and Senator Orji Uzor Kalu during the roadwalk.
Last week I wrote on security agents and their poor attitude towards citizens. The crux was brutalization of citizens by security personnel. The point I made in the discourse was that citizens deserve to be treated very humanely by those recruited and paid by the state to protect them. This is no special privilege or favour. It is a core responsibility of the state and government to her people. No one begs for it. It is a given because it is the first reason the government came into existence in the first instance. This is what is expected and that is exactly what we see in saner climes, where security personnel could pay the supreme sacrifice just to save one citizen.
Characteristics of us seem to do things in this regard very differently. Our security officers take great pleasure in visiting all kinds of acts of dehumanization on the citizens at the flimsiest of excuses. It could be as little as who should buy from a seller first; it won’t even matter if the “bloody civilian” came into the marketplace before the kings of the manor.
It is very disheartening to observe that in our country anyone in uniform is a lord; they view themselves far above the citizens. They run with a whimsical sense of entitlement. There is the retarding sense of «it is we against them.» Misguided sense of an enemy that ought to be crushed. They virtually bully the civilians for all kinds of reasons. Some people read the piece and spoke of their intention to draw the attention of the services to some of the examples I gave. My response was that institutions ought to have well staffed public relations units. Those manning them should know what to do.
I had cause to continue with a discussion on security personnel and civilians’ relationship this week. As I was about to pen what you are reading, a brother phoned me to say he nearly lost his life last Monday, while returning from the village, Umudobia in Ukwa West Local Government Area of Abia State through Aba to Owerri his base. He told me men wearing police uniform wielding machetes and guns stormed the Osisioma park at Aba, beating up everyone in sight and inflicting severe injuries on passersby. He took to his heels and ran into a nearby ditch, in fact a dumpsite.
Of course he sustained injuries having been cut by bottles and iron materials in the place. Security personnel came blasting over a minor disagreement between some members of road transport workers and a few security men. For that simple reason hell was let loose and innocent citizens who didn›t know what happened became unwilling victims of ill-conceived altercation.
Peace makers turned agents of war, intimidation and harm. I learnt another of such macabre displays took place in Abuja when security personnel attached to the Chief of Army Staff descended on a couple for having the audacity to overtake the Army convoy. Can two wrongs make a right? It certainly does in Nigeria.
Well, let me return to a subject I touched on penultimate Sunday on this page: the maltreatment of minorities with particular reference to the case of Asa People of Abia State. Asa land is geographically located within the Niger Delta basin. The colonialists recognized them as such. Most signposts in the area before and in early post-independence period had something to show the area was duly located within Niger Delta but the post civil war antics of the victors created a new order which turned the people of the area to something similar to a hermaphrodite. Today, you can’t say with exactitude if Asa people belong to Niger Delta or people of the mainland. They are just with all the neglect and abandonment that always comes with the loss of identity.
We all know when things are not very well defined, placing a tag on it is very difficult. This situation has its challenges too and mostly in the negative. As already observed, Asa people were a big clan before and shortly after independence. Today the Nigerian state through deliberate designs has made them a minority. Oyigbo town which is 100 percent Asa was taken away from them and placed elsewhere. It was taken to firm up Rivers State, both in figures and land mass. Asa people’s loss became the gain of the core riverine people. Imagine for once that Asa people, including Oyigbo, were all in one state. Just visualise the amount of political influence they could exude and what that could mean in terms of recognition and attendant physical development.
Asa land in Abia State lost oil wells but has managed to stay on as an oil producing area with no developments to show for it. The federal government created interventionist agencies at various times to cater to the needs of oil producing communities, but the process for getting appointees became more like, “the more one looked, the less one saw”. It has remained largely a case of so much motion yet no movement. Those who created those agencies gave the impression they meant to develop the areas using local personnel but in actuality it was like giving out something with the right hand and at same time taking it away with the left hand.
If it was not the Federal Government giving appointments to cronies, it was the state governments through the governors nominating very compliant friends and collaborators, men and women who will get there to satisfy the nominating authority›s whims and caprices. The supposed beneficiaries were left with the wrong end of the stick. They received promises which with time turned out to be a mirage. Their circumstances got far worse each passing time. The trend has continued.
The fate of Asa in Abia State appears the worst. In Rivers, Delta, and Akwa Ibom states just to mention a few, the quota system is still in operation. Those states make sure each part finds a space on the high table, but in the case of Abia State no such arrangement exists. No affirmative action. It is the survival of the majority, the disadvantaged must compete with the highly advantaged. Go through the institutions of state, one would have to search and search to find just one Asa person in places that matter. IIn the university system, civil service through health institutions the story is the same account of sidelining.
The 13 percent derivation fund meant to give some degree of succor to oil producing areas hardly get to them and when it does the fraction is so insignificant and bearly of any effect development wise.
Abia State Government created her own agency to cater for the development of oil producing communities but what the authors came through with is a pure mockery to seriousness, genuine intensions and justice. The state collects the derivation and the governor determines what to give out and when to do so. The law establishing the agency makes everywhere oil pipelines pass through an oil producing area. So they must have representations in the agencies.
Every one conversant with the Nigerian way of doing things knows what such arrangement portends. The state interventionist agency by this uncanny arrangement has a responsibility similar to the state government, development of the entire state. With how much? By current accounts, if one takes a critical review of what they claim to be doing it would be seen that more development activities using the oil fund is done in areas without oil than in those that suffer environmental degradation arising from oil exploratory activities. Anyone genuinely concerned can undertake a research on this.
What do Asa people want? Very simple. They desire to see Abia State produce a new Abia Charter of Equity that would redraw the administration of the state on three structures. Ukwa, Bende and Ngwa.
Presently there is this wrong assumption that Ukwa people are Ngwa, so whatever is done in Ngwa area automatically benefits Ukwa people. This thinking has tended to rob Asa and by extension the larger Ukwa people of what is due to them. It has also robbed them of participation in the inner recesses of power management in a more sustained manner.
Asa people want a quota system introduced so that they can find space on the table. It is not about the inability to compete. It has much to do with numbers and fair process. We have had working relationships with the Ngwa clan and it is our considered view and expectation that the Ngwa clan would support an Asa to become Deputy Governor and Senator in Abia South in 2027. Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe of Ngwa extraction by then would have been about 20 years as Senator representing Abia South senatorial zone.
The Asa people expect either the Federal or state to assist in lighting up the area that has been in darkness for over four years. They expect a turnaround on some of their very strategic roads, especially Uratta, Obokwe, Ugwati, Ogwe road. Owaza, Uzuaku, Umuorie and Umuokwor communities with very functional oil wells, yet don’t look like habitable settlements. They require facelifts. The health facilities are in shambles. No scholarships. No business credit facilities.
The people desire to help themselves yet the bigger truth remains that everywhere the government acts as the catalyst for change. Not much is required in this instance, just a few deliberate, well thought out actions would serve as impetus for the much desired positive change.