Commentary: Anambra – The Renegades Are Gathering Again

WRITTEN BY CHINEDU NZERIBE

There is a human tendency to become complacent when things are going well. People assume that things can never go bad again, believing the worst is over. The tendency to become complacent about the future because things are currently rosy has been brought to the fore by ongoing events in Anambra State. People are taking the rapid progress of the state for granted in a way that suggests that they no longer care about the future. This is dangerous.

Anambra has become, arguably, the most competitive state in the country in the last four years. Whether in agriculture, security, immunization, social harmony or education, the state has been very impressive. After representing Nigeria for years in educational competitions in Europe and Asia, it last year crowned its efforts when its students won the Golden Prize in the highly prestigious World Technovision Competition held in the United States.

It amazes people how a state, which was producing only 80 metric tonnes of rice four years ago, now produces a whopping 424 metric tonnes annually and the output will increase by 100 metric tonnes per annum in the next one year. Unknown to most Nigerians, especially Lagosians, even the famous Lake Rice, which is the product of a joint venture between Lagos and Kebbi state governments, is milled in Anambra State by a firm based in Amichi, Nnewi South Local Government Area.

The firm, like many other others, was attracted to the state as a result of Anambra’s status as Nigeria’s safest state, a long leap from the days when the place was practically overrun by kidnappers and other violent criminals. The bad news is that a number of the elements who made Anambra look like a failed state in the recent past are staging a comeback.

Rather than express outrage at what Professor Chinua Achebe would describe as sacrilegious, the elites are looking the other way. One of the elements whom Achebe called a renegade contested the recent National Assembly elections as the candidate of a major political party.  Though he lost, the mere fact that he was considered at all for the high national office-despite his poor education-in a state ahead of any other in education, calls for concern. The same person was at the centre of the rigged elections in the state. He was at the centre of the kidnap of the state governor in 2003; at the centre of the three-day mayhem which saw political thugs burn, in 2004, the House of Assembly, the Judicial Headquarters, the Governor’s Lodge in Onitsha, the Anambra Broadcasting Service and Government House in Awka, among others.

He was also at the centre of the massive fraud known as the Irrevocable Standing Payment Orders (ISPOs), through which the state was swindled of billions of naira under the pretext that some shadowy contractors were doing some jobs for the government. Remarkably, the person with whom this person is accused of committing the atrocities against Ndi Anambra is even laying claim to the same senatorial ticket as the controversial person. No wonder, Ndi Anambra are questioning the agenda of the state branch of this national party for them.

The elite in our state should not remain indifferent to the serious signs of the threat of a return to the era that made Anambra a byword for state failure. As the British political philosopher, Edmund Burke, noted in his days, the only condition necessary for evil to thrive is for good men and women to watch akimbo as evil takes over their land.

Anambra State has become a role model in rapid development. We should never allow it to go back to the days which the locusts consumed. We should never return to the days of the Irrevocable Standing Payment Orders, which left the state with no money to pay state workers.

For those who may not know, ISPOs meant in those days that the dubious contractors would be paid from the state’s monthly share from the federation account. They were paid from what was due to the state before workers and genuine contractors could be paid. The payments were regardless of whether the contractors generated certificates of job done or not. Ndi Anambra want such things as their state being among the first to pay the new minimum wage which Governor Obiano has pledged once the relevant law comes into force.

As the State House of Assembly election holds on Saturday, it is self evident that the renegades are gathering once again. The choice before us is to continue on the present development trajectory or return to the years of the locusts.