REFLECTIONS UPDATE!

After watching the grand opening of Governor Akpabio-led administration's stadium at Uyo, certain questions began to jostle for prominence in my mind. My ind immediately went straight to Governor Akpabio's next door neighbour at Abia. Uyo is just about an hour drive from Aba and if someone happens to drive to the opening yesterday through Aba, one will think he just emerged from pre-historic to a digital society. I have come to conclusion that the problem with a good number of Nigerian politicians is not political party affiliation but the absence or presence of one item - shame.

The difference between Akpabio and Orji is not party since both belong to the ruling PDP. What I think is that one has shame and the other has none. If Orji is blessed with the virtue of possessing an iota of shame, he would have resigned a long time again and allowed better people to run the affairs of his state. Aba is a complete eye-sore and it is in an oil-producing state. Other south eastern governors at Enugu, Anambra and Imo have to an extent done things that look as if they worked, but not Orji. The man is simply shameless.

Shouldn't we have some law against people coming from prison to rule. He was supposedly released under mysterious circumstances after being elected while in incarceration. The other time someone achieved that feat was with Omisore who because a senator of the republic while in jail. And yet, in spite of this elevated (definitely not divine) hand of god(s), this governor chooses to set his state back a couple of decades back in an eight-year tenure.

For a man who has shame, he will be concerned with how posterity will remember him. I go to a state like Gombe, you see governors who are working. It started with Goje and the pace of work has not abated under his successor. They are not propaganda stuff. You see someone like Fashola of Lagos too; someone working for the good of the people. I know some cynics will be like, "Aren't they enriching themselves in the process?" "How much will that stadium at Uyo have been inflated by?"

And I ask in return: "How much did it cost a governor like Orji to do nothing in almost eight years?"

I am not saying that "stealing is not corruption". All I am saying is that everyone who works must be commended in order to encourage the ones who aren't working to start doing something. 

By hindsight, especially with what happened to Anambra under Mbadinuju, most governors who do nothing are those who got into power through ungodly alliances with god-parents. Or tell me the magic with which someone who was in detention could win election. Isn't it an obvious evil hand-of god at work? Then, having come into power, their ability to perform is severely destroyed and they just use the remaining allocation to enrich themselves while the people suffer the resultant tragedies - bad roads, lack of job, no government project at all, heavy handed propaganda, appointment of misfits to run offices, lies and hatred being churned out on a daily basis, etc.

I don't know the full host, so I won't run to compare Akpabio and his other neighbour, Amaechi. But I am just wondering: what is that thing they say that a work person quarrels with his or her tools? Kwankwaso decamped to APC, but his work in Kano speaks for him. Can we also say the same for Brutus Amaechi?

In this next election, people must be judged by their precedence. GEJ should tell us how many of his election campaign promises of 2011 he has commenced and completed. I can still see no second Niger bridge. These politicians do not know how fast a four-year tenure goes. They always feel that they have time. And when they finally find out that time to start a project and convincingly complete it has passed, they immediately go into scheming and "stomach infrastructure." And before our very eyes, brothers and sisters in the north east consistently find themselves as refugees in their own land. Rather than answers we get accusations, counter-accusations, ur ours and lies. For crying out loud, didn't someone tell us there was a ceasefire agreement? Or has the meaning of that term changed? We don't want stories, we only want those who arrogate themselves to power to proffer solutions and when they can't, they should call up their sense of shame and do the needful so that those who have solutions can come in.

But do not think I am rooting for GMB. I am praying APC gives us a better alternative: someone younger and more dynamic rather than one whose mien shows he is only going in for vengeance. It is not a personal race out there. It is a race to save Nigeria and its people. Not a place for one to settle personal scores and get back at those who wronged him.

My hope is rather built on the fact that Burkina Faso isn't too far away. The Arab Spring might seem like eons away, definitely not Ougadougou Spring. It is coming and it will be huge. Let the likes of Orji continue, the people will not be silent for eternity.

Congratulations, Akpabio. People like you make all of us look civilized. God bless you and yours.