UMAHISM: TAKING DEVELOPMENT TO EBONYI GENTILES.

By Monday Eze

Recently, the enigmatic governor of Ebonyi state, Engr. David Nweze Umahi, directed that the reconstruction of Ezzamgbo - Effium road be extended to Effium town. He further added that pipeborne water be extended to Effium while the existing scanty electricity project in Effium be extended to the hinterlands of the community.
Effium community in Ohaukwu Local Government Area is the largest autonomous community in Ebonyi state, nay Nigeria. Effium which consists of five political wards and two development centres is home to the orri - speaking people of Uffiom the earliest settlers who migrated from Ukele in the present Crossriver state; Ezza Ezekuna people [from the now defunct Ezzikwo division] whose military prowess was sought in exchange for the reasonable consideration of inalienable rights over pieces of land to facilitate the effective occupation of the area now geographically expressed as Effium; Arochukwu, Uburu, Okposi, Ugwulangwu, Awka, Onitsha, Enugwu-Ukwu, Nsukka, Nkanu, Awgwu, Isuochi, Edo, Idoma, Hausa, Fulani and many other later settlers who followed their business and career interests to Effium and finally settled in Effium. Effium is thus qualified to be regarded, and is in fact regarded as a microcosm of Nigeria. As vast as Effium community is; and given the impressive array of human and natural resources with which the area is blessed, Effium autonomous community is the most undeveloped community in Nigeria! This jinx of development has retarded Effium community so much that except for the very scanty electricity project which was brought to the community by Chief Goddy Ogbaga, the former minister of state for power under General Sani Abacha, and extended to Ugoeze village through the constituency project of the wife of the former minister, Hon. (Mrs.) Elizabeth Ogbaga; a few maliciously sited boreholes most of which dry up even in the rainy seasons; the pre-civil war maternity home which is a shadow of itself and a health centre at Akparata which is at the Benue state boundary of the community, there is no other medical facility for the over one hundred thousand inhabitants of the community.
The five electoral wards and the two development centres in Effium have generous shares of the jinx of development which makes Effium different: Apart from the fact that none of either the electoral wards or the development centres has geographical boundaries, the secretariat of the pioneer development centre is a morribund planless assemblage of blocks which is out of synchrony with architectural standards, while the second development centre has neither a secretariat nor a site proposed for the secretariat since its creation in 2005. Devoid of boundaries and proper secretariats, the electoral wards and Development centres in Effium became modern primitive enclaves where every development idea is treated with either scorn or suspicion or criminally sabotaged!
The road sector in Effium is completely a negative spectacle. The road leading to Effium from Ezzamgbo had constantly continued to recede in quality and to degenerate as one approached Effium, metamorphosing into a concantenation of valleys of death at the boundary between Ngbo and Effium and terminating in a cul de sac at Omege village in the boundary between Effium community and Mbeke Ishieke in Ebonyi Local Government Area of Ebonyi state. In fact, since the early 80s when the trail-blazing Gov. Jim Nwobodo of the old Anambra state constructed the Abakaliki ring road which included Ezzamgbo - Effium road, subsequent reconstructions or rehabilitations of Ezzamgbo - Effium road by all the previous administrations in Ebonyi state always stopped at Ngbo, hence the total degeneration of the Ngbo boundary - Effium section of the road. With the major road leading to Effium in that condition, the myriads of glorified footpaths known as Effium internal road network is better imagined than experienced. The truth is that except for owners of tropical jeeps, car owners in Effium do not drive their cars at all during the rainy seasons as most of the roads are inaccessible even to motorcycles.
Politically, Effium elites have for selfish reasons continued to allow external forces to negatively exploit their diversity to the detriment of the common good of the people, thereby creating disunity and enthroning mediocrity all of which have reduced Effium elites to political chess puns and continued to be the bane of Effium autonomous community. The result of this is that everything including developmental projects, welfare or even human-angle issues are subjected to egotistic and suspicious war of intrigues in which the common good of the ordinary masses do not matter. That was how Effium community lost a ten million naira world bank-assisted project consisting of a fully - equipped health centre and eight water boreholes in 2009. The large expanse of land acquired for the health centre is still as void as it was on creation day while those that would have benefited from the project die of sundry ailments on daily basis!
I have refreshed our memory with the development profile of Effium community for us to see why the recent comprehensive executive order of Gov. David Nweze Umahi, a man who has been rightly described as "the wonder-working governor of Ebonyi state", directing that the developmental arsenals of Ebonyi state be deployed to Effium deserves great appreciations and celebrations. Effium even though the largest community in Ebonyi state with a voting population of over forty thousand has been perennially ignored and treated developmentally with the templates used by the archetypal jewish christians against the gentiles whom the Jews excluded from both the blessings of Abraham and the salvation of Christ in the early days of Christianity! When one recalls that for the first time in the history of Ebonyi state, it is under Gov. Umahi that Effium community is allowed to occupy Ohaukwu L.G.A. chairmanship position under any guise, one could safely add fireworks to this celebration.
From the foregoings and Gov. Umahi's antecedents of positively changing the status and faces of areas which were hitherto criminally excluded from the development plans of Ebonyi State like Onueke, Afikpo, Nkalagu cetera which urban status have materialized from paper works to practical reality, Governor David Nweze Umahi has written his name in gold as an impartial leader and the "governor of the governorless" in the history of Ebonyi state! In the light of this development, one can safely say without equivocation that just like St. Paul of the Bible did with the gospel, Gov. Umahi is the only governor who has taken development to all parts of Ebonyi state without regard to whether the inhabitants of the areas are "Jews or Gentiles" of Ebonyi state; and it is the prayer of Effium and other Gentiles of Ebonyi state that posterity will remember Gov. Umahi for all these.
It is well with Ebonyi state!