By Declan Ogar
When issues related to Ugaga, the home community of the Honourable Speaker of Cross River State House of Assembly, Rt. Honourable Larry Okori Odey are raised, I personally try to treat them with utmost caution.
This is not to say I don’t want to preach progress even in my own village; because I am also from Ugaga.
I only want to avoid the misconceptions that some feebleminded individuals may want to fuel by inferring that I am either being selfish or nursing a political interest to unsettle the powers that be or even being jealous about the office someone is holding.
The last time I cried out about total electricity blackout in Ugaga Community, our brother Dr. Lambert Agama and a few concerned Cross Riverians collaborated my observations with many suggestions to see how the Speaker could facilitate a solution to the black out.
I personally wanted the world to know that Ugaga the home town of the Honourable Speaker of the Cross River State House of Assembly, the number three citizen in the state is in complete darkness.
I also wanted the world to know that rather than looking for a solution to the impasse, the Speaker has been part of the problem.
I complained that the electricity which was commissioned in Ugaga by the then Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Admiral Augustus Aikhomu has since been overstretched without much repairs.
The population that the electricity Aikhomu commissioned to serve has now tripled the initial number and it is imperative to improve on what is on the ground.
Ironically, it was on that occasion of commissioning electricity in our village which provided me the opportunity to touch and feel a chopper for the first time in my life; when I was still very small but very stubborn and adventurous too. I remember that incident with nostalgia.
Within the period, when we were crying over the blackout, I was told by some kinsmen that the state government, through the efforts of Hon. Odey, had sent a transformer to the village from Calabar.
I rejoiced the first time I got the information that a transformer has been brought to the village to reinforce the existing ones for the benefit of the ever growing population of Ugaga community.
Regrettably, the joy was short lived as further checks after complaints persisted revealed that the transformer in question was hijacked to service the sky-scrappers the Honourable Speaker was building in his estate in the village and I am still weeping for my people back home up till today.
The politicians even with their low sense of estimation and feeblemindedness are using the advantage of abject poverty, which they have inflicted on the people coupled with the high rate of illiteracy and ignorance amongst the villagers back home to manipulate their senses and reasoning.
They give the people stipends from their huge constituency allowances and other funds meant for the development of the communities without any retribution.
This yuletide, they are busy decorating their mansions with different and assorted expensive cars to the deprivation of the people that elected them without second a thought.
But it is only foolish politicians that will continue to believe that giving constituents five hundred Naira every festive period will continue to blindfold the masses forever.
Even In our complacency and inability to act, the forces of nature are turning against those who think they can hold the people down forever.
Not quite long, we heard that Chief Obasanjo’s mansion was on fire. The same story was reported about the Deputy Governor of Lagos state.
The Governor of Kaduna State is gone. Sullivan Chime of Enugu is hospitalised in Germany and our own Governor Imoke is reported to be in an American Hospital. Catastrophe everywhere!
The wise ones amongst them are already thinking of what to do in order to change the suffering conditions of the people they represent.
They are going beyond giving cups of rice and salt to constituents during festive seasons and election periods.
They are implementing concrete and tangible project that have the capacity to create wealth, employment and change the living conditions of their people.
But the sad case of Ugaga my little hometown is that, it is a community which has produced a speaker, yet it continues to languish in darkness.