MBAISE SETS AGENDA FOR REPS

The Mbaise community in Imo State has resolved to evolve a new code of credible leadership by doing away with non-performing leaders and resisting imposition beginning from the 2011 election.

The resolution was taken at the recent Mbaise Colloquium held at Mbaise Secondary, Aboh Mbaise, with people from the five clans in attendance. They noted that 11 years after the new democratic dispensation, Mbaise people have been badly short-changed and brutalised by their elected and appointed leaders in government.

In a communiqué issued at the end of the colloquium, the Mbaise People's Congress (MPC), organisers of the annual event, as well as other Mbaise sons and daughters at the gathering, said: 'Since the advent of the current democratic dispensation in 1999, many unpatriotic men and women who have no defined agenda for the people of Mbaise and who lack any sense of community have been allowed to take over our political space either through selection, imposition or outright purchase of our votes.

These people who have no conscience and who have no respect for our cherished values and virtues of hard work, uprightness and accountability lord it over us to our detriment.' The MPC national president, Mr Ano Anyanwu, said it was time the Mbaise people made their collective will to become the basis of governance at all tiers of government.

He urged the people not to abandon the political space in frustration or despair but to actively participate and vote based on their conviction 'in order to determine our collective socio-economic and political fate now and in the future.' Anyanwu questioned the calibre of people that have been piloting the Mbaise political interest so far and noted that it was the reason the entire community suffered severe blackout in terms of dividends of democracy.

The resolution by Mbaise people, Anyanwu stressed, was that they cannot remain in bondage forever but would henceforth 'reject imposition of worthless, discredited and rascally people whose government and leadership styles do not reflect popular will.'