Is Oborevwori also an ebeano governor?

Sir: When he was governor of Enugu State, 1997-2007, Dr. Chimaroke Nnamani often promoted a slogan known as Ebeano. Ebeano in Ibo language means, ‘where we are.’ Part of why Nnamani was known as Ebeano governor was that his ebeanoness was his stratagem for wadding through the time and tide of the many accusations of his incapacity as governor. So he often arranged media tours to areas that bore what he said were the insignia of his outstanding accomplishments as governor of Enugu State.

While at his tours, he would have members of his paparazzi train the cameras at him, while he would raise his hands like a conquistador, brandish a resplendent smile on his handsome face, strut back and forth, pointing to projects that he said, he executed.

What became the selling point, the swag and the allure of those events was that on both sides of the roads and project sites that he often promoted, you would find scores of old women and children line the streets shouting, ‘Ebeano, Ebeano, Ebeano in a rhythmic gyration. 

But this discussion is not about Nnamani.  His name only just popped up because today he seems to have a fan in the governor of Delta State, who against the accusations of alleged ineptitude from his critics, has embarked on massive Ebeano-like campaigns in Delta State. This is how it started for us: credible intel indicated that even though Delta State gets 13 per cent derivation from the federal government, only 50 per cent of that 13 per cent funds appeared to be used for Delta State.

Based on that, we published a broadcast asking where the remaining 50 per cent of the 13 per cent was and why it was not being used for oil producing communities in Delta State. As soon as these criticisms got to town, the governor hit the ground running to places where he has some semblance of work to his name, and unleashed a massive Ebeano-like campaign.

It is important at this point to say that there appear to be nothing wrong with a chief executive officer of a state like Delta personally going through the projects under his watch. The idea may be that he is genuinely interested in seeing to the meaningful conclusion of those projects in an environment replete with ‘ongoing’, substandard and abandoned projects.

But there are two buts to the matter. The first one is that he has commissioners who can get these kinds of things done, and doing these things himself gives an indication that either he does not trust his own commissioners or that he has inept people around him. The second but is that nearly all of the projects that the Ebeano exponent was supervising appear all to be in the city centres.

Weren’t the 13 per cent funds supposed to be for oil producing communities – communities in the hinterlands where governance hardly gets to?  And why were there no independent observers, journalists, civil society bodies taking part in this supervision exercise that the governor embarked upon? If the governor was legit, we offered to take part in the project supervision exercise, if not for anything but just so that there is some semblance of transparency, accountability and believability to what has now become a legit Ebeano exercise. 

Delta State has capacity to be among the forward looking states in Nigeria. It is endowed naturally, and has some of the best people in the world. To move the state forward, therefore, the governor needs to depart from the norm, and overhaul his governance style and replace it with one that is innovative, people-driven, and certainly not one programmed to hoodwink.  

Bob MajiriOghene Etemiku is Editor-in-Chief, WADONOR, cultural voice of Nigeria.