Inyali Peter|29 May 2016|7:15am
The one year reign of Cross River State first citizen, Senator Prof. Ben Ayade like any other administration in the country has witnessed ups and downs. His achievements exemplified the famous cliché of the bad, the good and the ugly.
No thanks to his most renowned attributes of unbridled lips services. The state overtime have been blessed with governors and leaders with great oratory prowess but never have we had the type of Prof. Ayade. A friend jokingly said that it is probably because he is the first Professor to occupy the citadel seat of caliphate in the state that he fancy impressive expression to impacting or thinks he can deceive the people with more promises and less action.
To further explain how his unbridled lips services has affected the positive excitement that should accompany some of his achievements within the last one, I'll say that in governance, it's better to make an open promise than defining the limit of your promises, especially in this digital era where the electorates now understand that it is their civil responsibility to hold government accountable.
The memories of Cross Riverians is still very fresh on some of the governor's promises like setting up a garment factory within two months, creating 1000 jobs within 100 days, completing superhighway in 18 months, making the Calabar carnival the best ever and other countless promises that didn't catch up with the dateline promised.
However, although it has to taken one year to deliver on some of the promises, it will be unfair to say that our dear digital governor has not within his one year reign matched some of his promises with action. He has built a reputation as one of the most inconsistent governors ever in the history of the state when it comes to keeping to promises, but at the same time would have shocked his critics who may want to use such weakness to propagate bad gospel against him by religiously honouring some.
For instance, during his inaugural speech, the governor promised to sacrifice everything to ensure the state poor civil servants smile home at the end of every month with their stipend; a feat he has kept to religiously in the last one year.
When you compare this achievement with the reality on ground that most states even better placed financially than ours are owing workers months of salaries, you will acknowledge the fact that Ayade has done credibly well in this aspect.
Perhaps, this gesture is unconnected to the fact that the governor understood that as a civil service state with salary standard that cannot be compared to the enormity of problems confronting the workers, payment of salaries as at when due is the only antidote to clampdown the desire of workers to want more.
Away from salary, the governor in one of his early press briefings with journalists said that contrary to popular opinion that he was inheriting a relatively broke state, he actually inherited a state with great potentials and abundant wealth. Perhaps, nobody including myself was expecting such answer from the governor owing to the fact that since we lost our 76 oil wells to Akwa Ibom, the state have been living like a man with large family whose only source of income was lost. That's, living from spoon to mouth.
To corroborate the strong belief that Cross River State was not a broke state like perceived, the governor announced some extremely capital intensive projects code named 'signature projects' to include, dual carriage superhighway, garment factory, deep seaport etc. To achieve this, Ayade has signed countless memorandum of understanding with investors to fund the projects. While the approach and the fact that details of the agreements are not made public, the vision is worth commending.
Interestingly, the Ayade administration has achieved one of the signature projects which is the garment factory. Although the ownership of the factory is still in doubt, but with the petition and public awareness already created by critics about the alleged secret deal of private ownership, the government would definitely have a rethink and maintain it stance that the factory belongs to the Cross River state government.
According to Ayade's spokesman, Mr. Christian Ita, the factory has a capacity of creating about three thousands (3000) jobs when it kicks off. More interesting about the achievement is that the women especially widows would be given preferential treatment in the recruitment. This indeed is a great achievement.
Similarly, although the governor may have gone back on his words when he dissolved the Taskforce of the Forestry Commission on the formation of the Green Police, I commend him for the empowerment. Over 1000 youths now feel elated that they have been engaged by government. I would have said the state do not have the resources to match their wage bill, but reserved my statement because the forestry commission itself is capable of generating revenue to carter for them.
Despite these three major achievements; salary, garment factory and the Green Police, on a personal note, Ayade's one year has been a huge disappointment. To say the least, he has performed like a man who was either not ready for governance or has no policy direction.
This is so for many reasons. Firstly, Ayade has radically and classically destroyed the 16 years legacy of the state.
Before he took over the mantle of leadership in the state, Calabar was regarded as the cleanest and greenest city in Nigeria. But just within a year, he has changed the global status to the dirtiest city in Nigeria. There's almost no street in Calabar today that you can drive freely. This is not because people have bought more cars of course with the economic condition of the country, it is almost impossible to imagine that. Our roads are blocked because of the inaction of Ayade to clear our streets of refuse heaps.
While he has done well in civil servants salaries, I wonder why he is being insensitive to the plights of those responsible for waste evacuation. There have been protest upon protest by almost all the units of these set of people. Why is Ayade so proud not to consult Donald Duke or even Imoke to know how they did it for sixteen years?
Perhaps, this could just be the Calabar of Ayade's dream because as a Professor of Environmental Biology, he was supposed to understand the environmental hazards that accompany the development. While his wife, Dr. Linda Ayade is working hard as Malaria Ambassador to end the scourge of the disease, Ayade is compounding the problem by his nonchalant attitude towards making our streets clean. Poor Cross Riverians are contacting several kind of diseases on daily basis because of the government's negligence to this sensitive identify of the state.
Instead of strengthening the staff capacity of the ministry, it is alleged that Ayade heartlessly fired 250 poor widows that sweep our streets simply because they demanded the release of their 21 months salaries. How can Calabar be clean when you reduce staff strength by such margin without a proportional policy to cover up the gap? When has it become a crime for low income earners to demand for their entitlement? I thought Ayade said his administration was for the poor? Are we going to survive this recklessness? Time shall tell!
Another legacy Ayade has buried is the state's status as the most peaceful in Nigeria. Under his watch, the state has become a haven for criminals. When he promised making the state a haven for investors, nobody imagined that he was saying the opposite.
There is no investor that will invest in a state where kidnapping, arm robbery, cultism, assassination and communal war rule supreme. How things have changed under Ayade so speedily is my greatest bewilderment. I'm sure if the state was as hostile as it is now, he wouldn't have shown any interest to be the governor.
Since we lost our oil wells, tourism has been the mainstay of our economy but today, the story is different. While it can be debatable that insecurity is a national issue, Cross River state has been exonerated from everything insecurity in the last sixteen years.
Where did we go wrong that today the Igbo's residing in the state are crying and threatening to shutdown their businesses as a result of kidnapping? Could it be that Ayade has deliberately killed the morale of the gallant security agents in the state by not providing them with the necessary logistics? How effective has the State Security Adviser advised him? Is the government's relationship with traditional institution cordial? How exactly did we loose grips of our unique identify as a state? What more can be described as a rudderless, reckless, and directionless leadership than when a government cannot protect the lives and properties of his people? These and many more questions are still laying unanswered.
Ayade has unleashed terror on the economy with his unnecessary and irrational appointment. Most ministries, the appointees are dagger drawn over who control the affairs of what as a result of duplication. In the Ministry of Environment for instance, the threesome fight among the Commissioner, The Director of Waste Management Agency and the Calabar Urban Development Authority has taken over the real function of the ministry.
While it is irresponsible for DGs to challenge the audacity of the commissioner on who controls the resources accrued to the ministry especially when it has to do with waste evacuation, the DGs cannot be crucified completely because they probably were not given detailed appointment letters to define their various responsibilities. No doubt the commissioner is to supervise the all round activities of the ministry, but between CUDA and Waste Management, who controls waste evacuation? What is their different functions? Can't we just strengthen one of the agencies to perform the function under the supervision of the hardworking commissioner? Something need to be done urgently.
The failure of the governor to shrink his cabinet which has precipitated the inability of the government to pay the appointees their entitlement is no more news under this administration. A state that run deficit of N2billion monthly from payment of salary should not run a cabinet of over 700 appointees. The funniest thing is that they don't even have office space or know what their functions are. On daily basis, you see a large chunk of them dressed in borrowed suit hovering around the governor's office doing nothing.
The chant of SAs have become synonymous to Cross River government house. A friend joked that if you work along Calabar, you need to mind your steps to avoid stepping on SAs because they are like sand everywhere. Political settlement is not in unnecessary appointments but building strong institutions and developing human capacity that the people can become self relianct. I wonder what will happen after 2019 if Cross Riverians choose to show him (Ayade) the exit door.
Ayade's misdeeds and misrepresentation has become audible to the deaf and visible to the blind. Is it having the longest convoy and motorcades like colonial master or the noise pollution from his sirens? Is it his brother Frank Ayade who has taken over the position of the deputy governor or co-governor as he pronounced him? There are countless.
Somebody out there probably was expecting me to mention monorail as part of his achievement. To me, such project although not his initiative, projects the governor as a man who is living in fantasies.
At a time where government should be thinking of projects that should generate revenue and add value to the state, the government is celebrating liability like the monorail. How much is the Tinapa resort and the International Conference Centre generating for the state? All the facilities in Tinapa have become moribund and the ICC since its establishment has been used basically by government for official functions.
Considering the reality that Cross River is greatly a civil service state, how it is possible for a typical civil servant who earns a meager salary to be able to patronize the expensive monorail is what the government probably didn't consider when investing in the project.
How do these facility then generate the financial outlay to sustain itself given that the economy of the state is majorly dependant on allocation from the federal coffers? This and many more questions require an explanation from the government.
There are a lot of indices that should warrant the governor to sincerely review his path in the last one year to know if his one year has been an icing on a cake of bad leadership.
Ayade should know that a mistake is an accident but cheating and lying is an intention. Telling himself the obvious truth that he is increasingly becoming very unpopular and working to correct it will save his administration from total collapse.
Happy Democracy Day.
Inyali Peter
Writes from Calabar.
