PORTHARCOURT: A CITY WITHOUT A GARDEN

PORTHARCOURT: A CITY WITHOUT A GARDEN

On Friday, the 19th day of August in the year of our Lord 2011, I left my Edo North country home, Igarra, after the hugely successful Aba cultural festival which has been rated the 6th most indigenous cultural festival in the whole of West Africa to keep a date with ten thousand learned colleagues of mine at the Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association which is today factually the largest gathering of lawyers any where in the world at the historic city of Porthacourt affectionately called the garden city.

I had been warned of the bad state of the Warri – Portharcourt expressway, so I drove through much of Edo State, to Agbor, Onitsha, Owerri and then to Portharcourt and I entered the city through the Elele town – Omagwa end of the city. The route was not too bad. The roads still fairly ok and I expected much of Portharcourt especially considering what we hear in the media of the Rt. Honourable Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi doing great things in the governance of Rivers State. Man was I disappointed. Big time.

The judgement of some of our media houses and the integrity of the bogus and dubious awards they shell out everyday at the drop of a hat has never really impressed or fooled me. This Governor was somebody’s governor of the year not too long ago and yet there is nothing I saw in Portharcourt to suggest he comes close to being one of the top Governors in Nigeria how much more the best of the lot for any particular year. Whatever his spin doctors will have us believe, you do not go looking for evidence of development with a lantern in the dark. It stares you in the face. You see it every where you go and you feel it too. That is what you now see and feel in Lagos State. I saw and felt nothing in Portharcourt. Save for the model State Primary Schools which for me were excellent, I challenge any of the Governors sympathizers to show me anything of note he has done in Portharcourt and he is a second term Governor.

Perhaps to bamboozle the people, he has just embarked on rehabilitating several roads all at the same time without due consideration for the negative effect for traffic flow and the waste of man hours it will engender. Now the rains are here and furious. The result is that Portharcourt is one huge conundrum of traffic jams and chaos all day long. If you live in Lagos as I do and you think the Lagos traffic is bad, try the Portharcourt ‘hold up’ for size. It is very infuriating and frustrating because Portharcourt is not such a big city compared to Lagos. Pray why is the Governor rehabilitating so many roads at the same time when common sense dictates that you take things one at a time – Ada George around Ikwerre Road, Okporo Road at 1st Artillery on Aba Road, East West Road, Eliozu, the new overhead bridge at School bus stop on Ikwerre road, the mono rail which is perpetually under construction – and many others which have seriously hampered vehicular flow and nothing suggests that these roads will be completed anytime soon.

The Portharcourt city I saw is no where near beautiful. The city remains but the garden is definitely gone now. The Governor will do well to face the task of development for which he was elected and leave the issue of resource control alone. He wants more oil money but I have not seen what he has done with the Billions of Naira he collects from the Federation Account every month. He wants oil subsidy removed but he has not shown that with that he will bring back the lost glory of the one time storied garden city or that he will even put the city on a solid march towards reclaiming the lost garden.

The governor obviously does not reckon much with the judiciary too. See what he made of a wonderful speech by the NBA President, J.B Daudu, SAN after the learned Senior Advocate of Nigeria delivered his welcome address touching on issues that ails the polity and proffering solutions while at the same time urging Nigeria to make the responsible choice and save the nation and the judiciary from anomie. Rotimi Amaechi strutted to the stage, denigrated all the NBA President had said and trivialized issues of national importance simply because he could not see that the Arab spring is possible here, that what is happening in Libya can happen in Nigeria. He said the judiciary did nothing to save the polity and right wrongs at critical junctures in Nigeria’s political history whilst off course we know that the reverse is often the case. The judiciary sure has its own troubles. What institution in Nigeria does not? But to accuse the judiciary of wholesale indolence and doing nothing to make Nigeria as Rotimi Amaechi had done is downright irresponsible and ought to be condemned because were it not for the judiciary, this present republic of which he is a major beneficiary would long have torpedoed.

Take the Governors case as a classic example. Was is not the judiciary that won him the Governorship of Rivers State when the Peoples (Un) Democratic Party he now adores sought to deny him the primary election ticket he already won? Were it not for the dogged efforts and brilliance of his lawyers, the courage of the judiciary, he would not have been Governor of Rivers State. And he made the ironic and indicting point by quoting the anecdote that ‘when an Ikwerre man, says move on, I am behind you, you have to look back and be sure that the shuffling footsteps are not moving away from you’. May be the Governor is that kind of Ikwerre man, though he did not say.

If the Governor will not see that Nigeria is in dire straits and that the poor and deprived of Nigeria cannot wait need I remind him then that kidnap for ransom which is a staple in his Niger Delta today was alien stuff we only read in James Hardley Chase and other thriller writers and perhaps Hollywood movies. In 1995 when Ken Saro Wiwa and the Ogoni Nine were executed, no one could envisage that the Federal Government with all its might will be brought to its knees by militants in the same Niger Delta. When the Federal Government will not listen to voices of reason in the Niger Delta believing in the use and show of force, it eventually bit the bullet. How about the clear and present danger of Boko Haram? A few years ago, we thought we were immune to bomb attacks and suicide bombings; afterall we were not the state of Israel or the Palestine Liberation Organization and its twin variant, Hamas. See what has happened to us today. Bombs everywhere and anywhere.

I have severally read the President’s speech and there is nothing there to draw the Governors ire, however much I try, I cannot fathom a reason for denigrating lawyers he is hosting in that manner for members of this same august body made him afterall. I suppose the Governor will be more circumspect the next time he has the opportunity to address any gathering for I have now been told that he likes to speak in that way and manner- sarcastic. The erudite Professor and Noble laureate Wole Soyinka said as much at the beginning of his key note address at the occasion.

Well as they say áll is well that ends well’, the Conference has come and gone, it was hugely successful baring glitches here and there, we members of the bar and bench told ourselves the truth, salient issues have been raised for further extrapolation, old classmates, friends and foes from across the country met again, acquaintances renewed and new relationships spun – ample evidence of this was on show at the friendship centre - the ordinary people of Rivers State I met at both the Conference venue and on the streets were very friendly, kind and willing to help and finally, I grudgingly thank the Governor for his superb welcome cocktail and the grand party that signaled the end of the Conference.

STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a partner in the Lagos law firm of Fountain Court Partners.
Block 36B, LSPDC Estate
Ogudu Road
Ojota
Lagos .
Kingjaja_j@yahoo.com
08052066172