Governments everywhere, yes everywhere, worry about the level of unemployment. Of course, the devise, contrivance or contraption under which Governor Peter Obi has been running roughshod over Anambra state may actually not qualify to be termed as a government – because it never bothered about what genuine governments fret about. But to be fair, it has to be agreed upon early enough in this essay that Obi, in many instances, has been one of a kind.
Or how many Governors can Nigeria boast of whose Deputy Governors are never seen, never heard, and remain so invisible that any sane person would be right to think that such an office and office holder never exist in Anambra state? Well, that the luckless Mr. Sibudu exists in flesh and blood is a fact; that he was actually sworn into office is another fact of life and history. But has he ever functioned in any way? Why has he remained so unknown that when I asked ten randomly chosen educated persons in Akwa, the Anambra state capital his name, none of the adult government workers could remember it. A few just recalled that he is Sibudu, but his first name was beyond their recollective capabilities . But then, how does a public know or remember the name of a man who is never mentioned in the news media? Now, an election to succeed Gov Obi is on and his long-suffering Deputy-Governor has never been mentioned in any such analysis – no matter how hare-brained.
Leaving aside Osibudu and returning to the unemployment transgression at hand, Obi appears to have been totally cocooned in a world of his own – where the level of unemployment in Anambra state never mattered. The result is that the indisputable unemployment rate of over 20 percent has never worried him. If that unfailing indicator and manifestation of failed governance has ever disturbed the conscience of Governor Peter Obi, he would have at least done what requires no effort at all; fill up the yawning vacancies.
Vacancies, sad to say, abound in the primary and secondary school systems of Anambra state. All it needs is the prompting of a large social conscience to fill them. But social consciences do not come that easily to men who are devil’s bankers; stacking money in a certain bank’s vault – even if the work force is inadequate, the education sector in tartars and able-bodied men and women out of job and totally impoverished. This of course has a telling result; kidnapping and sundry heart-rending crimes. Please mark that I have not stressed that Anambra is yet to pay its workers the minimum wage of N18, 000 monthly. So as Obi is one of a kind among Governors, Anambra is one of a kind in terms of impoverished workforce.
Yet, why would a sane person, let alone one who is an efficient and remorseless “I-love-the-church-and-God” boaster fail to provide needed jobs for an impoverished populace? The answer was thought to be an ideological stance stolen from a damaged, deranged and totally discarded IMF school of Economics which in the 1980s rated the amount of money in a state’s accounts more important than the citizens’ welfare; now the world has been given a totally different answer – one only a sordid, ruthless, callous, ash-cold and totally indifferent mind could have dreamed up; impoverish the people, destroy the educational sector and then, when all is late and the allotted tenure has all but run out, dehumanize the people the more by making them scramble for the very funds they should have legitimately earned – spruced up as car-shower to ill-maintained schools.
That was how Governor Obi hit on the idea of, during this “injury time” in an eight-year match he was supposed to play on behalf of Anambra state, the eight years in which he refused to fill up the yawning vacancies in the educational sector, or even repair the schools, he has unleashed a car rain on the mission schools – and he is, inappropriately of course, receiving unearned accolades for the very products of his meanness and savage cruelty – as an untold number of fully qualified persons were denied gainful employment just so that some megalomaniac would draw attention to himself and political party as do-gooders.
Now, the funds that have been said to be sitting in Fidelity Bank vaults as savings for the state have emerged to fund stupefying electioneering profligacy.
Yet, is this the kind of continuity that Anambrarians should vote in “Willie the boy” as Governor for? Many have argued that nothing is intrinsically wrong with making a gift of any number of cars to schools, flung whimsically here and there by an out-going Governor to aid the electoral fortunes of his handpicked “boy”, who is also like him, emerging from the same Fidelity Bank.
This point is pertinent because the late great Anambrarian who until the bitter end wailed for good governance, Prof Chinua Achebe, wrote in the preface to his first book of essays: Morning Yet On Creation Day” that “experience is not just what happened because much can happen to a stone without making the stone any wiser”. To Achebe, “experience is the lesson learnt from an event”. If we could but only remember that no Governor should spend unbudgeted monies in purchasing hundreds of vehicles for any given public – most capriciously – only then shall we realize that a vote for APGA continuity for Willie Boy Obiano to succeed his unscrupulous (in budget matters at least) master St. Obi, would be a vote for unbudgetary profligacy. And you don’t need an Achebe to lecture you that such would be an affront on wisdom – which for the wise is supposed to be informed by experience! And the Gov. Obi experience – no, it is a mistake of Anambra voters –for anyone to operate without Deputy Governor, sans State House of Assembly and minus budgetary allocations but become an under-achieving dictator – should not be repeated!
Mrs Uju Okeke
Nzam
Anambra West.
