By Nnaji Nwobodo
Although Governor Sullivan Chime swore to an oath of office to do good to all manner of people without discrimination, the consequences of the gross neglect of the lower cadre by his administration will be glaring by the time it elapses in May 2015.? In the past seven years and four months, the administration has through its various programmes demonstrated that it has no place for the middle class or the less privileged in the state.
From imposition of multiple taxation and illegal levies to the incessant arrest and torture of people by Enugu State Waste Management Authority, ESWAMA, events in Chime?s elitist government of seven years and four months do not portray him as a leader who has not shown faith and care for the people he was meant to provide for their welfare.It is a common saying in Enugu State that Chime and his Chief of Staff, Mrs. Ifeoma Nwobodo, have succeeded in making the people of the state poorer than they met them in 2007.? In order to conserve funds to build their personal empire, Chime and Nwobodo made sure that there is no new recruitment into the State Civil Service while the civil servants in the state have continued to cry out against poor salary scale approved by the governor.? The governor had cleverly adopted the N18,000 minimum wage as the benchmark for calculating workers salary in spite of protests by the labour union.? As a result, civil servants on Grade Level 01 Step 15, which is the lowest cadre earns below N16,000 after tax and other deductions. ?The labour leaders said Enugu pays the least salary in the country and in the entire West Africa thus making civil service very unattractive to young graduates just as the state remained the very poor in national development index.
Parents of students of Enugu State University of Science and Technology, ESUT, and the Institute of Management and Technology, IMT, Enugu have been groaning over high school fees charged by the two institutions following the decision of Chime to withdraw financial support to them.? This has compounded the economic and security situation in the state as many who could not afford the high tuition fees have dropped out of school and resorted to self-help, which includes armed robbery, kidnapping and thuggery.
Apart from the mass recruitment of teachers carried out by the government a few years back in response to public outcry against shortage of teachers in the school system, Chime did not regard job creation as part of his developmental agenda. While no job was created by the administration, ironically, Chime, through his revenue agencies, largely seen as dubious and corrupt, descended on the self-employed who engaged in petty trading and other medium and small scale businesses to eke a living by imposing unaffordable levies and taxations.
For instance, small business operators are forced to pay as much as N24,000 by ESWAMA as annual sanitation levy even when total cost of goods in such shops are less than that amount. Those who cannot afford the amount are arrested and detained in an illegal cell created by the agency. Before a detainee is released, the exorbitant sanitation fee must be coughed out in addition to a fine of not less than N10,000. The notorious bull in-charge of ESWAMA enforcement identified as Mr. Nnamani, who is said to be the direct agent of Governor Chime and Ifeoma Nwobodo, for whom he collects the illegal revenue that are usually unaccounted for, will brazenly tell anyone that cares to listen within the ESWAMA yard that he has the strong backing of Chime and Nwobodo to use whatever method to generate funds. This accounts for the illegal arrest and detention of abducted alleged sanitation fee defaulters and their kangaroo trial by a sanitation court that seats inside the old Eastern House of Assembly, an unsanitary complex taken over by tick bush.
Human rights organizations had raised several issues concerning the inhuman treatments being meted out to Enugu residents by the ESWAMA operatives.? In April this year, a 17-year-old student, Chidiebere Ede was gruesomely murdered by an ESWAMA enforcement team for allegedly dumping refuse without bagging it.? The innocent boy was thoroughly beaten to death and thrown out of their moving bus.? Although the Enugu State Police Command arrested three staff of the agency, the matter was later swept under the carpet, thus further emboldening the thugs hired by the agency to terrorize the people under the guise of revenue generation for sanitation services that are in most cases not rendered.
In Enugu today, traders run out or lock up their shops regularly for fear of revenue collectors who charge all manner of fees thus paralyzing economic activities.? There are different revenue agents parading the streets and terrorizing the residents particularly within the state capital. ?They include those from ESWAMA, Board of Internal Revenue, Enugu Capital Territory Development Authority, Enugu Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Agriculture, various urban Local Governments?and others whose only identity is their reflective jackets.? Some mount roadblocks on the Federal Highways demanding different kinds of emblems from motorists. Even when such documents had been obtained from other states they are usually rejected thereby constituting serious difficulties for transporters.? The Chime government closes its ears to series of complaints regarding the activities of these hoodlums as if there is no government in the state.
While those doing petty trading are crying out loud against multiple taxation and levies, the Chime government went a step further to impoverish Enugu people by engaging in senseless demolition of shops under the guise of recovering the original master plan of Enugu capital city. No fewer than 10,000 shops had been demolished since Chime came to power in 2007, while over 20,000 traders had been wickedly displaced without any alternative provided by the government. The Old Park traders had their shops demolished while those doing their businesses on the streets were banished to make way for road construction.? In some instances, the roads were abandoned after shops on the roads were demolished.
The civil servants are the worst hit in the government?s anti-people programmes.? Some people regard Chime?s insensitivity to the plights of the ordinary citizens as an economic warfare against the masses to keep them under perpetual bondage and make them subservient to his leadership style.
A Director on level 16 in Enugu State Civil Service, which is the highest paid earns N91,000 including all allowances, while a Director on middle grade for about three years earns N87,000 as take-home pay and he is not entitled to a vehicle and accommodation.? The President, International Solidarity for Peace and Human Rights Initiative and former Chairman of Civil Liberties Organisation in Enugu State, Comrade Osmond Ugwu declared recently: ?Enugu is the least paid in the entire country and in the whole of Africa; apart from the condition of service being the poorest, the condition under which civil servants work is most dehumanizing.? They don?t have tools with which they work.? Even those in the other sectors, teachers and medical sector are suffering the same thing.? That is why those in the medical and teaching profession have been protesting and threatening.
?The most worrisome of it is that they are denied their basic fundamental rights of expression, assembly and agitation which are the hallmark of democratic practice in the world.? Enugu state is therefore as dictatorial as military dictatorship. The fundamental rights of the workers are being violated and they are in penury and that has invariably affected the entire population of the state because it is the workers that feed other sectors of the state.
?Enugu is not an industrial state, Enugu operates a civil service economy and other persons earn their living from the pay of the civil servants. The developmental process in the state is at zero level. It is only road projects that you can see as only developmental project that takes place only in the metropolitan Enugu North, South and East councils. ?In Enugu State today, nobody hears about the local government, whatever things going on in Enugu state are being credited to the governor, which means that the local governments are not working. It is high time people begin to look at the developmental policies of the state so as to be able to hold the government accountable for the resources that come to the state. If the councils are not performing their roles they should be made to account for the funds they receive.?
However, having realized the consequences of neglecting the people?s welfare especially with the experience from the recent ?Ekiti State governorship election where the then incumbent Governor Kayode Fayemi failed to secure a mandate for a second term on allegation of his not being ?man of the people?, there is serious fear in Chime?s camp that anti-people?s policies since the past seven years could jeopardize his ambition to install his successor as well his plan to join the 2015 senate after his current tenure. He was said to have summoned members of his kitchen cabinet shortly after the Ekiti election where they reflected on the dangers of neglecting the people.
An insider said that Chime, Nwobodo and other members of the cabinet then resolved to change their leadership style and embrace what they called ?Stomach Infrastructure? in order to win the support of the people at the grassroots level. Chime who is aspiring to occupy the Enugu West senatorial seat, currently occupied by the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, is currently distributing computers to some secondary schools as part of his campaigns to snatch the senatorial seat from Ekweremadu who had over the years empowered millions of youths in various local government areas of the state through the scholarship and bursary scheme of the Ikeoha Foundation, a Non-Governmental Organisation he founded to give succor to the less privileged in the state.? ?Ekweremadu had through his constituency projects set up several Information Technology Centres, ICTs, in all the local government areas in Enugu West in addition to functional Adult Literacy Programme and skill acquisition centers in the councils.
Ifeoma Nwobodo who is also vying for Enugu East senatorial seat has since embarked on an underground campaign and mobilization of women at the grassroots by distributing cash and materials, which she believes would convince the womenfolk to divert their support to her.? During the recent yearly August home-coming by various women groups in the communities, Nwobodo and her campaigners moved round distributing money to woo the support of the women who had since 2007 been left in abject poverty. However, her gifts were rejected by some women groups, while others gladly collected them with a clear statement that such largesse were mere release of physical democracy dividends, which they had been denied over the years.?? but women of Obe community in Nwobodo?s Nkanu West local government were blunt in rejecting her gift just like their counterparts in Ogui Urban in Enugu North Local Government. They returned the money and materials Nwobodo sent to them with a clear message they could not receive such Greek gifts coming few months to the election.
For daring the ?Madam-at-the Top? in Enugu State, the Chairman of Nkanu West Local Government, Mr. Afam Okereke, a former Nollywood producer appointed by Mrs Nwobodo, descended a sledge hammer on his people.? He caused the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC) to disconnect power supply to the community and the entire community has remained in darkness since then.? Okereke, when contacted by newsmen, claimed that he installed the power transformer giving light to Obe and reserved the right to withdraw the gesture more so when the beneficiaries refused to pay their electricity bills.
Obviously, Chime?s belated ?stomach infrastructure? intended to garner the support of the people for his next ambition and that of Mrs Nwobodo, may not yield the desired result as the people of Enugu who had been so traumatized on account of long neglect by the draconian administration headed by Emperor Chime.? It is the topic of discussion at every public place as the people describe it as a last-minute ?stomach infrastructure? that would never earn them any reasonable advantage over those that had in past years utilized their positions and personal resources in helping the poor in Enugu State.
Nwobodo wrote from Ogui, Enugu
