As the world stands inundated by the disconcerting events of the crises-torn Afghanistan, her hubris, enforced by the revanchist Talibans, it gores the heart to no end to pore over images of entrapped innocent babies bifurcated and some smattered into particles as their hapless doting mothers in their frantic effort to hurl them off barbed wire fences for safe custody in the hands of USA frustrated military power. Yet, the eyes of every acclaimed sadist misted for those yet unascertained staggering numbers that fell to their death angling for space while the military aircraft lifted some altitude above the tarmac.
What is presently happening in the unstable and friable nation of Afghanistan might pose a hard nut of historic awareness to crack, at best, conjectures from public affairs analysts informed by their respective bias would suffice to explain away the vagrancy of the country’s fate, extrapolating from the overwhelming defeat consciousness hovering around the despondent Afghans.
The unsavory incidents in Afghanistan, is not only a lesson but a cue that every sane government should as a matter of expediency leverage on, to avert the tendency of similar occurrence in their states. Afghanistan and all it’s entrails quite boils down to the intractable bane of bad and inept leadership assailing most troublous countries of the world. The people with public mandate sleepwalk on pressing affairs of the state of which security takes primacy. Unstrategic and loose leadership have over the years opened flood gate of chaos making a state prone to terrorists assaults. These accounts for the splurge of advices occupying spaces in our national dailies, proffered by cerebral Nigerians affrighted by the Afghanistan fall to bullets. Security of the citizens as a primary duty of any pragmatic government should be above politicization and selfish private bargain at the loose end of the people.
Nigerian government has always played either complicit, or worst still feigned ignorance of the building insecurity challenges bestriding every section of our national existence. This, puerile hide and seek game of treating rabid terrorists rampaging under bandits toga with kid gloves emboldens them to ply their death merchandise with impunity. Government need to descend into the area, to read the pulsating living conditions of the masses not dishing orders from comfort zones and never tracking whether there was substantial compliance from security agents or not.
The system has always been Abuja based governance where even a local government ward councilor stay glued to Abuja or any other animated city of lavishness rather than dwell in the heart of his ward to activate governance at his doorpost. Same can be said also of Local government council chairman, who preferred frolicking away in the state metropolis while the people they are supposed to be leading languish in stark ignorance of government’s programs and policies. When threats to peace called, they would never find no authority to register invaluable intelligence on how to curb insecurity triggers in the bud. This is to say the least very shameful and very unbecoming of a supposed true leader.
It is this lacuna of benighted leadership, that the government of Gov. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi has persisted to eradicate since assumption of office in the last six years. Ugwuanyi, from the word go ensured that all the elected LG Chairmen take their permanent residency in their immediate sphere of influence to afford them first hand knowledge and awareness of what infrastructural deficiencies their respective wards battle with, including security threats.
Reaffirming every bit of his push in this regard, Ugwuanyi ordered that all the LG Chairmen should remunerate the ward councilors as due to them on or before early November this year, so as to equip them to carry out meaningful projects to the wards they represent.
In this orgy for aggressive performance, Gov. Ugwuanyi ensured Party Executives salary upped to the tune of 400% scale, unlike shriveled stipend they have been subjected to for lengthy years now.
These are alluring incentives from visionary governor who understands the loftiness of constitutional roles strapped to these grassroots offices and their importance in rural lives. It’s the activeness of wards that ultimately culminates into political consciousness and massive involvement especially in election season. The exuberance and resourcefulness of a ward chairman reflects the level of people’s participation in decision making, policies and programs as it affect their collective existence. The outcome is always certain in the gravity of infrastructural attraction to the particular ward.
As the curtain draw closer for 2023 politicking, the national electoral body has rolled out measures for electorate qualifications currently ongoing. The demoralizing phase of it has been the low turn-out for online registration witnessed recently, reason of which non can account for. Little wonder, Gov. Ugwuanyi registered his displeasure with the seeming unconcerned poise of our people to get their voters card and stand certified as the country decides her future come 2023.
Unarguably, the buck rest with us to take our destiny in our own hands just like the Zambians determined their fate in their recently concluded general election race. Ugwuanyi, is a man of destiny and we owe him the plank on which to take this country to her deserved destination.
Written by
Mrs. Bibian Anekwe
SSA to the Governor of Enugu State on Mobilization and Empowerment
Enugu Di N’akachukwu Movement ( DG)
