…Charge them to borrow a leaf from Edo
By: Emmanuel Nlewedum
The First Deputy President of the Port Harcourt Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Mines and Agriculture (PHACCIMA), Chief Mike Elechi has urged Rivers people to unite and fight towards recovering the lost glory of the state.
Elechi, a retired Permanent Secretary in the state civil service gave the charge in an exclusive interview with Port Harcourt Spectator Newspaper in Port Harcourt.
He regretted that the political leaders in Rivers state are busy fighting over what he described as ‘meaningless things’.
He said: “I will like Rivers people to know that we should unite for us to know what our position is, in the country called Nigeria.
“My major concern is that they should unite to fight a purposeful fight and not irresponsible fight. Let’s fight the big fight, not small fight. What they are fighting now is what I see as a small fight.
“There are things that we have forgotten to fight politically and we are busy here fighting nonsense things, fighting where projects are cited and where it’s not cited. It is no more that someone ate money but citing of projects.
“We have been pursuing some mundane things, and forgotten that yesterday, Port Harcourt was the capital of the South South, today it is no more like that.
Today you have Zone 16 and it’s in Bayelsa. You have the local content, and it’s in Bayelsa. Palliatives came for the South South states during the period of lock down and they said it should go to Calabar and Rivers state collect her portion from there.
“Before it was Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt, today it is Lagos, Abuja, Kano, Kaduna. If you come to South South, it’s Calabar.
“Port Harcourt has become a village, somebody is lighting up the sky of Port Harcourt so that even if Nigeria don’t believe it, they will google from anywhere and see the skyline of Port Harcourt and rate it a great city.
“There was sometime Port Harcourt Airport was the worst international airport in the world. Seeing somebody upgrading these facilities, you say no, you must go and do white-wash road in Ogoni or in Etche so that you can now earn money. Sometimes we fight something that is not in existence and leave what we are supposed to fight.
“We forget to say that our two ports are down, yet Apapa port and rail line is starting from Ikorodu to Port Harcourt. We are forgetting to fight too many things instead, fighting things that don’t have any meaning.
“We don’t know where we belong, even if they are talking about ethnic nationalities today that people can meet, I don’t know where South South will meet, I don’t even know where Rivers State will meet.
“If the Igbos meet at Ohaneze, Yorubas meet in Afanifere, Hausas and others meet themselves somewhere, where do we meet ourselves?
“So we have problems but we do not know until these political gladiators, we call them PDP or APC realize it. They are all dancing and nobody is watching the dance because they have left the tune of the drum and are dancing to something they don’t see. They are dancing to something that has no meaning.
“Anywhere they gather, they will scatter it, moving from one place to the other.
“What is our purpose as a state? What is our survival instinct? Suppose something happens and say, every state becomes country, how do we survive in the midst of plenty, are you sure we are not going to kill ourselves?” he asked.
He further urged the political class to borrow a leaf from what happened in Edo State where the people united and spoke with one voice devoid of wanton bloodshed and killings or political affiliation.
