By Chuba Keshi
TUE. 27 DEC, 2022-theGBJournal| Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all us Deltans. As we enter the new year 2023, it is necessary that we reflect on our dear State and decide the next level we must attain.
It was Albert Einstein that said that one cannot keep “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. When I consider this famous quote, I also wonder why people sometimes tolerate unresponsive leaderships.
I wonder why questions are hardly asked when a people’s commonwealth is being plundered by a clique of persons whose command of power is not apparently based on any real substance. Such has become the fate of Delta State.
There is no doubt that every Deltan of voting age must either have experienced the glory of “Up Bendel”, or has been schooled in that slogan of prestige by his or her immediate parents or, and even grandparents. “Up Bendel” was a consciousness among the peoples of today’s Delta and Edo States who, as a people of one State, captured a personality of courage, audaciousness, confidence, brain, brawn, and never-say-die.
This played out in practically all spheres of life: academics, industry, science and technology, sports, entertainment, and even in the cultivation of social capital. Every other Nigerian who was not Bendel felt safe to deal or relate with Bendelites; always hoping to learn about current “global best practices”.
Bendel State was so astute that the renowned Time Magazine once described its Capital Benin-City as the “show business capital of Nigeria”.
When Delta State was created out of Bendel, it was so seamless to show where most of the Bendel glory came from. For instance, Delta State has won the National Sports Festival – which was practically an exclusivity of Bendel State – in about 80 percent of her total number of appearances in the national fiesta.
And in the recently concluded 21st edition of the fiesta holding in Asaba the mettlesome Delta spirit in spite of all the odds, held sway. Delta won. Unfortunately, however, this appears to be the only glory that the Delta spirit has clung on to.
It is this spirit, which even needs to be better fired in sports, that has collapsed in other spheres of life, in the 23 years of the PDP in the State. It is this spirit that has been dampened even further in the past seven years of the Okowa administration. It is this spirit that all Deltans must now compellingly strive to regain.
If we begin to interrogate specifics it will be unending. But a few instances will suffice. For instance, in the past seven years we have seen the tumbling down in the fortunes of the Delta pride Warri Wolves and even fewer Deltans feature these days at the national scene especially in football. The State still yearns for brands like Victor Oduah, Stephen Keshi, Victor Ikpeba, Wilson Oruma, Austin Jay Jay Okocha, just to mention a few.
The education system in Delta State is now an embarrassment.
Scholarships for first class graduates that hitherto encouraged seriousness in tertiary institutions have ended.
The same for free WASCE enrolment and student bursaries. Free and compulsory primary education have suffered alongside secondary education with the now moribund Edu Marshals; the enforcement arm of basic education in the State. This is just as fees for tertiary institutions have trebled in the past seven years.
We have seen an Education Commissioner that struggles to speak good English. We have seen a Special Duties Commissioner that cannot pronounce some simple words. Who found it very difficult to read a speech he signed himself, even though he may not have written it. For a State like Delta; a model in Nigeria known for best practices, this is totally unacceptable.
Closely related to this is the untold suffering of teachers who account for the largest unit of workers with late, sometimes irregular, salary payments.
They also suffer the most in untold delays and even non-payment of gratuities and pensions. Some State workers have retired for about ten years with their gratuities and pensions still unpaid.
Is it road infrastructure and transportation? Less than 30 percent of intra- State link roads are car worthy. In the recent past, we have been inundated with video footages and still pictures of dilapidated roads all across the State. Other infrastructure suffer equally. The street lightings we used to see in the urban areas particularly have gone.
Ancillary to this is a now ineffectual Direct Labour Agency (DLA) that used to complement infrastructure efforts in the State. The same for basic health infrastructure.
State-owned facilities are in state of disrepair. Related to this is the erstwhile free medicals for under-fives and senior citizens above-seventy in the State that have rather ceased.
What about finances? Budgeting is a mere writing of figures that are far from what the figures are eventually applied to. The monthly publication of IGR “state of the State” has gone, just as the goings-on at the DESOPADEC remains rather mysterious. Oil communities are denied their dues and mainly left to the mercy of community efforts.
The scandalous borrowings have not translated to any commensurate infrastructure or other development projects.
Yet, more and more requests are being made for more borrowing in what now appears to be an inordinate bid to fund the PDP presidential campaign.
Delta State must be returned to its old glory. And this task needs capacity.
Tested and trustworthy capacity. It needs audaciousness. It needs uncommon courage. It needs passion and the can-do spirit. All these are what Senator Ovie Omo-Agege represent. Heavily credentialed, both in formal and informal education, the man who is no doubt the most visible Deputy President of the Senate in the history of Nigeria, is clearly the only viable solution to the misrule of the PDP.
It is important to observe that his visibility is not in terms of any theatrics of verbose language or media hype. It is demonstrated in terms of development-oriented bills he sponsored on the floor of the Senate.
It is also demonstrated in the development-oriented projects he attracted to not just his constituency of Delta Central, but throughout the State, all through his time in the Senate.
Added to this is the large portfolio of social capital he has garnered to the extent that his governorship will enjoy unprecedented friendship for the State from both local and foreign prospective investors. Perhaps most of all, is his team spirit.
This is most crucial at a time like this that there has been so much social distance, artificially created by the PDP years such that the camaraderie spirit for which all ethnic groups in Delta States where originally know, has been almost eroded.
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