By CrossRiverWatch Admin
As has become common knowledge, I desire to be elected as the next governor of our state. I have declared so publicly to members of my party, the All Progressives Congress, particularly at Obudu chapter where I come from and Begiading ward where I am a registered member because all membership is local, at the ward.
I said at my declaration that ordinarily we from Obudu should not be seeking what we already have because the incumbent, Prof. Ben Ayade is one of us, an able brother and worthy son of Obudu! But we have walked his path of thinking and understanding these past 3 years and not a few of us think that there is something missing about his appreciation to the critical expectations of our people as a state on the role of government in our lives and how best to attempt to meet our collective expectations as a people.
We are an understanding people and we do appreciate that government can never meet all our expectations. All we expect is the assurance that government can at least be responsive to the most basic of some of these expectations as an irreducible minimum demand that will make us feel some sense of care about our wellbeing.
Prof. Ayade must be doing his best but unfortunately, if you fail to diagnose an ailment properly, whatever cure you apply no matter how well intentioned, expensive and intensive your efforts are, will still be in vain.
As 2019 stares us in the face, irreversibly, my hope and prayer is that we appreciate the need to formulate a new narrative for our state that will take us on a fresh new trajectory of development that is people centred and devoid of excessive window dressing; that is genuine and God fearing; that is open, transparent and results driven.
We can achieve these when we realise and appreciate that the commonwealth does not become ours by virtue of the people’s mandate to administer it. That we hold all commonwealth in trust for the people who elected us and entrusted us with the management of their affairs. That that trust is sacrosanct and should not be abused because it is sacred.
The fundamental approach in the current dispensation, unfortunately seems to have misplaced all these in its definition of what the people’s wishes are. That is a foundational misunderstanding at the root of the present inability to define as most will ask what Governor Ayade is actually not doing right; where he got it all wrong, and what needs to be redressed.
Understanding the fundamentals means getting the diagnosis right. Applying the right medicine then becomes easy, cheap and effective. We have defined the urgent needs in our “Blueprint for Social and Economic Reforms”. Our state is in dire need of healing.
Let us join hands and hearts to change our narrative.
Vena. A. Ikem.