No matter how inane any government is there must be an area it will improve on
squarely. Without reservation, Governor Chibuike Amaechi-led government of
Rivers State is improving in the area of electricity supply. At least, many
of the towns can attest to enjoying electricity, though it might not be
uninterrupted.
With what we are seeing now on power generation, his pledge that the
residents of the state would be provided with uninterrupted power supply
beginning this December might not be out of place. But whether this will
bring food on the table of the impoverished residents cannot be
ascertained. And how the stable power supply would economically empower the
people as the government swaggered is a puzzle.
The provision of stable power supply is very important in any given
environment no matter the angle we may look at it. Electricity supply helps
in designing a people and their city with creative initiatives for
entrepreneurial development. Amaechi knows this when at the Future
Symposium for Young & Emerging Leaders in which personalities like Obiageli
Ezekwesili, Kayode Fayemi, Pat Utomi, amongst others who spoke at the Shell
Hall, MUSON Centre, Lagos on March 19, 2012, he said that the young people
were pointing their blaming fingers on the wrong people.
According to him: “The basic problem is that the Nigerian economic system
is flawed. The Arab spring was started by someone who was ready to stick
his neck out. You all just gathered here as children of the rich to take
over from your fathers.” What flawed the system and why has it not been
resuscitated? In what was characterized as a revolutionary Symposium for
Young and Emerging Leaders well thought-out by The Future Project should
kick off a discussion in Rivers youth with an appealing label to action and
should be enhanced by the authorities. Like someone at the occasion pointed
out: “This is no time for dead clichés. This is not a gathering of
politicians gaming for a piece of the pie; this is a hall pulsating with
energy. Let us talk sincerely to ourselves about our own challenges, let us
start a discussion that will not end.”
If we must talk of our challenges in Rivers State, we must express our
delight that the young youth have dropped guns of their shoddy agitation.
So, would it not be good that the politicians in the state dropped politics
and face reality with action? Amaechi had also in a lecture on 29th March
2012, where his Osun State counterpart, Rauf Aregbesola; and National
Planning Minister, Shamsudeen Usman, were among those who gave solutions to
the nation’s outraging picture, talked of ways to make Nigeria great.
While reportedly he messaged that nations struggle with one another and
struggle to devise sources of competitive benefit, it could be said that a
country does not develop at once, but with developments coming from the
villages to the towns of every state, a country can develop. However,
Amaechi must be commended for at least reasoning that our nation should
struggle for competitiveness in development with the need to attract
tourists, factories, companies, and talented people and find markets for
Nigeria’s exports.
This is why Amaechi must make sure that the uninterrupted power supply that
his government has promised is achieved, because China, India, Brazil,
Singapore, which they said, used to be on the same economic pedestal with
Nigeria, didn’t develop on the pages of the newspapers. By achieving the
necessary things required in the state, there will be no need clamouring
for branding, but the works and achievements on the ground that are
people-oriented will speak for the state.
