Don Norman Obinna (Agu Ibeku)

As expected, the ‘public servant of the year’ award, bestowed on the speaker of the Abia State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Chinedum Orji by Sun newspaper management has attracted a potpourri of felicitations and encomia from admirers and obsequious flatters.

Others have also expressed reservations and contrary views. But judging by the organiser’s frame of reference and criteria for selecting recipients, Mr Orji merited his award.

Therefore, it is ill-disposed for anyone to cast aspersions on his richly deserved honour.  So, from the depth of my heart, I sincerely say congratulations to Mr Speaker. 

However, from a formalism and literalism contextual point of view, it is untainted sophistry to assert that the speaker won the Sun newspaper public servant of the year award as some of the accolades portrayed.

One can only emerge victorious in a contest that boasts of other comparable participants and is declared the winner on the strength of one’s spectacle. The organisers of the Sun award (in their wisdom) used different methodology to determine the recipient.

The word public servant stands for a civil servant or a government employee. The battered Abia State civil servants owed 20 to 30 months’ salary arrears fall into this category.

They would have been the equitable collective winners of the Sun award if the organisers considered their predicament and perseverance as benchmarks. 

On this premise, there was no contest to determine a winner. The organisers honoured Mr Speaker with the public servant award. He did not win it.

Furthermore, one had expected him to dedicate the award to his fellow public servants (Abia workers) in camaraderie, but he failed to acknowledge them.

This snub was not an oversight. It underscored the disdainful treatment of the civil servants and government insensitivity towards their plight.

Every Abia worker has a representative in the State and National Assemblies. Members of the House and 90 per cent of top government officials attended the fiesta in Lagos in solidarity with the recipient. 

But we have not seen them voiced solidarity with the suffering workers over their salary arrears the same way they did at Eco Hotels & Suites in Lagos over the weekend. 

The large entourage that made the trip to Lagos for a newspaper award rubbished Abia government interminable whinge of lean treasury or scarcity of funds often used as a pretext to deny Abia civil servants their wages.

The Saturday fiesta was a repeat of the October 19, 2012, fête in Accra, Ghana, where the then Governor T.A. Orji received an award of the best governor in security. 

Abia government rented despatch (Triumph) riders for three days, travelled with all the serving commissioners, 17 LG Chairmen, heads of agencies, party EXCOs, House of Assembly members and 25 sycophants. That bazaar cost Abia State government no fewer than N300 million in fares, hotels and allowances.

Psychologists posit that the best way to predict an adult’s future behaviour is through his past conduct. What Mr Speaker exhibited over the weekend was proof that his government – if ever it will happen – will continue the wastage of public funds that has kept Abia State in the chasm.

The bane of development in Abia State, since the advent of democracy, is the government penchant for boondoggles and omnishambles.

I do not know how to deodorise excreta. The idea to fly 90 per cent of top government officials and sycophants to Lagos for a newspaper award was a silly O’clock decision.

What will happen if Mr Speaker receives a national award? It means a mandatory journey for all Abia citizenry to the city of the ceremony. That is not what Abia needs in 2023.

The loose manner Mr Speake and his entourage were flashing their 32 teeth, posting pictures of Lagos State and Eco Hotels & Suites shows that he notices and appreciates a good city when he sees one.

It is human beings (people in power), not angels, who built Lagos. Eco Hotels found Lagos conducive for business because the government is people-oriented and places a premium on development. Look at Abia. Mr Speaker should be ashamed of its nondescript state.

If the Lagos State government locked up the economy the way we lock up Abia’s, would Mr Speaker be happy to associate with the state? If no be spell, na wetin e bi?

My brother, Eji eshi uyo mara nma fuma ama ooo!