PERSPECTIVE

“Prioritizing Our Sensibilities

(The Akwa Ibom Perspective)

By Joe Etokudor

A democratic polity should  not begin and end in our electing our people to represent us in government. It should  also embrace our opinions actions  and reactions our behavioral patterns and our culture to make it a developing democratic.

The spirit or culture of the  people is said to be the  total of human behaviour patterns and technology  communication from generation to generation, and the behaviour  patterns include the arts (music, dances, crafts, sculpture and paintings,) beliefs, social  institutions characteristic of community or race.  Leopold  Senghor had compared  culture  with civilization and noted that” civilization is a combination of facts and social phenomena, structures and valves  which characterize any given society”. It follows therefore  that each  race, ethnic  group, each nation  and each society has  its own spirit or culture which must be respected if democracy is to be meaningfully and a catalyst for development.

Culture is as  old as man and this presupposes that from pre-historic  days  man used culture to   regulate  his conduct and relationship with  others and the society  at large. Eminent among the beliefs was  that the relationship  between in-laws, grand children, kinsmen, and strangers (Abasi Ukot, Eyeyen,  Iman,  ye owo inua esiet) must be  kept sacrosanct and inviolate. Any   breach  such as fighting and causing  injury,  suing and claiming damages or compensation exposing or aiding and abetting the exposure to harm or danger  of these  people as sacrilegious as these breaches are; were recompensed natural calamities.  It has been observed that the indiscriminate assimilation of foreign  elements into the indigenous cultural life of  African  society has intensified  the crisis in our social life today. F or example institutions like education marriage, the family system  and even  our patterns of behavour have been invaded by foreign  influences. Nothing can explain more the extinction of our local crafts as (raffia bags, which has been buried by polythene alias (Festac bags), wooden spoons, wooden trays and spoons, while earthen pots are  no where seen  even  in our archives. Marriages are now conducted in hotel rooms and guest houses. Gone are the days when the  background  of prospective finace and fiancé were  scrutinized to avoid bringing pollutants into the family.

Let us not conclude that development ends with causing to  grow large, fuller or higher, physical  phenomena, or economic state; as large and well planned cities and towns, macadamized roads etc,  but that  development also include the growth of our mental and spiritual potentialities.

There are intrinsic values in our culture for instance offences such as incest, sorcery, and persistent commission of civil wrongs  were viewed seriously because they were abominations in the eyes of our ancestors and dcities upon whose benevolence the  community relied for their welfare and prosperity. For the state to move forward, there must exist a –two-way communication flow channel where the leaders constantly inform and enlighten the ruled on the polices, programmes and problems of government. Similarly, the channel for harmony sake should be capable of protecting the interest of the governed by remaining sensitive to, and projecting their feelings, problems and prospects to the rulers for necessary action.

In order to contribute to the development of your society, the youths have to be subservient. They have to listen to the words of the elders.

To say that Akwa Ibom State is a community in dire need of sustainable development is stating the obvious. No matter how strong and lofty the desire for development might be, it is incontestable that the actual attainment of   development involves a process of firstly developing and setting a clear and well  focused  vision   of what is desired,  putting in place a machinery for proper and strategic planning  and careful implementation of plans to ensure that plans are transformed  into action and actions into concrete realities. There should be the process of combing and mobilizing physical economic, financial, moral and human resources of the polity effectively and efficiently towards optimum achievement of designated objectives of the envisioned development initiative. This is a natural order of creating development.

God Himself in creation followed this pattern. He brooded over darkness before. He created light and prioritized His development project in such for the next achievement until in the end. He created His visioned Paradise for Adam and Eve and acknowledged the goodness of everything in it. From the very start, Akwa Ibom   has had lofty development plans since creation. F or instance the building  of a permanent Secretariat, Ibom  International Airport, the Ibom independent Power Plant,   Ibom Tropicana and Entertainment gallery to mention just a few. These have perfectly been initiated and executed by our past and present leaders in the state.  In some local government councils, the story is different. Our present state of soc-economic, industrial and technological development, amidst these plans is enough for the assertion that we have wandered carelessly, without a compass without the culture or a well focused vision for the implementation of our development initiatives.

This trend is not for from the fact that in almost all these cases, we have had a culture of applying wrong implementation approaches to our sporadic development  efforts –we embarked on perceived development projects with ill-conceived vision  and hasten to implementation theme ill-prepared, ill-studies, ill-coasted, ill-located sometimes with selfish and tribalistic consideration and not for economic convenience. The consequence  is that through such perceived development projects, we  open conduits for  corrupt  minds to drain our treasury and reserves. Our leaders  should be wise enough to strip themselves of anti developmental tendencies and practices. We must come to the reality that” clock  does not  make a monk”.  It is an established  fact that the foundation any interactive society is the  normative structure of a  common  value-orientation among  its members any plays a strategic role which could help or hinder the realization of the development aspirations and objectives of such society.

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