(Okwubunka of Asa) Umuiku-Isi-Asa Ukwa-West
E-mail: Ubanidon@yahoo.com
P.M.B. 7048, Aba
Phone: 08035523360
09-06-2015

RESTORATION OF CONFIDENCE IN THE RESIDENTS OF THE ENYIMBA CITY OF ABA, NIGERIA
SCRIPTED BY CHIEF (SIR) DON UBANI

If there is any human engagement in which confidence is most required, it is in political leadership and followership. Confidence, which simply means belief or trust in oneself or another person has, in most cases, been the driving force behind any success or progress made in human society, either by an individual or by groups. It is synonymous with faith.
As it has been said over time, government initiates, articulates and propagates its policy objectives and anticipates the governed to queue into them for them to be translated into concrete achievements.
Many countries, the world over, are run using the tax payers’ money and this is why high premium is placed on accountability by government and people of such countries. In such countries like Great Britain, the United State of America, France and Germany, attainment or realization of government’s developmental objectives always rests on the volume of confidence the tax payers could repose in that particular government. One might, therefore, infer that developments in any given human society are concomitants of the magnitude of confidence that prevails between her leadership and followership.
Much had, before this piece, been written about the commercial city of Aba, also known as Enyimba City. Its emergence as a sub-district colonial headquarters following the relocation of that office from Akwete in 1903 and the rapidity of its growth in such sectors as commerce, industry and politics have equally been well domiciled in the repository of many archives in Nigeria and Britain.
The residents of Aba are known for their idiosyncrasies, which are propelled by the Enyimba Spirit. The Enyimba Spirit is driven by industry, ingenuity and the philosophy of ‘I can do it and we can do it’! Many past leaders, who appreciated this spirit, had deliberately and skilfully tapped into it and it yielded maximum results. A few instances may be useful here. After the establishment of the first television station at Enugu in 1960 under the aegis of Eastern Nigerian Broadcasting corporation by the former Premier of defunct Eastern Nigeria, Dr Michael Okpara, the strategic importance of Aba was highly acknowledged by establishing a relay station of the television at Aba. Thus, Aba became the second city in the whole of the defunct Eastern region of Nigeria to have a television station. That station, which is now the Nigerian Television Authority channel 6, Aba, gave a welcome boost to the revenue and economy of the government of the defunct Eastern region. In addition to the financial benefits, Dr. M.I. Okpara’s political Party; the National Council of Nigerian Citizens, N.C.N.C., enjoyed overwhelming followership and support. In the same vein, the late Chief Samuel Onunaka Mbakwe, as governor of the old Imo State, made Aba a focal point of its infrastructural programme. The aftermath of Mbakwe’s development of Aba was a near surplus internal revenue and unquantifiable political support for his Nigerian People’s Party, N.P.P.
One prominent character of Aba residents is their promptness in reciprocating kind gestures and same in casting aspersions on any one or group whose activities are considered inimical to their progress. Though during the 2015 general election some Aba residents were, for reasons only known to them vainly worrisomely opposed to the emergence of an Ukwa/Ngwa indigene as governor of Abia State, it would still be given to them that they could be very objective in assessment of issues.
Aba resident are basically traders, business men and women, artisans and creators of wealth. For a people in this category, what they expect from government is mainly provision or sustenance of infrastructural artefacts and other enabling facilities that would enhance their day to day legitimate pursuits. Of course, the question of security, in any democracy, is the responsibility of government. But these were not to be! In the last sixteen years, Aba was subjected to various devastating experiences. Between the early part of 2008 and the later part of 2010, Aba experienced a holocaust of insecurity. There was complete breakdown of law and order in Aba and its environs. Some disgruntled and misguided youths of the area had resorted to various forms of criminality that principally took the shape of kidnapping. A good number of them reasoned that coming from an area that had been deliberately marginalized and deprived for many decades, the only option left for them to express their frustration in a state that had been most unfair to their people was to embark on vices that, though could consume their lives, would end up making the world realize that all was not well in the state. This narrative brings to the fore the fact that criminality that erupted within the Ukwa/Ngwa geo-political zone of Abia State was not, in the least, habitual but was sharply reactionary.
Sixteen years of neglect and near-total abandonment of Aba and her residents certainly took a toll on the psychology of the residents of the once great and glorious Enyimba City. The British colonial masters that designed Aba Township gave it a befitting network of roads, which made Aba accessible from many flanks. Visitors coming from Uyo and Ikot-Ekpene were meant to go into Aba through Ikot-Ekpene road. But for more than ten years, the Abia axis of this road had been under the most terrible state of infrastructural decay and abandonment. The state of this very strategic road, the parochial watery argument on whether the road is owned by the state of federal government notwithstanding, has compelled traders from Cross-River and Akwa-Ibom states to divert their business activities from Aba to Onitsha. Port-Harcourt is a major trading partner to Aba. Even though a sea-port is located at Port-Harcourt more than eighty percent of the imported goods that arrive at the wharf in Port-Harcourt have their importers as Aba-based business men. The markets in Aba; Ariaria, Ekeoha, Cemetery, Ngwa Road, Ohabiam and Ehere, sell at prices that are enviously cheaper than markets in Port-Harcourt, Umuahia, Owerri, Ikot-Epene, Uyo and Calabar. Traders in Port-Harcourt, therefore, buy their wares from Aba. Alas! If there is any road that has suffered the worst form of abandonment in the history of infrastructural neglect the world over, it is Port-Harcourt road. The same fate befell Uratta and Faulks, through Ukwu Mango roads.
The twin devils of insecurity and infrastructural irresponsibility ended up forcing many wealthy Aba business tycoons to relocate to Port-Harcourt, Owerre, Ikot-Ekpene, Uyo, Lagos, Abuja and some other places. In all these, it was not only the neglected Aba that lost. Abia State lost double-barrelledly; leadership image and revenue generation. Ndi Igbo equally lost.
Aba situation became so frustrating that the city became a mere shadow of its past. Frustration became synonymous with residents of Aba. Since most of the roads were out of constructive human use, residents, who would not help matters, deconstructed them for use as refuse dumps. The scenario in Aba, between April 2015 and 29th May, 2015, for instance, was so frightening that between Opobo road junction and Ukaegbu road junction of Ikot-Ekpene road, one could count more than twenty heaps of uncordinated ‘refuse mountains’ in very terribly infectious decomposing putrid state. Their experience was so nauseous that Aba residents lost faith and confidence in both government and governance. This political cum psychological crescendo culminated in Aba residents widely booing, hooting and jeering at the state governor almost each time he came to Aba, including during such solemn occasions like burial of very highly placed Priests. The Aba picture looked anarchical and it appeared everything there was at sixes and sevens.
It was this scenario that was at hand when Dr Okezie Victor Ikpeazu emerged as the governorship candidate of the People’s Democratic Party in Abia State. In the study of Psychology, one learns that transferred aggression is unprovoked hostility directed against someone for no specific offence or crime of the person but for the person’s name being, in one way or another, associated with another person whose conduct or activities have been adjudged to be injurious to those transferring the aggression. This human trait is psychologically normal. In being driven by this psychological dictate, majority of Aba residents, as made evident in their voting pattern in the governorship election of 2015, vowed not to support the candidacy of Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu.
Whatever was the case, Dr Ikpeazu has become the governor of Abia State. To the glory of God and in keeping with his promises to recover Aba from its many years of infrastructural inconsideration and delinquency, he has dutifully put in motion a machinery that will actualized his dream of celebrating his administration’s first one hundred days in office with solid infrastructural recovery of seven key roads in Aba. A visit to such roads as Ukwu-mango-faulks, Ukaegbu, Umuocham, MCC, Kamalu and Umule would surely convince one that with determination, even in the midst of an inherited empty treasury, a government could put smiles on the faces of her citizens.
Expectedly and hilariously, Aba resident have started singing an entire different songs in less than two weeks of Dr Ikpeazu’s assumption of office as governor of Abia State. A good number of them now pray for the success of Dr Okezie Ikpeazu because he has shown that confidence lost in leadership could be restored through diligence. As Aba residents are encouraged to give maximum support to a government that is committed to the restoration of confidence by being environmentally friendly and performing their civic obligations, political psychophants, who even kneel down while speaking with a governor that has shown great humility by asking that the appellations; ‘your excellency and executive governor’ be not used in addressing him, should realize that the times have changed.

Chief (Sir) Don Ubani.

I believe that Aba will be great again