Governor Ikpeazu One-Year Anniversary Score Card
A few months ago I promised to restrain myself from any harsh criticism of the Abia state Supreme Court Governor, Dr.Okezie Ikpeazu and to wait till his one year anniversary in office. Even though on one or two occasions I have attempted to point out a few things I believed he should have done, I have to a large extent kept my word. But the grace period is now over and it is time to grade his performance in office after his first year and in my opinion, which I believe is shared by a majority of Abians, his, is a failing grade of a C-.
In view of his poor performance and ineptitude, I find it rather perplexing and somewhat hilarious when his supporters and indeed most Nigerian politicians start talking about a second term barely half way through their first year in office. It is either they regard it as fait accompli that they will be re-elected by an unsuspecting and clueless electorate or that they are confident they will be able to rig themselves back to power. Whatever is the reason behind their crystal ball assumptions, the honest truth is that in a more civilized democracy most of them will not even be re-nominated by their political parties, let alone stand for re-election.
With regards to the Abia State Governor, despite his less than stellar performance in the last one year, his supporters mostly from his ethnic community have not failed to bombard our tender political sensibilities with talk about a second term. The question therefore arises. Judging from his performance so far, does he deserve a second term? The answer isunequivocal no. Which brings to mind a popular saying, “You don’t need a second chance to make a first impression”. If our first impression of this Governor is anything to go by there will not be a second chance.
There may be those whose only excuse is that he needs more time. That may be true but in governance as in dating a girl, first impressions matter a great deal. If she is not impressed or if the man fails to meet her expectations, there may never be a second chance after your first outing. A look at the Governor’s performance in all areas of governance reveals a man who has no vision or any idea of what he hopes to achieve.
There is not one area where he can be awarded a passing grade. In the area of road construction in Aba which is his one signature achievement, it has been a case of one flag off and photo op ceremony after another with the construction machinery removed the next day. Now that the rains have come, some Aba residents now wish their roads were left in their previous conditionof disrepair instead of being turned into cesspools of mosquito infested ponds.
A visionary Governor as I once suggested should have started with the construction of the roads in Ariaria market and the provision of other social amenities which will improve economic activity and, in turn, generate increased revenue collection. The revenue would ,therefore be used after careful planning and budgeting to finance the construction of the major roads in Aba before the tertiary roads. I recently saw a picture of the Governor inspecting a drainage system under construction and I was appalled by the quality of work being done.
Again I watched the Governor with no shame on his face announcing during his recent press conference how his administration started over 60 construction projects and have completed 27 and I began to wonder about the quality of these roads if the drainage system I saw was anything to go by. By the way, what is the essence of starting over 60 construction projects at the same time when you know you do not have the funds to completely execute all of them. It was really depressing watching the Governor’s press briefing which revealed a total lack of policy and process dimensions, two key ingredients of good governance.He was as clueless as he was uninspiring and comical.
Every sentence he made began with, We shall, We would want to, We are going to, We will and We will make , so much so that I started wondering, what happened to the phrase ‘We have” . What we have are promises, promises, and more promises. Of course, that else did we expect from a man whose only criteria for running for office was that it was their turn.
His entire industrialization policy has been to take pictures at a privately owned Glass factory in Aba and to promise the export of made in Aba shoes without proving the shoe artisans of the enabling environment to improve their trade. His agricultural program consists a poultry village, not farms and the increased production of Cocoa and cassava, whereas what the farmers actually need are good roads to enable themto transport their farm products to distant markets.
Studies have shown that more people will engage in farming if they have easy access to the markets where their goods will be sold. His smart idea about education is to train more teachers with the help of Australians when he has not been able to pay existing teachers their salaries and pensions. With regards to healthcare, what a bright idea to introduce free ambulances. Which begs the question, free ambulances to dilapidated hospitals that have no beds, modern medical equipment or the requisite personnel. Of course, he plans to revamp our healthcare system with the help of Abians in diaspora. What a joke.
I live in diaspora and unlike Dr. Alex Otti who sought and cultivated the support of Abia professionals in diaspora and even promised to create a Department of Diaspora Affairs, Dr.Ikpeazu did nothing of the sort. All he did was to attend a Ngwa convention and I doubt if there are many Abia professionals here who will be willing to come to his assistance or be part of an administration that has no designated pathway to progress, vision or provisions for their safety notwith the resumption of Kidnappings in Aba and other parts of the state since he became Governor.
I, therefore, would like to know what Abia diaspora healthcare professionals he is talking about. Just read a piece by one Obed Asiegbu who calls himself a Special Assistant to the Governor on Strategy in which he blamed the Governor’s poor performance on the declining Federal allocation, last months of which he claimed was 1.9 Billion Naira. If that is the case, how can anyone justify the Governor’s 5 million Naira donation during his recent visit to Adamawa state to attend a wedding ceremony? Is the donation his personal money or that of the state? How is this prudent? My guess is that being the paid sycophant which he is, Mr. Asiegbu would not have any answers to these questions.
Like a president, a Governor‘s choice of advisers tells you about him. A deep bench of experienced advisers is essential for any good Governor to provide policy guidance, a sounding board, intellectual ballast and eventually help in translating ideas into action. Instead, this Governor filled his cabinet of 20 Commissioners and dozens of assistants with people lacking in intellectual rigor and the ability to generate or entertain game- changing ideas.
If I may borrow the words of one Segun Adeniyi in a recent article in Thisday, this is an administration very deficient in policy articulation and execution. A good case in point is his recent appointment of Ex- Senate leader Adolphus Wabara , a disgraced former senator who was banished from the Senate for financial malfeasance as the pro-chancellor and Chairman Governing Council of Abia State University.
I guess this was rewarding him for his ignoble acts during the campaign when he made a public caricature and nuisance of himself unbecoming of a former Senate president. When you look at most of his cabinet members and advisers, there is no escaping the fact that he has surrounded himself mostly with his kinsmen whose only qualification is their expertise in the act of election rigging. Square pegs in round holes, so ineffective and ineffectual that B .P Apugo recently described most of them as not fit to be office messengers. Even the number of commissioners is way too many for a state that has no money.
Let’s take a look at what his counterpart in Kaduna State did. El-Rufai despite being a religious and ethnic bigot had the good sense to reduce the number of his Commissioners from 24 to 13 and the number of permanent Secretaries from 38 to 13 as well as cutting his salary and that of his deputy by 50 percent. Inkaduna state salaries are paid. This has been possible because the Governor has done everything possible to cut cost by attrition and the removal of ghost workers. Governor Ikpeazu on the other has done the opposite.
Despite his acclaimed Biometric exercise, workers are still owed their emoluments.With regards to his person, there is a mad abandonment of reality of his failings as Governor. Ex –Governor T A Orji was a certified crook with a façade of civility, but nonetheless a crook, but Ikpeazu, on the other hand, appears to live in a parallel universe-sealed off entirely from the ghastly realities lived by those outside his political and ideological thrall.
No matter how hard he tries to conceal his know- nothingness by always reminding us of his Ph.D degree, his ignorance shines froth.I challenge him as others have done to make public his 2016 state budget so as to enable us see what it contains, scrutinize and suggest changes. The question is, what is he hiding? Like his predecessor, he too has refused to organize Local Government elections.
The plan is to appoint Transition Chairmen who again will be turned into PDP polling agents in 2019. That way he will be able to continue the hijacking of the Federal Government funds meant for Local Government Councils .To make matters worse he is continually enabled by a state media with their praise singing and heaps of accolades having turned themselves into lap dogs instead of watch dogs.
Despite all his incompetence and lack of vision as Governor, there are still people who claim he is God sent, a messiah which, makes me want to throw up. Their perplexity echoes the alarming state of denial they often display. For some, not all from the Ngwa extraction, presumably, the only group in Abia still singing his praises, their continued support for Dr. Ikpeazu is not based on any governing intellect, experience or even false evidence of vision.
For this group, the incoherent truth is bitter and hard for them to swallow. All over Social media, when they are confronted with the Governor’s poor performance, they always respond like a child who failed his exams and his only defense is to say the subject was difficult and besides two of his friends also failed.
They forget that that when you are elected into a political office, failure is not an option. As a Governor, you are responsible for the improved welfare and security of your citizens. With this Governor, the clock of progress in Abia state seems to have been set backward. Their standard of living has taken a severe hit. Many are so disappointed that they have begun to deny Abia as their state and claim Anambra where the APGA Governor seems to be a transformative leader.
Again despite his mediocre governance resume and accomplishments Dr. Ikpeazu and his band of comedians is not receptive to constructive criticisms of any kind. They call those of us who are critical of his performance ‘wailing Wailers”, but then they themselves are far from smiling,but suffering in silence. They ask us to go and hug transformers, forgetting that presently the transformers in Nigeria do not generate or transmit any electricity, thereby rendering them harmless. What they want is a culture of silence. But the Governor is not well served if all he hears are the sweet nothings whispered into his ears by the sycophants around him.
As usual our leaders, Ikpeazu included do not learn from history. They forget power is ephemeral. It is here today and may be gone tomorrow. Those who sing his praises today will be nowhere to be found when things start going bad or when he is out of power. Like Ochendo before him, the sycophants who were defending and applauding his incompetence are the same people who will bad mouth him tomorrow and deservedly so.
For a Governor, whose victory was dubious and popular support from a majority of Abians lacking at best, his job performance so far is a disgrace. For those who continue to support him, irrationally to the point of fanaticism and denialism, I make bold to predict that in no distant time, their present love affair will turn into a tortured one. One that grits its teeth,girds it loins and pines for a transformative leader like Alex Otti. It is going to be a love affair worn down into resignation and disgust. In time, their praise singing for him will go down in political history as some of the most constipated hosannas everrendered.
By the end of his term, they will discover that individually and collectively their standard of living have not improved but have taken a turn for the worse. They will experience a buyer’s remorse for the can of goods they were soldand that there’s no immediate hope on the horizon until 2019. All any one needs to do is to look at the rate of development in other South East and South South states and you begin to wonder if Abia is indeed ‘Gods own state or the devils paradise.
I therefore, challenge those who may be inclined to come after me after reading this article, to search their conscience before doing so and ask themselves if this is what they hoped for when they voted for Ikpeazu. I implore them to go on a tour of Umuahia, the supposed State capital with its dirt and decay, vultures having a field day on the refuse pile up close to the Government house and other parts of the city.
I beseech them to visit the Enyimba City of Aba and in doing so get themselves canoes to help them navigate the roads that have been turned to creeks. I plead with them to visit our crumbling school buildings with their lack of desks, computers, books, notto mention a demoralized and unenthusiastic teaching staff who are still owed their salaries.
I ask them to visit our hospitals where patients sleep on the floor for lack of beds and where to be admitted into any of them is tantamount to a death sentence. I urge them to look closely at the faces of our youths and thousands of unemployed graduates and see the despondency in their eyes and their resignation to a life of misery and poverty.
I ask them to speak to their friends and relatives in the state civil service who are owed salaries and enquire how they are able to their rent, feed their families or pay their children’s exorbitant ABSU school fees. When they have done all this and still think Governor Ikpeazu’s one year in office deserves a better grade, then they can call me all the names they can conjure. They can then proceed to attack and rain abuses on me as much as they want for all I care, but I will not be deterred from speaking the truth. In time posterity will judge us all.
The truth may be bitter for them to ingest but it has to be said if not by me, by someone else. For those who think people like me are hate mongers, I sympathize with their ignorance, imbecility and lack of understanding of what truly constitutes hate or hate speech. We do this because of our love for Abia state and the welfare of its people.
We can do better and we must do better as a state. Every true leader must have an appetite for constructive criticism. He must welcome it, grab it with open arms, learn from them and make amends. Such is the true test of transformative leadership.
Nnanna Ijomah BSc,
MA (International Relations) is a New York based Political Science lecturer.