuruta Roundabout, spilling its content in the process. It is not always the
presumed carelessness of the drivers that cause the accident most time.
Amaechi should also remember that
while describing the Igwuruta Roundabout section of the road as a federal road,
he promised to rebuild it in order to guarantee the free flow of traffic and
prevent similar occurrence in future. The same is applicable to other
roundabouts and roads in the state even when some of them in bad shape could be
federal roads as well. But the residents don’t know the difference from state
roads and federal roads. So, he should intensify efforts that whether it is
Shell, Agip, Elf, Mobile,
NDDC roads that the authorities concerned work them. Because: “We must reduce
the level of irresponsibility of some road users…,” Amaechi had said.
We believe the governor in totality
when he said that if anybody wants to discuss issues on Niger Delta, the person
must also put on the table the fact that 60 to 80 per cent of the oil companies
are located outside where they extract the oil from, and they have no business
having their headquarters outside the Niger Delta.
Moreover, Amaechi should remember
his own words: If we are going to address sustainability of development, before
you talk about good governance, you must talk about food. We must focus on
providing food and providing food is not going from house to house and say take
food from us, we are not socialists, it is providing an economic environment
that allows a man to exploit his natural resources and his ability at seeking
employment and get same.
Odimegwu Onwumere is the Coordinator, Concerned
Non-Indigenes In Rivers State (CONIRIV)
No comments:
Post a Comment