Generally, animals tend to wag their tails when they are excited and expectant. It is usually a stimulus that notifies their caregiver of their immediate expectations. Many of these tails are gleefully wagging in the advocacy for the creation of Ogoja State. A project I have remained very nonchalant, disinterested and sometimes, even irritated about.
This is not like, the opposite would have made any difference anyway, even if I was excited about the advocacy, I cannot quantify what my contribution would have differentiated, considering the respectable caliber of men and women already on the task.
Nevertheless, I have read, listened to, and digested so many materials on the merits of the creation of Ogoja State. I have carefully listened to elder statesmen from Cross River North and part of Central, giving ardent reasons why the old Ogoja province should be made a State, and these arguments are very laudable and agreeable. What I haven’t seen and what usually does not elicit interest even with the leaders of this advocacy, is a development plan for the proposed Ogoja State.
I have written before that the entire five LGAs of Cross River North that make the core of the proposed Ogoja State, are smaller in land mass than one single Akamkpa LGA. If you add Yala, Ogoja, Bekwarra, Obudu and Obanliku LGAs together, Akamkpa LGA alone is still bigger than all of them, with the land size of Bekwarra LGA. Now, let me first note that even as small as Cross River North maybe compared to Akamkpa as illustrated, it is bigger than some countries both in Africa and elsewhere in the world. It can be made a State if the dynamics are right.
But if that small space that is smaller than Akamkpa LGA, has a Senator, an immediate past governor, a Deputy Governor, two members of the House of Representatives, six members in the State House of Assembly and fifty one ward councilors, and cannot find a sustainable development path all these decades, it is not because it has not been made a State yet, it is because those who have led us do not have a direction for our future.
The Ogoja province till date is still splattered with mud shanties, devoid of any form of modernity. We do not have good schools nor enough teachers in our dilapidated schools, nor do we have basic drugs in our decrepit primary health centers. Our water works built by the military have been mismanaged and destroyed by politicians. The most beautiful homes in our place are those owned by politicians who have stolen from us. Some LGAs like Bekwarra and Obanliku do not even have what you can comfortably describe as LGA headquarters. In the past four decades, the quality of life in the old Ogoja province has deteriorated disproportionately.
Not many people on this Ogoja State advocacy train are interested in dedicating time and resources to engender the conversation that will create an Ogoja development agenda. The cadre and trained manpower and managerial expertise that will run the Ogoja public policy administration, where is it? How will we address the pressure of unfavourable conditions created by the weak linkage between planning and management and between plan preparation and implementation? How will we surmount the constraints in finance generation, rather than relying on handouts from FAAC?
Challenges of unavailable data in many sectors, absence of commitment amongst the masses, inadequate efficiency in public and private sector consultation, these are all embedded development issues that are neglected in this advocacy and giving it a hollow sound that many young people are finding difficult to connect with.
All I see and hear is the mushrooming of groups of entitled individuals and coteries of friends who are rather interested in moving privileges from Calabar to Ogoja, so they can own the power to appropriate those privileges without let or hinder. Creating another layer of power drunk big men and women in Ogoja, freed from the control of Calabar, whose goal won’t be serving the people but expecting us to venerate them for giving us Ogoja State. I don’t want to be part of the creation of another State where IGR cannot be generated practically and FAAC will be used to service a few individuals and the masses have nothing to benefit.
For now, I remain disinterested in this project and very adamantly too. When the vision is clear, our energy will tip.
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.
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