Ifere Paul|3 February 2016|6:15am
There are between 22,000 to 36,000 modern day slaves in the world today. These 22,000 to 36,000 are exploited daily by their modern day slaves masters. These slaves makes huge profits for their organizations, companies, and governments that enslaves them around the world. (2016 Harvard Panel Report on Slavery).
In modern day Cross River State, the situation depicted above is no different. A lot of people in Cross River State are given fake hopes on infrastructural development amidst the highest hype in the social media. With the decay in infrastructural development, and a near dead country life, as occassioned by a harsh economic forecast around the world, the average Crossriverian is left with a deceptive government that does not care for about 98% of its population.
Yes!! I know the government pays salaries every month. Perhaps earlier than it should. Much as it is a welcome development, it is not the ultimate.
According to the bureau of statistics in Calabar, the entire population of Cross River State is estimated to be 3.88million people. The population of civil servants in the State is put at 25,000 people. Which is a very negligible 1% of the entire population. This means that, only 1% of the population in Cross River State is important to the governor of Cross River State through the payment of salaries. The other 99% is left to fend for themselves.
With a dwindling federal allocation from the Federation Account as a result of slumping oil prices, one would expect that our leaders will begin to draw up practical policies that will diversify our State's economy.
Agriculture which is a major income earner in the country side, is still left at its mercy. Farming seasons are here again and yet government has not issued a statement of hope that can encourage youngmen and women to think agriculture as an alternative business.
Our parents in the country side are still walloping in poverty due to crude methods of farming, lack of improved varieties, and a lack of encouragement from government. Fertilizer is a very expensive commodity and nonexistent in the whole of Cross River State, making our farmers in the rural areas slaves to mother earth with less or no yield to compensate their toil.
I expected that our most touted digital governor, Governor Ben Ayade will be digital enough to digitalize our agricultural sector to attract young and new agribusiness entrepreneurs in Cross River State, other than imported foreigners to do what ordinarily, can be done by Crossriverians.
As a State with a deputy governor (Prof. Ivara Ejemot Esu), a professor of agroeconomics, soil pedologist, and a qualified scientist of improved food safety and sustainability, Cross River State is supposed to be the best State with the best policies in agriculture.
But damn!! Professor Ben Ayade has reduced Professor Ivara Esu to a kindergarten student in his first class at school.
Professor Ivara Esu who has been the best professor and the coordinator of the UNICAL extension farm school at Okuku, has distinguished himself in practical agriculture when in 2004, he harvested the biggest cassava tubers ever harvested in Cross River State. Why can't our deputy governor share some agricultural development plan with His Excellency, Ben Ayade? Or is it that Ben Ayade is not listening to his deputy? Is the deputy slaving just to be heard?
Other than to revolutionize our agricultural potential and competitive advantage, the governor is building media slaves that work without pay. Some of which are so proud working in offices in the government house. They forget that the governor's office is a public office financed by public taxes. These modern media slaves who acts as attack dogs are employed everywhere in the internet media space to blackmail critics of government. Lately, kidnapping and shooting at political opponents is their trademark.
The dilapidated conditions of our Ikom-Calabar road in Cross River State needs 100% intervention initiative from Governor Ben Ayade. Motorists are slaving with long hours under intense whether. Some are dying through accidents before they get to their destination.
On top of all these, the government is proposing a superhighway. I love the dream of the superhighway, especially that it comes with the much talked about tunnel. I love tunnels any where in the world. Plus internet. I love internet, it is the second thing I love after my wife, and God. Much as this hitech superhighway and it super runways are concerned, we need to think straight too. We need our dilapidated, unmotorable road of Calabar-Ikom highway to be fixed.
We have to fix our agricultural sector into a productive agribusiness that will attract young graduates. As a professor with many international awards, I expected that our governor will turn our education system into a more practical and technical solution driven system. Instead, he is still on the trail of downgrading ITM Ugep. The provost of ITM Ugep has left the school back to England due to lack of funding from government.
Other than paying research intervention schemes in CRUTECH, our governor is engaged in not paying administrative and operational imprest in all CRUTECH's campuses. It is so sad that two professors like Ben Ayade and Ivara Esu would sit and watch as our educational system plunge headlong into the abyss. Most of our primary and secondary school teachers in the whole State have mortgaged their certificates for different loans regimes from loan sharks and lenders. Thereby making themselves slaves to those they loaned money from.
It is alarming that wherever you look, and whatever sector you are evaluating, there is strive and strife among Crossriverians. Everyone has been reduced to a slave and the slave master is Governor Ayade and his younger brother Frank Ayade. Governor Ayade and his little brother lead Crossriverians into submitting to their modern day techniques of slavery.
While paying salaries, other aspects and forms of financing in all other State projects have been put on hold by the closure of all accounts in the State, thereby making a multitude of slaves begging to feed themselves and their families.
Ifere Paul
Is an Environmental Activist & Public Policy Analyst
