By Dan Etokidem
It takes one lie to start a war but many truths to end it- Braine Browne
"We hear that NDDC is planning to open more roads, if they do that we
would resist it because that would distort our development plan".
-Gov Udom Emmanuel
With the above statement from the Executive Governor of Akwa Ibom
State, it is indeed very unlikely that the state will overcome it's
troubles anytime soon if the mindset of the Governor is an indication of
what lies ahead.
Truly, there is no greater affliction than for
a doctor to suffer an affliction in his area of specialization. Who
could have believed that this macabre dance of shame was ever possible
in Akwa Ibom? But here we are.
There often comes a period in the
life of any society or nation when even it's most critical intellects
are incapable of making any sense out of what is going on. We seem to
have arrived at that juncture where fanciful reality meshes seamlessly
with colorful fiction.
As I lazed and rolled in bed ruminating
about the facial turn of events in Akwa Ibom state, it became clear that
under Udom, logic, rationality and diplomacy has become a prime
casualty of the social fiasco.
Akwa Ibom people have never seen a
hostility as vain, fruitless and senseless as the ongoing self
inflicted war unleashed on itself by the state government ostensibly in
the name of fighting the NDDC and it's management.
But if the decision
to view the NDDC as an adversary than development partner was a
calamity, the Governor's threat to undermine the Commission's effort at
developing the state is certainly a mistake made without rigorous
intelligent rumination.
Udom's demonstrable lack of diplomacy,
his dilatory, off handed responses to issues, banal equivocation and
frivolous flip-flopping should give many some cause for concern.
Though Governor Emmanuel is fascinated with exaggerations, but even
that it is still difficult to tell where he gets the flamboyant
impression that he can senselessly undermine NDDC's core mandate in the
state without severe consequences. We should all be wary of the
impending approaching hurricane.
When a Governor talks like
this, he presents himself as being at bottom a very vulnerable and
insecure politician who deeply coverts praise and loathes criticism. The
criticisms which his mind readily expands into abuse and insults as he
calls it.
Leadership is not just about planning to import 2000
Mexican cows, building a pencil and toothpick factory (though a good
step towards the industrialization journey) and insisting you can't
conduct local government elections because you lack money to employ
personnel, buy materials needed, fuel generators, provide security,
vehicles and other resources for the state electoral commission.
It is
more importantly about being visionary in collaboration and partnerships
for the common good, about anticipating the future, preventing
conflicts as the one he has vowed to initiate, and envisioning where a
people should be in decades to come.
Except Governor Udom
Emmanuel can properly articulate a vision for himself and the state, not
the nonsensical verbiage of his "Dakadda" philosophy which the
initiator himself has bastardly bastardized by refusing to himself rise
to the faith of greatness, it will be impossible to deliver the right
amperage of patriotic fervour to drive both the vision and the
investment needed.
Perhaps it is time for the ex banker to climb
down from his high horse to acknowledge that it is time he sits down to
discuss not only his understanding of partnerships and diplomatic
engagement, words that should have sounded familiar in Zenith bank where
he migrated from, but also where the state should be heading to, the
resilience of the ties that binds us, and the nature of the factors that
disunited us.
With the cold war emanating from the Hilltop
Mansion against the NDDC in the last six months, the Governor should
know by now or ought to be told by those who know that the people are
still eager to see him stop talking and behaving like a man who rose to
the office of Governor of Akwa Ibom State without the accompanying
psychology of a Governor.
They are eager to see a Governor whose mind is
no longer a vast battlefield and victim of his own bipolarity. Will
that happen soon? Only Udom Emmanuel can provide the answer
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