Letter To My Incoming LG Chair… BY AGBA JALINGO

Dear Peter Akonfe Undiandeye (Pita Pars)…

Tomorrow is Local Government elections in our State. I have monitored nearly everything going on keenly and I do not need to go far to conclude that you are the next Chairman of Obudu LGA. By next week, you will be our Chairman. The reasons for my conclusion are myriad but that’s not the focus of my long letter to you. It is now time to set the agenda and ensure your time is office will be worthwhile.

Me and you are not just from Obudu. We are brothers who have known ourselves all our lives. We have played together under the rain. We have sat in the same classroom as toddlers. We have carried firewood from the farm together. We have bathed together naked in the same stream. We have played together in the mud. We have played together and listened to folk tales under the moonlight. We have been ordered on our knees together and beaten by our parents when we crossed the lines in school and at home.

We have eaten from the same plate. We have drank from the same cup. We have laughed together. We have cried together. We have sent money to ourselves when we are broke, repaid some and never repaid some till date. We have gossipped together. But above all, we have discussed countless times and wished an opportunity will ever come for anyone within our age bracket, who has a compassionate mind for the people, to run the affairs of Obudu LGA, with financial autonomy.

Now you will become our Chairman. My Chairman. Just like you wished. There are no more excuses. Amongst all of you who contested, none of you were the best, but some of you were better and shoulders above others. You were favored and now is the time to work for Obudu people. Posterity has started taking your records already and it must not be another sad tale of agonizing.

As a citizen of Obudu and now your subject to be, I promise you that I will support you to succeed as our Chairman throughout your tenure, on the condition that you begin with and continue to serve the greater interest of our people. You are my brother and friend. I cannot imagine me and you bantering in public. If we must, which we shall do, we will lock the door behind us.

If I ever had any workable idea about effective leadership for our people, I consider your Chairmanship an auspicious opportunity to lay it on your table for consideration. I want to control my expectations and by extension, the expectations of many others. I am not expecting that you will solve all the problems of Obudu. You can’t even dream of that. But I am however fervently hopeful that you will make some marks that will recede our recent gruesome pains. Obudu is in the eye of the hurricane.

In aiming for those lofty goals you have romanticized about, some of the pitfalls you may quickly need to handle with caution as you take off, in my own opinion, include:

1. Food-on-the-table appointments – We have seen where this policy landed us in the recent past. An endless queue is already waiting for you to enter and give them appointments just to put food on their tables. It is true that people are working for your election and if there are statutory appointments, such persons who have competence, should be given the opportunity to serve in your government. But it should also be clear that appointment into government is not and cannot be regarded as compensation or food on the table. It should be first for service. The appointees should have the capacity to deliver value for the money they will earn. If it is for food on the table, government has many other ways of funding that. Avoid the temptation to over bloat the government payroll with names that cannot quantify their contributions to your development agenda for Obudu LGA.
2. Fingers in too many pies – Please no matter how tempted or how egalitarian you may want to pose, don’t put your fingers in too many pies. Don’t go and start too many things you won’t be able to complete. Remember someone started 38 industries and couldn’t complete anyone in 8 years. You have only three years. Measure your cloth before you visit the tailor.
3. Security: The greatest security challenge our LGA has faced in the last 8 years and more is gangsterism, commonly referred to as cultism at home. The mushrooming of armed gangs, funded and shielded by top politicians from Obudu. The free-for-all proliferation of these gangs in Obudu, reached the highest crescendo during the last administration as several top Obudu politicians in Calabar sponsored different factions and saturated our LGA with small arms in the hands of jobless youths. Many have said that the rivalry between members of Norsemen, where you are now their State wide leader, (State Patrol Governor), are responsible for the violence. It is then partly a wonderful thing that their State wide leader will become our LGA Chairman. It is therefore also safe to say that, our people should hold you personally responsible should there be any incident of violence in Obudu involving members of the group, or violence with their rival gangs. You should be able to wield your authority as our Chairman and their PG and know exactly what to do from within, and with relevant security agencies to curb the menace and discipline errant criminals.
4. Godfathers – Every politician in Nigeria has one godfather or the other. It is not out of place in our politics. From the complaints I have heard, people are worried that your elder brother and former caretaker Chairman of the LGA, Chief Tony Undiandeye, will be the one controlling you in the Council. He is your brother, and an elder one for that matter. No one can morally say that you should suddenly turn away from your elder brother after becoming chairman or because some people feel he will pull too many strings. He is a former Chairman of the Council and even if he were not your brother, it will only be right to consult him on the affairs of the Council. Having said that, it is even more important for you to always keep in mind that, his possible encroachment into the day-to-day affairs of the Council, will ruffle many young and old feathers and create the negative Co-Governor energy, that we just finished grappling with. People are equally feeling that you will be heady because your elder brother is also the Chief of Defence Intelligence CDI. I think this isn’t feasible. I know this one well. He has no time for politics, not even LG politics.
5. Fear of round tripping of allocations to Calabar – There is still the real fear that the Chairman will claim the Council is not receiving the allocations directly from FAAC even after being granted financial autonomy by the Supreme Court. Well, many people know already that there are joint responsibilities of the State and LGAs that require statutory contributions by the LGAs from the first line charge. There are several Commissions that are funded by both tiers of government as previously legislated by our State House of Assembly. I understand also that, several governors are planning to send more of such bills to State Assemblies to get more slices of the LG funds. Where the law requires those commitments, it will be wrong to stand down, unless you seek legal redress where necessary. But to outrightly decide to round trip our LG funds outside the requirements of the law, will certainly not go without a challenge.
6. Communication – Don’t be opaque with government activities as it has become our culture here. Communicate the much you can through all available channels and reduce the stress on you. Seek for effective hands and utilize all social media platforms to communicate and leave less to be sought for, from your office. Maximize technology in your communication and interaction with the people, particularly the youths. Make the contacts numbers of those working with you, the Supervisory Councilors, the HODs, the Council Secretary, the heads of PHCs, the DPO, the Education Secretary, all your appointees, public. Publish their contacts regularly in an official bulletin, so that those who need their services and interventions can reach them directly. That will reduce the pressure on your office and expose them directly to the people. Please reduce visits to the Council to visiting days and enforce it strictly. You have a maximum of ten hours to work a day. One traditional ruler or political leader can visit and take half of that time just chatting and laughing loudly in your office. If you must give them that much time, go to their homes after work. You will come to work, look from your CCTV and see sixty persons waiting for you and fifty came to just take your time for nothing. You won’t be able to open crucial files. Yet, they will be the first to blame you if you fail to work. Sit on your table and do our work. Don’t relocate to Calabar like your predecessors have been doing. We will look for you.

Finally, we will all expect that after Monday, after you have become Chairman, you will still have the time to address the people of Obudu and tell us clearly again, what we should expect from you in the next three years. I wish you all the best as always.

Citizen Agba Jalingo is the Publisher of CrossRiverWatch and a rights activist, a Cross Riverian, and writes from Lagos.

NB: Opinions expressed in this article are strictly attributable to the author, Agba Jalingo, and do not represent the opinion of CrossRiverWatch or any other organization the author works for/with.