Amaechi’s Promise to God
By Odimegwu Onwumere
"Since we have these promises,
beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit,
bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God," 2 Corinthians
7:1.
Governor Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers State
is now doing well. One unique thing we have observed about him in the recent
times is that he has a listening ear, unlike his once posturing of a diehard.
His projects in the areas of education, health care, security, urban renewal
and provision of infrastructure are meeting his talk, not that he has done very
well, and we hope they fully meet their destinations.
What Amaechi calls “my covenant with
God” should help him and be his guiding rules to governance. He should always
remember this covenant that he would serve the public without any reservation
while praying concerning his objective to be governor in 2007. For this reason,
perhaps, was why some of his projects are people-oriented. And he should make
sure that the ones that are not completed are completed.
This is the time Amaechi should
begin to take stock whether his administration was able to meet this covenant
with his God or not. Because, it is not always about being out of all
proportion striving about projects execution, but about the many that were
really executed. However, it is not easy for a government to operate under a
hash economy as all the world businesses are facing difficult time since the
event that characterized the economic recession. So, it is imperative that
Amaechi should look at the financial framework of his government if it is in
consonance with the economic reality of today and hence face the reality that
are pro-poor and pro-society and eschew others. Government is not all about
spending too much money to fund people’s responsibilities, but about the
economic aspect why the money was spent.
We thank him for his choice of
promise to reduce the pains that parents feel in the state on education by
making sure that every child has the opportunity to acquire education. But he
should also check if the children are really going to school and if their
parents are not suffering the same pains. We knew that he had seen and known
pains when he was in the school, and we advise that he should not be far from
the people.
Amaechi should in earnest send out
genuine people to find out if our Rivers people are really appreciative of what
he is doing, because it is hard you read people praising his government again,
unlike what they exhibited during his first term as governor, perhaps thinking
that he would share money.
Is it because he does not share
money that the yesmen outside the corridors of his power once praising him
disappeared? Notwithstanding, how long has the people’s expression of sensation
of Amaechi’s government been heard? There is a painstaking of people in his
first tenure saying that why was Amaechi campaigning for a second term when
they believed that his government programmes had touched lives. Therefore, we
appeal that he should check today if he is given a third term whether the
people will say the same.
Moreover, why did the branding
project for Rivers
State which was Amaechi’s
idea stopped? Have people outside the state killed their unenthusiastic
discernment about the state? Are investors no longer afraid to come into the
state? Is their confidence about our state rebuilt? Amaechi was once afraid
that the consciousness of the residents of Rivers State
had been assaulted, and believed that the residents even run for their dear
lives even on hearing the sound of fireworks. Thus, the governor was getting
people to participate in this branding project through his agents, but quite
unfortunate, the branding project has gone oblivion.
The branding project was not
supposed to stop, because we need the branding project ambassadors than we need
to remind the governor of the ills around. Things like this are supposed to
live beyond their pioneers. The people who will attend the schools and
hospitals he is building need this awareness to rejuvenate their minds. But, it
is unfortunate. There is no how the government will be above the ground
without, for a while, touching on those things and areas that put people’s hope
on him. What about the town hall meeting with the different towns and villages
that Amaechi was organizing and holding with the people? Let him not see it
that a lot of the work had been done, whereas some people could be murmuring,
but had no voice of their own to say what was on their minds.
Has Rivers State
under Amaechi really got any change? We know this government as a government
that has told the residents of the residual change it intended. Everybody
between 2007-2011 was talking about ‘change’. Have we seen the “Change We Can
See”? which was the slogan of Amaechi’s governorship election campaign in 2011.
Who is today talking about the government and the projects because we knew that
during the 2011 elections there was a division of labour where the campaign job
was separated from the job of the state’s Ministry of Information. Does the
campaign team remind the governor of the promises he made during that period
that might not have been fulfilled, or did it dissolved as soon as Amaechi was
announced the winner of the 2011 gubernatorial election in Rivers State?
If that team no longer exists, it is haughty.
Amaechi should always have a genuine
story to tell on the jobs he has done, and should not be thinking that he has
changed the countenance of Rivers State therefore he should relax. No. He
should think deeply if he has authentically changed the face of governance in
Rivers, and where the state will be when he steps down. He should not feel
relaxed, because it is not yet uhuru.
This is the time he should work assiduously for the judge called
posterity to pass its verdict when tomorrow comes. He should strengthen himself
more and serve the people, because they have no other eyes and ears than him.
He should also allow people to participate in the governance if he believes
that democracy is government of the people, by the people, and for the people,
because of the covenant he said that he had with his God.
We wish him the best.
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.
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