COVER
Every citizen loses in era of executive, legislative distrust
By Mathew Onwuasoanya
ALTHOUGH with ongoing peace and stability that opened Anambra State for all-round growth and progress these preceding 10 years comes with a collateral tendency to forget past labyrinth from which the state was extricated, the tell-tales are still so fresh to ignore. Why will anyone forget where the state is coming from, when it took uncommon adroitness of recent leaders and their teams to salvage Anambra from hangovers of past lunacy whose ripples nearly permanently destroyed crucial drivers of socio-economic and political development, ethical and value-added orientation in the state?
Hence, in less than 10 years after more than one academic calendar was lost, Anambra’s basic education sector has been transformed into competitive global brands whose products win national and international honours. This also explains why despite having many public utilities cannibalisedor razed down, from House of Assembly complex to Ikenga Hotels, among others, in broad-day orgies of arson, Anambra currently ranks high in Nigeria’s state-by-state infrastructural development index. The new orientation that places premium on value-added leadership equally explains why despite being plagued by daylight banditry, Anambra has been transformed into Nigeria’s safest state while hitherto easily pliant or manipulable youths at the beck and call of taskmasters, young ones are presently being recruited into leadership roles through sustainable empowerment and development programs.
No doubt, it took cutting edge policies incubated by cerebral leadership such as prompt payment of workers’ salary and pensions, community choose-your-project and one-youth-two-skills initiatives, among others to reboot Anambra. But the new booting process can ill afford distraction let alone disruption.
Similarly, why will anyone quickly forget bleeding sores inflicted on Anambra’s body politic by poisonous claws of daredevil godfathers and their godsons that held the state to ransom in every parameters of responsible statehood, reeking so noisome that many were ashamed of being identified as an Anambra indigenes not long ago? Today, this is no longer the case as everyone takes pride in pitching for Brand Anambra in new collective solidarity as ndiAnambra.
This is why Saturday’s election into the state legislature holds inexorable clarion that all must answer to avoid the devastating consequence of doing otherwise. Of course, nobody needs to look far to see this clarion when all know it starts and ends in people coming out en masse to vote, and voting for only candidates who know where Anambra is coming from – and why the state should suffer no such reversal again. The vitality of a robust legislature leaves nobody in doubt. From diving peace, progress and security by providing legislative templates of good governance and democracy dividends to attracting people-oriented projects that catalyse socio-economic development of their constituencies, treating the forthcoming election cavalierly will be tantamount to political naivety of the worst order. That’s why in coming out to vote, ndi Anambra should be going for candidates with nuanced legislative grace that places public good above personal interests. This is not time for mundane cleavages that may throw up a cast of politicians just coming to ignite firestorm in the legislative house targeting the executive branch for ceaseless ding dongs or dogfights, and by so doing, capsize current stability that is re-launching Anambra State on a higher matrix.
What ndiAnambra stand to gain in executive-legislative harmony is too obvious for anyone to contemplate giving room for its converse. It is so because it will be easier for a camel to enter a needle’s eye than for a legislator at daggers drawn with executive arm to attract physical or human infrastructural development for his constituents. Or how will a lawmaker needlessly antagonising the executive deliver goodies that come from qualitative representation to his or her constituency when only the executive branch has legal capacity to implement policies, build roads, hospitals, create or provide jobs?
This is why ndi Anambra should ignore politicians promising heaven on earth and go for credible candidates that will bring rapport in executive-legislative relationships. Not doing this will only bring about two elephants fighting, and as the saying goes, ndiAnambra should not forget that when two elephants are fighting, the grass suffers.
