Dissecting Udom’s continuity and Umana change ideology: A compendium of factors

BY TOM FREDFISH

On April 11, 2015 Akwa  Ibom people will file  out to either vote for a governor who will take over from the incumbent governor, Chief Godswill Akpabio on May 29, 2015 after governing the state for eight years or watch as thugs will cart away ballot boxes and thereafter allocate votes to candidates with INEC officials on a standby to announce the results.

My conclusion is premised on the fact that I have witnessed one of the most free and fair elections in Nigeria in 1993 and saw the peacefulness and joy in citizens choosing their leaders. Eventually, I have just witnessed another presidential and National Assemblies elections 22 years after, where after accreditation instead of giving me ballot papers to vote, I was asked to go home and pray. Free but unfair.

So this Saturday, it is either the strength of each candidate’s campaign, win for him or her or the strength of Nigeria’s security forces backed by INEC officials and political thugs wins just like I witnessed last presidential election. Either way, one must be employed to gain political power on Saturday and I pray it will be the strength of their campaigns.

The major contestants in the election are the anointed political godson of governor Akpabio, Mr. Emmanuel Udom of the PDP and Obong Umana Umana of the APC. The two men who are gladiators in their own enclaves and both men having been a former SSG to the same state and the governor will have to face Akwa Ibom people after thorough electioneering for months.

Both men are invariably coming from a different political divide with dissimilar ideology, political inclination, support base and social discoloration. Campaigning all through the length and breadth of the state and into places of worship for spiritual guidance and blessing, Akwa Ibom people welcome them with all amount of alacrity.

For Udom Emmanuel of the PDP, he wants continuity. He is not bother whether the policy of his predecessor was right or wrong, if they were impactful or not, if they favoured the larger segment of the populace or not, all what he is interested in is to continue in whatever that was done by the last administration. He is not through with the uncommon transformation in Akwa Ibom State. He intends to continue his government from where his godfather Chief Godswill Akpabio stops. 

By the definition of continuity and through his manifestoes, Udom wants Akwa Ibom people to support him so that he can construct dualized roads that look like airport runways with street lights powered by generators. He wants to spend 3.5 billion naira yearly on 999,000 carol night, and invite hungry Akwa Ibom people to come and sing on empty stomach in the brand new tear rubber stadium that was built with God-knows how many billions of naira.  He may perhaps build another Olympic size stadium in Eket, Easter Obolo, or Oron to attract either visitors or tourist to the state, when there are uncountable jobless citizens.

Udom has promised to continue with the free education policy in Akwa Ibom State not minding how many pupils uses bench and desk in the classroom or the quality of education been accorded these children. Udom said he will complete the gigantic infrastructures started by his predecessor such as the Ibom Tropicana and build more to make the state a tourist attraction without being sensitive to how much has been expended on the project and why it hasn’t been completed.

Since every good works of governor Akpabio must be continued by Udom, Udom will definitely continue owing workers’ salaries for months. If workers are usually being owed three months salary; be rest assured that Udom will owe six months salaries because his managers presumed that Udom will perform better than Chief Godswill Akpabio.  

If the official figures of debt owed by Akwa Ibom State and announced by the state governor is 80billion naira, Udom will definitely continue borrowing money for the uncommon transformation of the state. Since he is an ex-banker, borrowing cash might turn out to be his hubby. 

What about the 31 industries the PDP government promised Akwa Ibom people in 2011 elections, unfortunately for Udom, this time around he has no industry to manage or continue with, since there was none built. But Udom has promise to industrialize the state. Since industrialization means having many industries established in every hook and cranny of the state, civil service job may no longer be lucrative in Akwa Ibom state again just as oil job is lucrative in Rivers state. 

nonetheless compelling factors has analytically posited that if Akpabio who assumes the slogan of “promise keeping” could not build a single industry, Udom’s reverberations of industrializing the state is only a farce in waiting.  Because pundits say he has no capacity, neither will he have the political will to build a small industry like that of Tooth-Pick industry.   

The APC candidate, Umana on the other hand, philosophy and ideas lay on change. There is a saying that the only constant thing in life is change. And so every living thing has experience change in one way or the other. The idea of the need for change as conscripted by the All Progressive Congress, APC is a global phenomenon.  People and events changes from time to time all over the world depending on their wants and the crux of the matter is that people experience change daily nevertheless why is APC change so peculiar in this current political dispensation?

A man marries his wonderful heart rub of three years relationship and in three weeks, he complains to his mother in-law that her daughter has changed because she chose not to put on mini-skirt again.  A young idle unemployed university graduate has been asking this pretty university girl out for a relationship for two years. When she agreed, he got a job in a bank and had less time to see her, after two weeks, the girl complains to her close friends that her boyfriend has changed. A pretty damsel puts on a wonderfully made gown for a dinner party but she realizes she does not have a shoe to match the color of the gown. She frowns into her bedroom and changed the gown immediately. 

This is the kind of change the APC candidate Umana has promised Akwa Ibom people come May 29, 2015. He intends to change the way things are currently being done by government. Umana is not saying building roads like airport runway isn’t the best for the state, but at what cost and whose benefit when thousand of Akwa Ibom people cannot walk out from their homes to access the runway because roads leading to their houses are badly immobile. As a result, he intends to aid them by constructing quality roads to enable people leave your home to the runway roads. 

Umana does not have problem with free education that is currently enjoyed by the children but his problem is with the quality of education? He is not happy that thousands of children enrolled for WACE and Jamb after 6 years of primary education but only few passes the exams and gain admission into the University. He is bothered that the teachers are not motivated enough to enable them teach these children properly. He is worried that teachers who have families to cater for are being owed salaries for several months hence they indulge in other activities that does not permit them to teach the pupils better.

Umana is promoting change not because he is angry that the State government is building an event Tropicana centre that can employ more than 900 Akwa Ibom people for the past seven years or that the state built a world class stadium which cannot employ more than 10 people under two years, but he is concern about the benefit of the stadium which was built with billions of naira and instead of serving as an avenue for employment, monies is being expended for the stadium maintenance, while a specialist hospital that could employ thousands of people was abandon to rot for seven years. 

Umana did not promised to convert Akwa Ibom civil service state to an industrialized state like Lagos or Port Harcourt, but he has promised to revive and change our moribund industries,  like the Peacock Paint Industry, the Oku Iboku Paper Mill, the Ceramic factory, the Sunshine Battery Industry among others to be functional and employable. 

He believes that the basic components necessarily for any government to formulate a policy must be the intention of such policies to solve a problem and not for its creation for fanfare.  Hence every policy being considered by the Umana government to come is one that is aim at ameliorating problems such as employment, security, scholarship and grants to students among other factors too numerous to mention.  

Rather than saying all is well and the state has been totally transformed like his counterpart in the PDP, Umana has been able to identified certain areas which hitherto lacked development oriented programmes and want to change the areas through rapid development policies in what he referred to as catchment areas for development such as Ini, Ikono, Mbo, Oron, Obot Akara, Oron, Ikono Uyo, Easten Obolo, Mkpat Enin, Uruan etc. 

For Udom, the PDP candidate who believes in continuity even when such policies intend to grapple on the psyche of the citizens, he needs to be reminded that every government is a continuum. And that it is a duty for any government to be good managers of state resources to avoid waste by embarking on the project left by their predecessor and not strictly adhere to continuity as a campaign tool for seeking votes.

Umana’s change ideology placates the responsibility of a responsive government to be dynamic in its policy because governments are structured for the dual purpose of problem solving and enhancing the standard of living of its citizens. It therefore behooves on Akwa Ibom people to choose if they want continuity or change. 

As for me and my family, it is time to change the status quo.


Tom FredFish is a Youth Activist, Media consultant and Public Policy Analyst.