by Uzoma Nwandu (Ada Aba)

 

Like in a wrestling game, verbal wrestling as is the case here, they had turned vocal combatants, always ready to throw attack punches to anyone who dared to question their smelly incompetence.

Impoverished roads, filth-ridden markets and hopeless healthcare—sadly, these are terms that had become tied to my beloved state, if not now considered synonymous with it.

Regardless of a huge Federal Allocation estimated at N54 billion annually; Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of about 48 billion naira annually and N64 billion collected from the Federal account between January and December 2012, which is exclusive of other allocations such as Derivation (for oil producing states), Excess Crude Account, Domestic Crude Account, Subsidy Reinvestment Programme (SURE-P), Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) refund and Foreign exchange differentials, the dividend of good governance is comprehensively abysmal in Abia.

Personally, I think it has always been.

Over the course of the years, Abia has seen governors with neither conscience nor purpose.

Except maybe we decide to talk about personal targets. Here is a state where past and present leaders are at all times engaged in a web of political battle of wits and petty talks, aggressively fighting for dominion of voice. A victory so impalpable it can only be read off the pages of newspapers. Or roadside posters, which they now seem to paste on every surface, as if it to cover up their negligence and heartrending inefficiency.

Weeks, months and years pass with them doing nothing for the good of the common Abia man, only carting away incredible sums for puerile advertorials that shame­lessly declare their specious fabrication.

Like in a wrestling game, verbal wrestling as is the case here, they had turned vocal combatants, always ready to throw attack punches to anyone who dared to question their smelly incompetence.

And while these go on, the people whose votes had earned them the office they so intensely abuse stood watching as mere spectators, still, silent and sad.

And like this, a full political term elapses in Abia State with little or nothing being done.

Abians have been most patient, I must say. I read somewhere sometime that some street boys in Aba finally defiled the fear factor and threw sachets of water and other objects on Governor T. A. Orji. I had laughed, because their little act of violence as widely disseminated by several media units then, was nothing compared to the horrendous atrocity being committed by the then and still governor.

Still, majority of Abians, as always, have taken the simpler way out – paying little attention to the saddening abuse of office and devising alternate means to survival. Adaptation, it can be called. In the midst of the horrific dilapidation, residents still try to invent ways to live. Being strong among themselves, being who they had always been.

But the good people of Abia have endured enough.

It’s time we reach out to change ourselves instead staying idle with folded hands waiting for it to magically fall on us. If we don’t do it ourselves, no one will do it for us.

We must all reach out and embrace a different kind of wrestler that is coming to us this time. One with conscience and purpose. A purpose of the people. For he had been among us, watched the tear-evoking injustice as the rest of us, felt all we felt. He had always been a part of us.

Now we must stand up and give him the support he needs. For only a man with love in his heart can wash off the dense layer of decay Abia that has come to settle on Abia.

God bless our people.
God bless our man.
God bless our Abia.
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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.