Grouse With Amaechi …‘Real Treat’ That Sparked My Angst

As I stepped out of the soon to be unveiled Model Secondary School, Eleme, one of the ‘out-of-the-world (from Nigerian perspective) citidals of early education, the same question I had brooded over hit me like a fatal blow : What manner of man is Amaechi’s son, Chibuike Rotimi, Governor of Rivers State?

The state’s Information and Communications Commissioner, Mrs Ibim Semenitari had  just conducted heads of state media agencies and the Ministry on a round the educational facility tour of projects in the Khana, Andoni and Opobo/Nkoro axis of the state.

That tour which also took the media heads to both Nkoro and Andoni ends of the 36 kilometre long Unity Road project followed a three-day retreat, at the Songhai Rivers farm (Thursday Jan 2nd to Saturday, Jan 6, 2011) during which, the media heads not only brain-stormed on how best to reposition the state’s information machinery, but also beheld an array of very benumbing changes only a 10 per cent of which Governor Amaechi had obliged the world. But that’s for later.

After moving from one structure to another, housing various aspects of studies, well-equipped physics, home economics, chemistry and biology labs, language centre, complete with translation equipment and head phones, a mouth-watering dinning hall that can go as coffee shop in a five star hotel and dormitories that will house not two oil company expatriates but two Rivers and Nigerians students, per room and more than 50 toilets, the same question returned: what manner of man is Amaechi?

My brooding from the experience of the Songhai Rivers farm turned into agony when the commissioner led us into what could pass as  a sub conference hall of the United Nations (UN) in New York, USA, complete with the intimidating trappings of excellence, class and character. But she called it the model school’s auditorium. All those for post primary education? Why not Eleme Polytechnic? That in other states would be celebrated as a university campus as part of the real change we can see.

Strangely, rather than tell the story, the whole success story of the massive transformation, a 20- year leap into the future that places Rivers ahead of other states in that sector and help enrich tomorrow’s history, with the kind of change even the blind can feel, Governor Amaechi has been  down playing his sorry, Rivers own giant strides, and has been feeding the world with barely a 10th of what Rivers has achieved under his watch as Brand Symbol. This is unacceptable.

Upon taking the oath of office, as Executive Governor of the State, October 26, 2007, Amaechi in his now familiar modesty had elected to be known, simply as governor and be addressed merely as Right Honourable, an appellation he earned as Speaker of the State House of Assembly, for two consecutive terms of eight years, and not His Excellency.

What manner of a man is Amaechi?. A reluctant celebrity? One who works exceptionally hard to be known and decides to wear large and very dark sunglasses to avoid being recognized? And for this manner of modesty, little accomplished states everywhere in self-praise and now are at the verge of succeeding in their attempt at distorting facts of the true development indices of the Nigerian project.

Today, the Rivers Change Woko is being claimed, and won proudly by less befitting many because the true change agent appears shy and  modest to a fault?

Governor Amaechi needs to be reminded that the luxurious bus of change which he pilots, belongs to Rivers people, he, merely the driver, and on the marketing front, the principal brand model engaged, dressed and empowered to defend the masters’ (Rivers peoples) directive. As the primary custodian of the Rivers brand, Governor Amaechi should freely share the content of the Rivers change epistle not be shy to echo the brand symbol’s key words, Change We Can See. He should speak it, dream it and sleep it. He must not allow his modesty to affect this charge for it is a reminder of the bond of collective pride  and success which all Rivers people, at home and abroad wear as a development garment.

If he fails to do that, he in advertently helps others in creating doubts over our accomplishments and potentials as a people and allow them to boast and speak loudly when they should in fact, listen.

In September last year, editors in Nigeria had their 7th All Nigeria Editors conference in one of the sister states within the South-South geo-political zone. Naturally, huge presence of that calibre of journalists evokes in the host, the need to add a bit of the state’s milestone to the evolving history and the  host governor felt no less so.

In a power-point presentation, earlier, the state governor personally painted an ‘out-in-space’ picture of his educational accomplishments to the visiting media ensemble. The hype was such that evoked inferiority complex even among some Rivers people because, in his fear of being misconstrued as immodest, Governor Amaechi had repeatedly said, ‘a lot still needs to be done.’

But on getting to one of the much advertised schools, earlier displayed as superbly model, what we found was a semblance of the historical educational relics that even rural dwellers in Rivers State are in a hurry to forget. And in their stead, modern, standard and well-equipped primary schools that can go for Model Secondary School elsewhere.

In the security sector, no state comes miles next to Rivers. Infact, outgoing Managing Director of the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG), Mr. Chima Ibeneche penultimate Sunday, at his send-forth dinner at Hotel Presidential Port Harcourt, confessed to the fact that the Gas firm’s headquarters relocated to the state because of the improved security situation engendered by the Amaechi administration.

For those who know, that is one area where Rivers’ big brother role, even in neigbouring states is indeed legendary. That is why, when last year, in their failure to heed the wise counsel of one-time President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln: ‘Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubts’, information managers of neigbouring Abia questioned such known facts, they came out of the press war’ about 9,999 miles away from true wisdom’.

In fact, no state in Nigeria has invested as much as Rivers in the areas of equipping the Police Force and other security agencies, through building necessary capacity among their ranks and indeed going the extra mile to ensure an investor-friendly environment for multi-national oil and gas companies.

But what do we get in return? Less than plausible partnership contribution to a state whose proactive security pursuits have over the years, helped to save enormous resources that should have gone into security issues.

Take the Rivers Songhai Farm initiative for instance: Sitting on 314 hectares of land in Bunu-Tai/Bani Ogoi in Tai Local Government area of the state, its about 20 times the size of the Songhai farm in Porto Novo. The farm is designed to become the hub of agricultural development in the state and indeed Nigeria. Operationally, it is a partnership between the Rivers government and the Songhai International Centre in Benin Republic, but should have been co-financed by oil companies in the state.

Before actual work began at the farm in 2010, some 105 young Rivers men and women from the 23 local government areas had been trained in various specialized agric and agro-based areas at the Songhai International Centre for a period of 18 months. During the period, the young lads also sharpened their entrepreneurial skills, needed to drive the Songhai dream and run their own individual businesses.

Today, standing in the once unknown forest of Bunu-Tai is a rear treasure, a tourists’ delight, hub of agricultural development and a potent machine for rural transformation: it is the Songhai Rivers farm. It consists of an imposing administrative block, library/health care services, 10 units of  tastefully furnished two-bedroom bungalows all built with stabilized bricks, visitors and staff park, two units of trainee dormitories complete with canteen, kitchen and store. Others are 12 and 10-room hostels with double and single beds respectively. There are also mini market/western restaurant/boutique and liason offices, African restaurant and security post.

The farm’s Technology/Industrial park consists of cassava processing unit, Rice Mill, Feed Mill, Foundry and Machines production unit, stabilized bricks production unit, generator house, automobile and machinery maintenance unit, juice, jam, syrup, pastry and soya milk production unit, smoking hut (fish and meat) and fruit drying unit, palm and dry products unit, handicrafts, spare parts store and the like.

There is also a production centre which comprises of arable agriculture, livestock including 200 pigs and piglets, with some producing as many as 18 piglets at a go and a ranch designed for the training of those to manage livestock products. Apart from a massive poultry and fishery sections, there are, in all, 48 fish ponds in the farm and man-made lakes to support aquatic programmes.

Within the production centre  are Piggery Pens, grass cutter reproduction unit and fattening unit, cow and goat ranch, broiler pens unit, pilots and broiler cage unit, layers’ pens, nursery pens for layers, poultry house  (reproduction and nursery), snailiery park, circular concrete fish pound, fish hatchery unit, free range poultry, earthen pond, artificial lake, green house, development of feed for gasifier, maggotry unit, biological pit toilet, nitrogen bank, compost, seed multiplication, biogas and storage unit, orchard (pineapple) cash crop production/garden cassava, coconut, orange, plantain and mango among many others, including the cow and goat ranch where cows and goats are reared for milk, meat and allied products.

Under the superintendence of the Rivers State Sustainable Development Agency (RSSDA), the Songhai Rivers Initiative is supposed to have as partners, among other bodies, oil and gas companies operating in the state and for whose safety and condusive investment climate, scarce Rivers funds were injected into proactive security pursuits. But to date, all that is in place is the sole investment of the state government, in real pursuit of the Change We Can See.

This, methinks is the crux of the  Rivers re-branding project highlight that must be magnified by the brand model and sole custodian, his well- known modesty, not withstanding.

My Agony is that Governor Amaechi still thinks that listing the Rivers examples of the Change We Can See as detailed as they are as awesome as they  are and as gigantic as they are would amount to an over-kill of some other fellow state governors who might still be 10 years behind Rivers from when the real change era actually began. That discretion, is beyond his power, for it is a duty he owes Rivers people, from the moment the Rivers brand was launched with himself as the major model and champion of the same change.

That is how to fashion tomorrow’s history, today and help invite the world to the state through regular patronage of the Songhai, Rivers farm initiatives, as many do Tinapa, in Cross River State.