The media atmosphere has recently been saturated by a news stunt, obviously sponsored by the management of the Niger Delta Development Commission against the integrity of the Governor and Government of Akwa Ibom state.
The governor is supposedly painted as refusing moves by NDDC for partnership in moving the state forward. As an independent media assessment team, we were awed by such a report and decided to look further into the said report, only to find out that the management of NDDC sold a dummy to the public by alleging that the MD Mr Nsima Ekere used a short messaging service of his wireless phone to ‘write a letter’ to the governor requesting for a visit, which Mr Udom Emmanuel did not oblige.
Sending phone short message to who, a governor? Not by Mr Nsima Ekere, but by NDDC….this is rather absurd, so funny and ridiculous. The public and media relations handlers of this intervention agency have made a terrible mistake that have shown to the entire world the rot existing in that agency.
So the only way the NDDC management team can communicate with the Governor of Akwa Ibom state is through text message that no one can verify?
Who is fooling who and why?
How does anyone expect that a governor who probably receives an average of 200,000 -500,000 text messages each day can truly see such a message, if at all it was actually sent? This at best is a stage play from a theatre of absurdity.
But then, if the NDDC managers want to display their ignorance publicly, they should try another means and refrain from dropping the name of the Akwa Ibom governor. If after seven months in the saddle they have finally realised the need to liaise with the government of Akwa Ibom State, then we won’t mind also reminding them that there are known channels to route correspondences and document same for posterity and diligence checks.
The office of a state chief executive currently occupied by His Excellency, Mr Udom Emmanuel, is worth more respect, and sending sms to book an appointment shows utter disdain, insult and disregard to the 6million Akwa Ibom indigenes who mandated him to be their leader. Even if it is alright for Mr Ekere to send SMS’ to his PAs and junior staff, it certainly is wrong to accord same treatment to our state governor. This is unacceptable and is not in line with the due process campaign of President Muhammadu Buhari.
•Does NDDC accept contract proposals from text messages?
•Does NDDC award its phoney contracts through phoney messaging?
•Is text messaging recognised by the constitution of the country as a means of formal communication by government agencies?
• Was the visit of Mr Ekere and his team to the Rivers,Delta,Edo, Ondo and other state governments arranged through a phone text message?
•Why would a Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission, unable to attend public events in Akwa Ibom state even when officially invited with formal letters, now resorting to sending private phoney messages to a governor?
•Now that the Sms has been sent to the governor’s phone, does NDDC expect the governor to now minute inside the phone and sent the phone in a file to his secretary for photocopying, documentation and necessary arrangements?
The recent outburst by the agency managers tends to expose their level of contempt to a governor, to the extent that his office can be relegated to that of an ordinary office boy who must spend his day watching out for sms from a duly constituted federal agency; yet this cannot undermine the fact that the vast bulk of resources used to give value and meaning to this agency is from Akwa Ibom state.
The current NDDC leaders have become synonymous with lies, but they should rather channel their lies to other things such as the non-existent projects they recently advertised, and the poorly executed projects they have abandoned all over the state, and their refusal to partner with the state government to bring life touching projects to the state.
We are all aware that the current leadership of the commission has a very limited lifespan, and stands to gain nothing by engaging in useless political propaganda with Akwa Ibom state government.
Every Niger Delta state government is today complaining about NDDC’s phoney contracts, why have they decided to introduce phoney text messages?
From our independent assessment, the Mandate Eyes have clearly seen that the government of Akwa Ibom state has open its hands to welcome development partners who are genuinely interested in supporting it development programmes in the state.
Like stated recently, the government abhors any programme under any guise that will daunt its developmental master plan and want to collaborate, advise or be informed of whatever is being brought for the benefit of his people. For example, it will amount to sheer waste, if a road marked for a dual carriage expressway by the state government, is visited with a single lane road by NDDC. Or how would it look like if state funds are expended on a project for architectural designs and NDDC goes on to duplicate same with funds it would have used for other projects? That is the essence of communication, proper communication, not phoney letters.
For whatever it takes, when Mr Ekere-led management team of NDDC exhausts its tenure in December this year, Akwa Ibom people will be more concerned asking how the time was spent in line with the core mandate of the commission, and not by the number of lies and propaganda the commission sold to the public.
From available statistics, Akwa Ibom still contributes almost 50% to the revenue profile of the country’s economy through oil exploration and exploitation and the agitations for some level of respites and respect from the federal government, nee NDDC can never be too much of a demand.
After all, we bear the hazards of environmental damages and economic losses occasioned by these rape on our natural habitat.
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