Dear Governor Okowa, a very good day to you and here’s to wishing you well on your second tenure as governor of our beloved state Delta. We are constrained to write this letter to you publicly because of the seriousness of the issue we seek to discuss with you. We are mindful of the fact that you have great respect for things that would engender the greatest benefit to us Deltans. Therefore, we thought to approach you personally. Yet, the limitations that protocol imposes between us have necessitated this explicitness of expression.
Let me not waste any time. Last week, we had the privilege of visiting Ughelli Delta state. It is just a stone throw from Warri, where that video of a pupil, Success Adegor, insisting she would prefer be flogged than made to leave school because she had a deficit with her fees made the rounds. As we drove from Warri to Ughelli, an acquaintance looked around the initial sense of order as we approached Ughelli and said to me: this looks good. This must be Okowa’s handiwork not so?’ Before I could respond, someone from behind had interjected: ‘No, this was work done by his predecessors, Uduaghan and Ibori. The man mostly focuses on Asaba the state capital’.
Since most of us in that vehicle do not live in Delta but Edo, we have no way of verifying this rather odd testament. He was our guide through the Ughelli town, and therefore we deferred to him. Apart from that as well, most of the narrative about the Delta State under your administration, Your Excellency is to some extent positive. For me, I took the comment from our guide in my stride and focused more on enjoying the serenity of the countryside to which we were billed to attend the wedding ceremony.
However, as soon as we arrived our destination, something of the disappointment expressed by our guide began to hit home. Some of us left Benin City a bit early, just so to meet the wedding ceremony in good stead. Therefore, our acquaintances began to feel the urgent need to eat something. Just close by, a woman was frying fish, which customers consume with bread and washed down with a bottle of soda or water. In places like this in the Delta we grew up, fresh fish popularly the Tilapia and others known in local parlance as eba and ero usually form part of the culinary delights that visitors come from far and near to indulge in.
On taking a close look however, I found that fish my acquaintances were fried iced fish. Fried iced fish in Ughelli of all places. There’s nothing wrong with eating fried seafood but… The women selling around gave us the lecture. First, you cannot find fresh fish in Ughelli, and that is because all the rivers are dead. The only rivers close by are in the dense hinterlands and even then, their deaths many years ago were from the activities of multinationals. If there were any rivers around Ughelli, then they would be artificial lakes, ‘burrow pits’, constructed by private individuals as business ventures. Because many of the fish are grown with fertilizers, many people avoid them and eat iced, sea fish as an alternative.
Apart from the dead rivers from where our people made a living, many industries that once made the Delta tick are no more as well. I remember sometime in the early 80s visiting Sapele. That town had a salt processing company; producers of Ethiope Salt that was sold to the rest of Nigeria and Sub-Saharan Africa. That town also had of a sawmill mostly because of a forest of Sapele – Entandrophragma cylindricum – the tree to which the city lends its name. Sapele used to be home to one of Africa’s largest timber production factories. Sapele was home to the United African Company, UAC, which ran the African Timber and Plywood (AT&P), known then known as the largest timber manufacturing complex in the world. In its heyday, that factory alone employed over 6000 Deltans.
But today in Delta, you can hardly find one factory or two to which we can ascribe the old Deltan enterpreneural spirit to emboss on the Nigerian signature and brand. No car assemblies, no soap, button, canoe, salt, timber, no nothing sir – everything and I mean everything is from China.
Your Excellency sir, you would recall that already, perception of your administration in terms of lasting achievements to which you name will rest are not there. Our people are already saying that you merely collect the fattest allocation from the Federal allocation and use it to decorate those close to you. They say that you have made the DESOPADEC an automated teller machine, ATM, which dispenses cash to you for mundane projects.
This is what we believe you should do: develop an action plan in the area of agricultural and industrial revolution. A great part of that work plan should include an agenda to use monies from the Federal Allocation to resuscitate industries in the Delta that once gave us our identity as Deltans. We believe as well that monies for the DESOPADEC can be better channeled to develop a base for a non-oil economy to which your name will be ascribed. You should also begin to put in place a practice of developing the mental capacities of any of our people who have the capacity for training in the management of projects you seek to endow.
Thank you Mr Governor for your kind attention.
Bob MajiriOghene Etemiku is deputy executive director, Civil Empowerment & Rule of Law Support Initiative, CERLSI, Abuja.
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