Only those who do not know the person of Governor Udom Emmanuel will be unable to tell how resolute he is in his bid to correct the odds in the State.
The State helmsman who has been at the fore of advocating for peace, fairplay and humanness, has constantly harped on the need to do things right across boards.
In the buildup to the forthcoming Local government and Councillor-ship election, the State Leader at the swearing in of board members and Chairmen yesterday, made a passionate call for peace and sanity in the system, and called for the abolishing of fetish oaths in the quest for loyalty.
“No one will say that as a Chairman or member of the board, the Governor has given him any oath to remain loyal. The era of this has passed away in the State.”
“If you decide to do such for anybody in this local government election, you’re on your own and you’ll be disqualified. Let us take these things away. I don’t know what people benefit from it. Are you God? Why would you do such for loyalty?Are you loyal yourself even to your maker? You’re not loyal to your maker; one who created you, gives you life and sustains you everyday, yet you try to impose and force loyalty on another person so that if he/she does not do so, they die. What will you gain from it? Let us stop it! We can all stand here and a person wins an election, what was not meant to be, won’t be. So let’s just live a decent and normal life and leave all these fetish oath taking.”
It would be recalled that the Governor had warned against the fetish act of oath taking and cultism in the State, while stressing on the uselessness of such.
“I’ve seen people in this country who started as Deputy Governor to Governor, to Vice President and President but never stood for an election. It has happened. Someone has been Governor without being to the Primaries. He was called by the court to be Governor. So we should learn from it. Let us keep sanity in the system. We can do the things differently. Things have changed”, he stressd.
In his resolve not to interfere with the election, Governor Emmanuel explained that he was only concerned about the ALGON Chairman, whom he has a right to choose.
“I stood here and said that we’ll take power back to the people. When you see me stepping in, its when people want to ignore justice and what should be done right. The only one I’ve done as my right as Governor, is to appoint the ALGON Chairman and I don’t think anybody should challenge that. It’s the full right of the Governor to choose the ALGON Chairman because of coordinating. I’ve heard people complaining and I’ll have to make this public that I too have the right to vote in this LG Election and my vote goes to who’s the ALGON Chairman. Whoever that falls on, let that Local Government just allow my vote to stand. They shouldn’t challenge my vote please, so that we can work together for the benefit of all.”
This is no doubt an attempt to allow peace prevail and give back power to the people as he rightly puts it. One can only hope that the people to which these opportunities are given will be grateful enough first, to appreciate the Governor’s neutrality and second, to choose wisely.
As earlier, established, Governor Emmanuel’s pragmatic approach to leadership remains resolute. And will only be best felt when all hands come on deck to ensure lasting effectiveness. A situation where things are kept in the right perpsctive by the government but neglected by its users usually renders government’s efforts insignificant.
Lamenting this lack of maintenance culture and negligence to public properties, the Governor expressed worry at the rate of infrastructural decay in schools.
“We counted not less than 1000 projects we’ve done so far but it’s as if we’ve not even done a scratch because of decay overtime. We’ve put in so much and it’s as if you’ve not done anything.
So, it’s something we need to rehabilitate over time. We went round equipping some technical schools as model technical schools with computers, today, I don’t know what has happened. A lot of them complained that those things have all been stolen. So, its extremely difficult for us to develop the way we want to if we cannot protect our assets. All of those things we did, I’ve gotten reports that they’ve all been stolen, by who?
And these schools have PTA so, even if the parent don’t take interest in their wards, government alone cannot do everything. The parents, students, government, the society, the school, all of us are stakeholders”.
Obviously, a cry for concern from a burdened heart, this call must be received by all and sundry, and acted upon for the collective good of the State.
However discouraging the feedback from the public gets, the state Chief Executive has remained undaunted in his bid to better the lots of the State, particularly as it pertains to empowering the civil servants for greater productivity.
“I’ve been accused by labour that I’ve be paid so much attention to civil service and they’re beginning to be jealous about it. You’ll see the kind of training we’re giving them now from level 10-17. We’ve taken the experts to come and teach them and they’re going through those leadership training batch by batch so that we can have a very productive civil service.”
“We believe that they will reciprocate this by changing the order, structure, social orientation, attitude and everything of the society. No society can progress if people are not there so we need to reshape the minds of the people towards the direction we’re going and we believe a lot of encouragement will come from the people,” he said.
The onus is now on the civil servants to deliver on the expectations required of them in the betterment of the workforce.
To say the Governor is working without getting it right on our roles in the script of governance is incomplete. No one exists or survives in isolation. We therefore ought to take responsibility for the assets around us, help keep an eye on them for our own lasting benefit. By this, we will be complementing governments efforts by helping to channel resources to other pressing needs.
This is the message Dakkada preaches!
