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| Pat Utomi |
Founder
of the Centre for Values in Leadership and political economist, Prof. Pat
Utomi, has admonished Nigerians, especially the political class to look and see
beyond the politics going on across the country.
Commenting after his
tour of some of the states in the Southern part of the country, Prof. Utomi,
noted in his Facebook wall, Tuesday that an amazing thing about light is you
can see the damage it does to darkness when just a ray shines through.
“It is often that
opinions focus on what is not being done in Nigeria, the darkness, but on the
road last week I felt some relief, I went from the heart of Port Harcourt to
the Governor’s office in Asaba in two and half hours at rush hour peak.
Many years ago, living
in the United States as a graduate student I learnt that the English Language
could be violated by advertising. How do you spell relief? The answer was
R-O-L-A-I-D-S. I did not quite begin to spell relief the way the antacid’s name
reads but I found that I could spell relief in different ways. One naughty
classmate of mine used to spell it SHIT.
According to him, if
you need to go badly and you go you will truly know how to spell relief. To
that I used to respond with an even naughtier joke about the big Indian Chief
that desired relief. He had not had bowel movement for days. So his emissary
went to the medicine man and said: big chief, no shit. He got a dose of
laxatives. To ensure relief he over administered the stuff, with deadly
consequences. He returned to the medicine man panting: Big shit, no chief.
I have never thought
relief from traffic jam in Port Harcourt could ever be big enough, certainly
not so big that the outcome negates the goal like the death of the Indian
chief. That’s how frightening I used to consider Port Harcourt traffic. You
would be yourself if you slept in traffic inside Port Harcourt just trying to
get to Owerri, only to arrive the following morning. After that experience from
several years ago I came to think of Port Harcourt traffic the way Lagos
traffic was in the 1970s when Ikorodu road was transiting from two – lane
carriage and a trip to the airport could take longer, indeed much longer, than
the flight from Lagos to London.
Recently I was to
speak at the Rivers State job creation summit in Port Harcourt and the
following morning at Asaba. I was so fixated on the traffic getting out of Port
Harcourt and what was the bad road to Asaba. I asked that the driver arrives at
5: 00am. But as these things happen the driver was
not there until 7:15am.
You can just imagine my state of mind about how late I would be to the Asaba
event.
The night before, I
had, after my speech at the Summit, visited with the Governor. He asked if I
was disposed to joining him on an inspection tour of construction sites. I
affirmed. He stepped into the driver’s seat and another guest got in the car to
begin a really interesting surprise visit to construction sites. Truly
impressive stuff. I came back with much hope that some of those constructions
would lift the load from Aba road. But I had put that to sometime next year. A
note about governors as drivers. Having been driven round Jos, Owerri, Akure
and now PH by an incumbent governor I think they drive better than their
official drivers. But back to serious business.
When the driver came
at 7:15 I figured it would take us till about 9:15 to get from the hotel, through the city to the
road leading to Owerri. I then hoped I would be on the road another three and
half hours, which it took me the last time I travelled from Port Harcourt. To
my surprise we went from The Juanita Hotel to the highway in minutes. But for a
short patch in Imo State where construction was still going on, the journey was
motorway driving all the way. By 10:00am, I was in Asaba.
This led me to
thinking that because we are often so distracted by bad politics the points of
progress just slip by without becoming the energizer for more good outcomes.
The bad politics was so much in the air as I visited Rivers state. The day
before I arrived four governors from the North had come on a solidarity visit
to Rotimi Amaechi, their Rivers counterpart, to express concern not only about
goings-on in his state House of Assembly, a body he once presided over as
Speaker, but in Nigeria.
The motorcade of the visiting governors received
pelting from a group of anti – Amaechi elements. Fortunately, the Governor
managed to exercise restraint. Had he decided on fire for fire Rivers would
have witnessed a blood bath, as I predicted on my blog when this crisis began.
But the bottom line is that the bad politics was not allowing either the
Federal Government or even the Amaechi government to focus on the various works
at hand and showcase what I would enjoy that morning in my smooth cruise to
Asaba.
Surely the Federal
Government had overcome the long standing bogey and evil spirit that stood in
the way of completing the Onitsha – Owerri highway. Same for ensuring a good
window on the amazing construction work Amaechi is carrying out to save Port
Harcourt from traffic hell.
We cannot continue
like this. As I left town, Governors from the South West came to show solidarity
with Chibuike Amaechi. All men of goodwill should surely stand up against
impunity. There is more to life than politics.
*Extracted from Pat Utomi's wall
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