By Reuben Onyishi
(Ugoachataberu)
TVC News Journalists’ Hangout of Sunday 12th May, 2024 of which Mbah’s Enugu State took the centre stage of discussion in terms of his revamping of moribund assets in Enugu State reminds me of some story about a verbal critic who set out excoriating a particular painting of flowers by some artist. While the critic pontificated how it lacked verisimilitude and semblance of nature, a butterfly flew past and perched on the paintings, mistaking them for real flowers. The verbal critic’s lips collapsed into his mouth in sparsmodic toutness. In my Nsukka dialect, it would be idiomatically rendered that his mouth had receded into his anus.
This anecdote is akin to the said alarm raised by one Casmir Agbo and Onuora Odo of the discredited and frustrated Enugu Labour Party, where Agbo serves as the state chairman, and the said Odo publicity secretary. They had earlier on Sunday issued a statement, jointly signed by the duo, in the form of an alarm, claiming that the company, Pragmatic Palm Limited, into which Enugu State Government entered partnership for the ressurcitation of United Palm Products Limited, was registered on May 4, 2024, and because of that, it meant that the partnership was a “bogus transction designed to facilitate diversion of money belonging to the people.”
This claim really teased me, and I chuckled a billion times. Alexander Pope’s poem, “Essay on Criticism,” readily came to my mind where he tells the poet to neglect the rules the verbal critics lay, for not to know some trifles is but a praise. While I also was wondering from what depth of daftness these folks hived off, TVC News whose channel I had tuned in to watch Journalist’ Hangout fortuitously came up with the discussion of Mbah’s commendable initiatives of turning dormant assets in Enugu State productive.
The discussants, Ayodele Ozugbaku, the anchor; Babajide Otitiju, TVC News Director of Public Affairs; and the other analyst who is from Enugu State, delved into Mbah’s audacious moves towards the diversification of the Enugu economy as something worthy of emulation by the national and subnational governments in Nigeria. They held that following Mbah’s performance in less than one year in office, he was arguably the best governor in Nigeria. They analysed the revamping of UPPL and the positive values it held in terms of job creation, revenue mobilization, foreign exchange earning prospects, and its value chain effects in the agricultural sector. They recounted that what M. I Okpara, the Premier of Eastern Nigeria (1959-1966), did with Palm oil whose proceeds were used to build the University of Nigeria Nsukka was being re-enacted by Governor Mbah. The journalists showed how palm oil was the mainstay of Malaysian and Indonasian economies, statistically holding that revenues accrued from palm oil in these countries ran into billions of dollars, noting that Malaysia took the palm seedlings from South East Nigeria. They demured the fact that Nigeria abandoned agriculture, which was the mainstay of its economy in the first republic, for crude oil.
The renowned journalists appreciated Mbah for giving life to dead assets of the state, saying that besides UPPL, Mbah was rebuilding the international conference centre abandoned over the years, commending him for also awarding the contract to reconstruct Hotel Presidential, Enugu abandoned over the years, while also noting his efforts at operionalizing the international wing of the Akanu Ibaim International Airport and the cargo wing thereof. Also not left out was the revamping of Ogurugu Waterways and the jetty thereof in Uzo-Uwani Local Government of the state.
So, while the heathen raged and imagined vain things, journalists of high repute, (Generals, to put it in Reuben Abati’s way) as well as many Nigerians locally and in the Diaspora celebrate Mbah for his uncommon capacity to do the unheard-off, the audacity of economic transformation via disruptive innovation. Mbah has what New Telegraph Newspaper called “Courage in Leadership,” which earned the governor the New Telegrah Governor of the Year Award. Incidentally, he also won the Sun Newspaper Governor of the Year Award; the Vanguard Newspaper Governor of the Year Award, and the Champions Newspaper Governor of the Year Award. Award galore! Out of two or three witnesses, the truth is established, so says the book of life.
Need we reply Agbo and his cotravellers on the infamous route to malicious criticism, unnecessary cynicism, simplistic and vile imaginations that have no anchor on anything reasonable or useful? Tell them that the blind see; the lame walk, and the deaf hear. Tell them that in Enugu State, dry bone rise again
The frivolity of wasting time on when a company was registered is delusional. Agbo and his partner in vindictive politics could not even read in-between the lines as they would have read in the news conveying that partnership that UPPL is a subsidiary of Diamond Stripes Limited, whose structure they should also have verified. What should have reasonably bothered anyone with clear intentions is the capacity of the company and how much it is bringing into the partnership. Such questions as to who the directors of the company are (lifting the veil), their antecedents, and whether they have experience in the sector should have been more engaging than the frivolity of when it was registered. How does the date of registration tantamount to intention to divert funds when the company’s equity stake in the partnership is over 60%? Instead of commending Mbah for bringing in such humongous investment in the agricultural sector, these folks are chasing shadows, sulking endlessly over irreversible defeat at the polls and courts.
Eyes have not seen nor ears heard; neither has it entered into the hearts of men What Mbah prepares for the people of Enugu State. Every dormant asset is being activated for productivity. Mbah has a clear understanding of the working of money and the economy. He has this complex-seeing capacity to glean at developmental issues of the economy from different perspectives from where he takes quality decisions that transform the economy of the state. Under Mbah’s watch, dry bones are receiving sinews as they rise again.
