It can be agreed that Ebonyi State Governor, Chief Engr. David Umahi, has put in place infrastructure that added to the beauty of Abakaliki, the state capital, projects such as the airport under construction, flyovers at every junction, glass tunnels and water fountains at every roundabout in Abakaliki, though good, are considerably unnecessary: given the poverty level of the state.
No doubt, a project like an international airport can launch the state into the economic map of the world, if the state has other basic economic pedestal on which the air business will depend on to thrive. Development comes in phases, in line with a blueprint that guides the phases of the development plan.
To build an airport in a state ranked third poorest state in Nigeria is considerably unnecessary; when abandoned and incomplete projects from past and present administrations abound.
For instance, the water project started by the immediate past administration of Governor Martin Elechi, which was almost 80 percent completed, is not getting the needed attention from the administration of Umahi. As it stands now, there is no tap water anywhere in Ebonyi State, which, to a large extent, is a hindrance to hand-washing hygiene at this period of COVID-19 pandemic.
The aforementioned infrastructure have made no impact on the standard of living of the greater percentage of households in the state. Many Ebonyians cannot meet basic needs for survival. They are chronically hungry, unable to access health care, lack safe drinking water and sanitation. Many families cannot afford the education of some, if not all their children. In some cases, many families lack a roof over their heads and clothing, which are considered basic necessities of life.
The ecumenical centre project alone gulped about 10 billion Naira in a state with deplorable conditions in public schools. The Governor cannot, in all fairness, recommend or send any of his children, relations or close friends to any of the public schools in Ebonyi State, as a result of their deplorable conditions.
We can depict the conditions of neglected public schools from the school children as majority of them trek to their respective schools barefooted and in worn-out uniforms.
Oftentimes, these children only come to school to play around the premises and then disperse before closing hours, because of an acute lack of teachers. Many schools, especially in the rural areas of the state, can only account for two to three teachers. This is because the last recruitment of teachers in Ebonyi State was in 2013. Since then, several teachers have retired, others are dead, while majority have left the service for greener pastures.
As the number of teachers continues to decline, alongside grossly inadequate funding on education, leading to poor derelict facilities and lack of supervision of schools, the rate of school dropouts among children in the public schools is on the increase.
The school dropouts are primarily from poor families, who cannot afford to send their wards to private schools. The dropouts are the Ebonyians who roam the streets as hawkers. Several of them may bond with peers as they grow into teens, forming gangs that become useful tools for politicians during elections for use to perpetrate electoral offences. They become victims of different crimes and often end in jail.
Street hawking among Ebonyi youths has doubled in recent times, as a result of the poverty enabling programmes of the government. The meagre salaries of civil servants, non-payment of gratuities and pensions to retirees, who would have supported their children in school or trade-learning, lack of enabling environment for entrepreneurial skills to thrive for youths or parents, who are not in the civil service, contribute immensely to the burgeoning poverty in the state, especially since politics and civil service remain the mainstay of the state’s economy.
Settlement of retirees is not prioritised under the present administration in Ebonyi State. The Governor prevaricates when confronted with questions concerning settlement of pensions and gratuities. To add salt to injury, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) in the state that would have taken up the matters of the retirees is factionalised. A faction of the NLC chairman is recognised only in Ebonyi State, while another factional leader enjoys national recognition.
The Governor has been accused of deliberately sponsoring the division in the NLC, as a way of weakening the body from a stronger negotiation for a better welfare for workers in the state, having been used as a formidable force against Elechi during the battle for the soul of the state in 2015.
It beats one's imagination how a government that prides itself as a divine mandate administration could withhold money for the settlement of retired workers by subjecting them to routine, endless verification and screening exercise, which has never resulted in paying a dime to any of them from 2015 to date.
This is despite the fact that the federal government has has indicated interest in offsetting the backlog of pensions and gratuities via the Paris club refund. As a result, a number of retirees have died out of frustration, while endlessly waiting to be settled.
The agony faced by retirees is also applicable to the beneficiaries seeking to secure death benefits of their loved ones, who died while serving the government. The pension board in the state also subjects the beneficiaries to a series of endless screening that yields no positive result. As it stands now, no death benefit has been paid in Ebonyi from 2015 to date.
On the threshold of Umahi’s emergence as the governor of Ebonyi state, Ebonyi workers rejoiced, believing that he would sustain the increased salaries of workers already implemented by his predecessor. How wrong they were to quickly believe that he would keep his promises of sustaining the increased salary he met when he assumed office.
The workers also believed that Umahi, as apostle/deacon in a political position, was most likely going to toe the line of the apostles of Christ, whom Christ bequeathed the sacrifice/blessing of being a servant to others, as He deigned to wash their feet during the last supper, setting before them the standard of a servant leadership, which they all lived to advance his kingdom here on earth.
However, instead of living the apostolic/deaconate leadership style, by uprooting the deep-seated evil entrenched to pauperise the poor by past administrations, Umahi seems to be nursing the seedlings into luxuriant shoots that have today merged firmly as poverty enabled programmes, which he uses to induce poverty in the state.
Ebonyi State is also poor in sports and remains one of the states in Nigeria with no football club. The Governor is spending billions of Naira on a new Olympic stadium, with no plans to set up a football club or other sporting activities. To have a befitting sporting facility is not bad, but its usefulness is contingent on the football club, boxers, athletes and other sports, which Ebonyians must be involved to launch themselves into the sports market.
The lack of attention of the government to sports development explains the conspicuous absence of Ebonyi State in all sporting events held variously across the country in recent times. The "cart before the horse" attitude of the government in sports led to the construction of an Olympic stadium, without simultaneously harnessing the sporting talents, which would serve as an anti-poverty programme for poverty eradication in the state.
The second term of Umahi is running without a blueprint to change the narrative that has kept the state in the lines of poverty in Nigeria. The state is not developing, if after its years of creation it still finds itself in the same situation it was before creation.
The associated social stigma has, once again, led to the National Bureau of Statistics ranking the state as a poverty capital in the South-east of Nigeria. House helps, street hawkers, bus conductors and high rate of illiteracy are still on the increase among Ebonyians.
There is also a new trend, where Ebonyi women and children have become beggars in major streets of Enugu, something that was not obtainable in before the creation of the state. This suggests the leadership in the state is not dynamic and has not explored ways for social change.
Ebonyians are not shiftless or unintelligent people. The burgeoning poverty in the state is because of inability of the government to provide the enabling environment for the citizens to exhibit their talents and skills in various sectors.
To solve the problem of poverty in Ebonyi is simple. The solution must start from accepting the NBS poverty ranking, in which Ebonyi was ranked as one of the poorest states in Nigeria. Second, admitting that there is obvious poverty in the state, as a result of bad governance, rather than playing politics with it.
The acceptance and admittance of these glaring facts would form a platform for the government to have insight into the opportunities at the base of the pyramid. This will lead to the articulation of programmes and policies to make the infrastructural development to correspond with human capital development, to harness the energies and aspirations of our teeming youth wasting away as bus conductors in some cities across Nigeria.
The poor in Ebonyi State make up a major untapped opportunity for businesses that can provoke new ways capable of attracting investors to the state. Umahi should first take advantage of the untapped opportunities by putting education far above every other project if the state must be counted in the comity of state. He should know that human capital development forms part of United Nations' standard for measuring development.
Osita Julius Nworu, a social critic, writes from Abakaliki.
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