Rivers Marks World Community Dev Day …Harps On Legislative, Executive Harmony

Rivers State Governor, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, has said community participation is an integral part in providing sustainable development and “an engine of societal growth.”

Governor Amaechi made this remark, yesterday, during the 2012 World Community Development Day celebration with the theme: “Self-Help: Panacea to Underdevelopment in Communities”, held at the Community Development Training Centre, Aluu in Ikwerre Local Government Area.

Represented by his Deputy, Engr Tele Ikuru, Governor Amaechi said no investor would come to a community where people were confrontational in their approach, and making un-necessary demands, stating that “for our community to grow, the individual in the community must live to their responsibility and create an atmosphere devoid of violence and acrimony”.

The State Chief Executive called on community leaders to begin to look inwards because “every community has one resources or another deposited by God”, that needed to be harnessed for the development of the community, rather than engage in unproductive ventures and wait for government to do everything for the community.”

Speaking, the Chairman of the occasion and former Secretary to the State Government, Chief Sampson Agbaru, said there were abundant yet untapped resources in the rural areas, which if well developed would go a long way in creating jobs for the teeming youths in the state, and called on all hands to be on deck for the development of the community.

In his address, the organizer of the event, Commissioner for Chieftaincy and Community Affairs, Mr Charles Okaye, said the programme was aimed at rekindling the zeal and role of community leaders for people to come together at the community level towards achieving common goals of transforming their community through self help intervention.

In a paper titled, “Making Self Help A Reality,” chairman, Nigeria Institutie of Public Relations (NIPR), Rivers State, Barr Karibi George, stressed the need for communities to adopt the self-help approach, which “dates back to mythic times, when governments had not been structured as they are today,” urging government to come up with incentives, ranging from grants and awards to communities, which have the best self-help project, adding that “self-help remains the platform for protecting the establishment and sustenance of government projects in communities.”

Meanwhile, the Secretary to the Rivers State Government, George Feyii, says it is essential for the legislative and the executive arms of the government in the state to work together.

He spoke when the chairman, Hon. Ikuinyi Owaji Ibani and other members of the State House Committee on the Office of the Secretary to the State Government, Head of Service, Establishment and Pension visited him Tuesday in his office as part of their oversight functions.

The SSG said, “for the success of governance it should be seen and registered in any place in the state like ours that collaboration between the legislature and the executive is absolutely essential. There are no reasons why we should see it otherwise. Only those who cannot appreciate the complexity of governance will feel otherwise.

“All of the institutions of governance have been established to achieve specific purpose within the overall process of governance. If you are placed in charge of any particular duty and there is no need for somebody to ask you how have you done this, there are things that you will take for granted, there are things that you will do which otherwise you wouldn’t have done,” he added.

Continuing, the SSG said, “So, there is need for checks and balances at all times and the role that the legislature plays is crucial because it is the role the legislature plays that brings about order. You make laws with which business of governance is carried out. If those laws were not there, there would be no order in the way that things are done, so we quite appreciate the role that you play”.

Feyii also thanked the House Committee members for the visit.

Speaking earlier, the House Committee Chairman, Hon Ikuinyi Owaji Ibani said, “we are here for a simple reason that as legislators it behoves on us given the mandate as assigned to all State Assemblies to carry out or perform some oversight duties on other arms of government and I think that in democratic societies, if institutions are allowed to run on their own and do what they are supposed to do, you find out that governance becomes easier.

“Once an institution is so established and there is a system in place, it means the institution has grown beyond an individual in which case it will run and perform its duties and functions as assigned. So we are only vehicles through which such duties will be carried out and as a vehicle, as a means to achieving that if you don’t want to live up to your responsibility as assigned in some cases you find lapses and decay,” he said.

Hon Ibani said the State Assembly would not be confrontational with the executive. He said there would always be cordial relationship between the state’s legislature and the executive.

“So I think that if we actually need development for our people, we want our people to prosper, there should be that synergy between the executive arm and the legislative arm of government so that we should always be on the same pace of policies, programmes and implementation and I think principally that’s what we are doing,” he concluded.