A note of gratitude on Abia Day

Being the governor’s fraternal message on the 23rd anniversary of the creation of Abia State. I write this piece with an overwhelming sense of gratitude to the generality of peace-loving Abians. As a matter of fact, I lack the fitting syntax to exhaustively convey how I feel about the awe-inspiring love Abians have lavished on me these past years.

This year’s Abia Day Celebration is particularly unique in the sense that it will be the last I will celebrate with Abians in my capacity as their governor. It hurts to say goodbye, but the expediency of exiting when the ovation is loudest cannot be over-emphasised. The inauguration of any endeavour is as vital as its closing activities.

In retrospect, today evidently calls to mind how I was made a trusted instrument to fearlessly drive the much-expected new dawn in Abia, a state desirous of prosperity and a new lease of life at that time. The responsibility was enormous, especially in the face of gaping infrastructural decay and political confinement which had been the pathetic lot of Abia since creation. Application of the much-expected template, however, ushered the needed new horizon.

The victory in Abia is not that of one party over another but of freedom of Abians from political hawks who would rather delight in privatising the state and keeping the citizens perpetually at war with each other, while they mindlessly hoard and fritter away common patrimony for personal aggrandisement. It heralded the exhilarating new dawn Abians had been yearning for. Regardless of the mind-boggling infrastructural layback, which menacingly stared us in the face, we chose not to trade blames – and we did not disappoint in instituting a workable programme for effective take-off of the state.

Widening our option was considered a better approach and it earned us the needed merit for streamlining and prioritising our interventions so as not to shoot ourselves in the foot. We can always rewind to flaunt our milestones encompassing every facet of human endeavour, which humbly but steadfastly began with the health sector. Like the Biblical mustard seed, our resilience in this regard grew our health care delivery from 650 health centres located in all the nooks and crannies of the state to the icing of instituting state-of-the-art medical and diagnostic centre. Our medical tourism, which is still growing in leaps and bounds, will soon celebrate the inauguration of a 100-bed modern hospital in each of the 17 council areas of the state.

The undisputable new dawn we attained in health care fired us to broaden the laughter on our people’s faces. Thus, the capacity of our mandate to deliver was further proven and driven home when the gigantic twin Workers’ Secretariat conceived to free us from infrastructural layback sprouted like a mushroom and is aesthetically adorning the landscape of Ogurube Layout. It has motivated the right approach to work among the rank and file of Abia civil servants.

The saying that where there is a will there is a way practically played out at the positive turn of events, leading to the relocation of Umuahia Market, hitherto at Isi-Gate, to the hugely spacious and more modern Ubani neighbourhood where over 6,000 shops have been built and occupied. This feat is flamboyantly coloured with other critical necessities such as asphalted good network of roads, functioning fire services centre, and a controlled parking lot. It has rid the capital city of traffic confusion and the embarrassment of filth.

The other legacy is the classical new Government House. On completion, it will deservedly reward Abians for believing in us and free the state from a pathetic retrogression of operating from ramshackle buildings. So will the state-of-the-art International Conference Centre, JAAC and ASUBEB high-rise buildings.

Let us recall that some years back Abia was precariously turning into some sort of political Siberia as a result of high rate of insecurity. Businesses nosedived as residents fled in droves. Fear took possession of all and sundry, until our security recipe restored hope and brought about a new dawn in Abia. With the restoration of tranquillity, other blueprints vital to the sustenance and wellbeing of teeming Abians began to unveil. Consequently, our avowal to help our people to help themselves came alive with the distribution of countless empowerment vehicles to throngs of Abia youths, delivered through an ongoing window christened Abia Youth Empowerment Programme.

Time and space will not permit me to reel out other life-touching programmes championed by our administration for the benefit of our people. We are not unmindful that the totality of our socio-economic challenges may not have been addressed, but the legacies we have established will remain green. As a matter of fact, they will herald a watershed in the socio-economic illumination our state deservedly needs. I therefore sincerely express my gratitude to Abians for looking beyond my inadequacies when providence partnered with them to elect me their governor.

Perhaps it will be pertinent to acknowledge that we may have ruffled some feathers, knowingly or otherwise, in the onerous task of addressing decades of mountainous challenges prevalent in the state. I am also not dismissing the possibility that some political officeholders may have become laws unto themselves, hounding and exploiting innocent and unsuspecting Abians for their selfish interest. Naturally, every angst in this regard is directed at the chief executive, the anchor point of every buck. Let me without reservation apologise on behalf of such individuals, because we fought hard to institute peace and our persuasion is that the instrumentality of a convivial atmosphere in moving a given society forward cannot be over-emphasised.

God delivered peace in Abia State and every stratum is a beneficiary of its positive effect. This administration will continue to propagate that peace, especially as the countdown to 2015 is cascading. We can only have one governor at a time, whose tenure ceases at the expiration of eight years, leaving the choice of providing the next governor to another geopolitical entity as it is done in the wider Nigeria. No particular zone is a custodian of knowledge. 

I will always posit that if preceding administrations had had the political will to leave one landmark or the other, available scarce resources channelled towards such necessities would have been deployed to tackle other mounting demands.

As we commemorate the 23rd anniversary of Abia State, we reiterate our avowal to uphold the virtues which stimulated our founding fathers to collectively work for the creation of God’s Own State.

 

T. A. Orji