Abia State and the Cycle of Underdevelopment

Okey Nwachukwu

The resort to divinity, rather than enterprise, is understandable. The wreck, which Abia State, which fancies itself as ‘God’s Own State’, has become, defies logic and reasoning. Only God’s intervention will broke the yoke, it seems.

From whatever direction you approach the state, the grim scourge of underdevelopment stares you rudely in the face. The roads, some of which are Federal Government-owned, offer a glimpse into the appalling trend that has enveloped virtually all aspects of the state. While other neighbouring states – Rivers, Enugu, Ebonyi, Anambra, Akwa Ibom, and Imo, to a lesser extent, present a tolerable drive on their roads, Abia offers a debilitating contrast that waggles your memory about infrastructure abandoned by departing colonial masters 62 years ago. Other social amenities present similar abysmal reality.

Bearing the brunt of the misfortune are workers of the state, local government employees and pensioners, who are owed huge backlog of wages, a situation that prompts curiosity about where revenue accruals are being channeled to. Teachers at all levels are especially afflicted, with the Abia State University gaining notoriety for depression-induced suicides among its staffers. Local government areas exist only in name, having been reduced to appendages of the state government, with allocations to them decided by the state government.

Aba, a globally-claimed private sector hub, endowed with the capacity to generate ample Internally Generated Revenue to sustain the state, wallows in abject neglect, with its roads now classic expression of deathtraps. An occasional politically-motivated ‘Made-in-Aba’ stunt has failed woefully to stimulate any meaningful economic momentum in the famed city.

A deeper challenge, often ignored in articulating policy objectives, is that the current unbearable condition of Abia State, and possibly other Igbo states, dates back to the 70s. Largely due to lack of strategic planning and deterioration of societal values, education of the populace was not prioritized. Consequently, educational attainment and quality have steadily declined over the years as people no longer see it as a channel to get ahead in life. Instructively, the least qualified persons are running the affairs of the nation.

The civil war had in its wake created a critical mass of pauperized farmers who were unable to finance their children’s education. Such children were subsequently dispatched to the cities to live with relatives or guardians in order to learn a trade or just to survive. Over time, a huge mass of illiterate and half-baked youth population accumulated. To survive, most of them resorted to trading and other forms of private enterprise. A large chunk of them went into the auto spareparts business, a vocation now erroneously deployed to describe the Igbos in ill-informed circles. Remarkably, during the colonial era and immediately after it, the Igbos dominated the upper echelons of the civil service, business and military, all based on merit.

The restoration of democratic governance in 1999 opened another window of opportunity for people. As people-centered governance, democracy was expected to create a conducive environment for societal development and to enable people fulfil their potential. But what happened? With just guts and fists, a lot of people poured into the political space at the state and local government levels. But, lacking the requisite experience, education or roadmap, governance became a criminal drive for private wealth acquisition while good governance retarded. This chaos precipitated in part the soulless polity we have today where mediocrity and brigandage reigns. Abia State was particularly unfortunate.

Some may be argue that there is no correlation between level of education and good governance, but enlightenment and excellence which are derived from strategic thinking and application have since been devalued from public reckoning. When someone who could not pass Basic Six now flaunts a BSc, apparently doctored or non-existent, what do you expect when he is saddled with a high office?

Orji Uzor-Kalu, Theodore Orji and Okezie Ikpeazu are products of the ‘survival  first’ fallout. Kalu parades himself as a successful businessman who became rich at a young age. Nobody faults the claim, afterall his parents were successful merchants. Nonetheless, a closer scrutiny of his antecedents reveals a rather opportunistic instinct to exploit the system for self-interest. Traces of this predatory tendency define his whole life. Overall, he never offered strategic or transformative leadership as governor. Instead, he arguably created the retrogressive model that has become the albatross of Abia State. Some people rate him as best governor of the state since 1999, but no one readily meantions any enduring legacy project or achievement from his eight years in office. Today he is Senator.

His successor, whom he installed in the hope of maintaining a puppet in government house, continued the rudderless voyage to nowhere. Without a significant legacy to flaunt, he however succeeded in establishing a political dynasty in the governance of the state. He became a Senator and his son the Speaker of the Abia State House of Assembly. The son has secured a party’s ticket vie for a seat in the national assembly. Abia was reduced to a beggarly state.

The incumbent governor, Dr Okezie Ikpeazu, emerged from the Theodore Orji heist. A middle level civil servant who served in several nondescript paratatals in Abia State, he has unwittingly created the image of a clueless leader, and demeaned his doctoral prefix, which should ordinarily signpost some accomplishment. Indeed, he holds a Doctorate Degree, Ph.D in Biochemical Pharmacology from the University of Calabar. But, when he blabbed about a flyover bridge in Aba, giving N500 to women who deliver at the state’s general hospitals, his fascination with a transport exchange project in Lagos and how residents were destructing roads with hot water from the skinning of fowls, he became the butt of jokes on incompetence. A remedial effort by his spokesman in which the ‘hot water and roads’ misspeak was described as a joke, was similarly derived as unhelpful frivolity.

Despite significant allocations from the Federation and IGR, no one can pinpoint a strategic project executed by the administration in almost eight years. It has largely been a tale of empty pronouncements and hounding of constructive criticisms. Perhaps, the commissioning of the Osisioma flyover bridge in Aba would nudge the narrative towards positive territory. Ikeazu is vying for a seat in the Senate in 2023.

On the flip side, the people have been sufficiently pauperized to offer any resistance or demand for accountability. Instead, they are willing to fight to death over the crumbs dropping from proxy battles of their inept and selfish leaders. Against this backdrop, the leaders expectedly ride roughshod over the people, treating them like sickening irritants.

Come 2023, another mediocre may be installed as governor to continue with the hopeless governance, while the performance parameters sustain the downward twirl for over two decades. Who will bell the cat?

In the face of an indifferent and subdued populace, the resort to prayers is logical. But going forward, the first prayer point, if the people hope to see good governance, is to ask God to awaken them from slumber and instill in them the spirit to fight and ask for accountability and performance from their leaders. It is their fundamental right.

Nwachukwu can be reached via informokeynow@yahoo.com