By Joe Iniodu
Akwa Ibom has steadily ascended the unenviable height of serving as the rumpus capital of Nigeria. Every week a needless clatter is manufactured to help the subsistence of this negative attribute. If it is not about Lagos lodge, it is about the governor patronizing Churches or building International Worship centre or even visiting a market. Sometimes the cause of the rumpus could be so inane that a dispassionate observer would wonder why such a thing should be an issue. This is what politics has done to our dear State.
The latest in the serial rumpus is the casting of slur on the ongoing Akwa Ibom State Local Government Orientation Workshop taking place in Lagos. The grouse of those opposed to it is not well discerned. But it is gleaned that the expenditure on the item as usual is part of the issue. Others have questioned why the event was taken out of the State in the first instance. Yet these persons own offices and do transactions in the same Lagos. The arguments are thus myriad; from the sublime to the ridiculous and as usual with little or no regards to logic, facts or acknowledgment of any underlying gain in the choice of the Lagos location.
Holding of workshops in certain locations are determined by certain fundamentals. Such fundamentals are also set by the objectives of the workshops. In workshops where knowledge needs to be imparted and internalized, tranquility is a pre-requisite. This pre-requisite would include insulating participants from undue pressure from within and without which could necessitate distraction and lost of focus. We do not need any expert knowledge to know that a workshop that is intended to achieve maximally and equip the local government chieftains with the right mental tools for the managements of local government affairs in the State would fail to achieve the desired goal if held in the State under the current mood. We are all too familiar with the prevailing culture of alms solicitation that has pervaded the State and which has serially damaged our collective pride. Today the gathering of one or two is a veritable ground for the thriving trade of begging. Even people who have genuine needs to meet their leaders have also resorted to the same unconventional method of ambushing them at unofficial locations. With such ambush, nothing would have been achieved even if they secretly gathered at Le-Meridien Hotel and Golf Resort or anywhere in Akwa Ibom.
We are also aware that these Chairmen and Vice Chairmen were sworn into office about two months ago. The pressure on them for appointments can best be imagined. Any information of their gathering in any location in Akwa Ibom would turn such a place into Mecca of some sort which undisputably would defeat the purpose of the knowledge centred retreat. A retreat as one embarked upon by them requires quality time. It would foolhardiness to hold it under a seemingly chaotic atmosphere that would have turned it into a jamboree. These are realities we can not dismiss even in our pessimism.
During the second term of his Excellency, Senator Godswill Akpabio as governor of Akwa Ibom State, the State acquired the sobriquet of the Gilgal of Nigeria. The reason was that the State had become a destination for retreats, conferences, workshops and events of both national and international hue. Le Meridien and Golf Resort instantly became a beehive of activities. Those activities involved people who came from other States for their events in Akwa Ibom just as the case of Akwa Ibom State Local Government Orientation Workshop that is holding in Lagos. For non initiates in the affairs of Christianity, Gilgal was the place the children of Israel gathered to renew their covenant with God. Owing to the surfeit of activities the State witnessed at that time of nationwide insecurity, the then governor, Senator Godswill Akpabio christened the place as Gilgal to reinforce the fact that the peace and transformation of the State into a destination as experienced and witnessed were from God Almighty.
Yet the people who made the State to be celebrated as Gilgal came from other countries and States. They recognized the need for that isolation from their primordial environment to give value to their time and undertaking. They did not wait to count cost and stir such din in the polity to resonate back to the State were the events were held. They enjoyed the tranquility the isolation from their environment offered. But in Akwa Ibom what we get is a needless rumpus.
The workshop in Lagos certainly has higher cost implication but the gains accruable from the event at that location outweighs the cost. Our elementary studies avail us with the fact that traveling is part of education. They may be some of those elected local government officials who may never have visited Lagos before or savoured the comfort of such delectable environment. That workshop in that location would elevate such people mentally and rid them of inferiority complex that would have afflicted them if they were not availed of that exposure. That singular exposure would build their confidence and endue them with the right mental attitude that would help their work. These are the cost we can not quantify but which are higher in gains than the naira and kobo cost.
Well, we appreciate the fact that this is political season. And just as in warfare, everything is fair. Following this skewed notion, every action of government must be railed at not withstanding the good intention. Sir Wilker Jackson in one of his songs conveys and instructive message: “Nothing where man go do for this world where people no go talk, you do good them go talk; you do bad, them go talk”. This seems to capture succinctly the psyche of the Akwa Ibom naysayers. For these people, Governor Emmanuel is incapable of doing any good thing. But is there any man or thing created by God that is completely bereft of value? Non. Sadly, this is what the naysayers want people to believe. Even when a thing is said to be nonsense, it is known to have nuisance value. For a young man who was a success story in the corporate world to be deprecated as incapable of any good despite the laudable achievements trailing his yet short stay in office is the height of depravity and an illustration of the infernal hate that drives the critics. But the governor should forge ahead as history would judge him not by their hate filled criticisms but the unalterable difference he is making in the lives of many.
*Joe Iniodu is a public affairs analyst