Gov. Okowa, behold your brief!

Your Excellency sir,

Let us not argue over nomenclature. I am calling you Governor and not Governor-elect deliberately. It is because I really want you to know that the party is over. Yes, you may yet meet some of your opponents in the election that has presently changed your status at the petitions tribunal. But if history is our guide and given the way we yet are, it is looking like you may very well serve out your tenure as Governor until May 29, 2019. So let us cut to the chase.


You are no stranger to the politics of the state and indeed the country. Since 1999, you have been a standing fixture in the text. From Commissioner to Secretary to Government to Senator and now Governor, your dossier is clearly a most loaded one. This ordinarily should be an asset. But as we have seen in several other instances, there is really no guarantee this would truly be. The critical point then would be YOU. What do you understand your brief to be; and what would you insist that you do?


A recourse to history would help. The territory of Delta State is one that predates the military grant of statehood in 1991. It is an area peopled by hard-working and self-assured peoples who established diplomatic treaties with Europe as far back as the 16th century! At least one of the traditional institutions in the state was led in the 17th century by a graduate king who had trained at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. It is also a state that has had and continues to sustain a rich stock of merchants, intellectuals, professionals and now comedians! To paraphrase my publisher, you are clearly not presiding over a two kobo state!


I have gone into this much detail so you can connect with the fact that the least you must do is to, as we used to say in Government College Ughelli, keep the ship sailing! As Governor, you no doubt would be a most powerful person. But all power comes with a burden: and it is that of looking forward to the end of the day, when, we the people, would ultimately score you. Make no mistake about it sir; that day will come.


From where I am standing then, there is no ambiguity in my mind about the job that you are gearing up to take up soon. You are Governor of Delta State to improve the lives of all of the people that live in the state. You are not a Governor for your party members. You are not Governor for your predecessors. You are not Governor for your community of origination, sub-geography or linguistic area. You are also not a Governor for ancestral Deltans only. No sir; you are Governor for the improvement of the lives of all of the people that live in the state.


I make this point very clearly because as a student of Delta and Nigerian political history, I know that this is the only way to make a critical impact on the lives of the people and indeed the state. To do otherwise would mean that you are yielding yourself to be torpedoed by the elite forces of reaction and opportunism that have continued to ensure the underdevelopment of the state and its peoples.


You would already be familiar with the self-styled advocates for ‘fair sharing of the resources of the state to all interests.’ This Your Excellency, is merely a euphemism for elite grabbing. When you pass it on to the promoters in the manner of appointments, contracts, etc, as they are pressuring you to do and will continue to do over the next four years, you may very well need to go back and check whether the jobs really get done and the perks do indeed trickle down to the people of the communities and interest-blocs in whose name they had approached you in the first place. This has been the pattern. Of local government chairmen who live outside their council areas. Of commissioners who do not even touch base with their people. Of contractors who feed only their stomachs. Opportunism upon opportunism, all is opportunism.


If you permit this state of events to continue, you should also be prepared to go into the growing hall of infamy; of former leaders of the state who have colossally failed to impact on the real lives of the people. And there will be very few tears shed for you that day. But it need not be so if you take our counsel today.