The name ‘Ebonyi’ sounds derogative to an uninformed and to the slaves of prejudice. The myth of Ebonyi inferiority has been sold to unsuspecting public over the years and many have become spiteful of persons and institutions which are attached to Ebonyi. Skeptics and cynics graphically paint Ebonyi gloom as a small landmass, not even qualified to be called a state. It has only 13 LGAs.
Ebonyi people are poor, illiterates, fools, wicked, angry, dark, ugly and discriminatory. Ebonyians are primitive, rude with undisciplined muscles industrious in breeding children. They have no business with family planning and get married before 14. Ebonyi has 2.7 million people loaded with inferiority complexes scanting for limited resources and busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to other states for menial jobs. They are office cleaners, sales girls, drivers, barrow pushers, conductors and beggars. But when it comes to where number is advantageous like in allocation of revenue, rights and privileges, the story changes. Ebonyi is small. It is empty. The state is full of jungles, highlands, deserts, grasslands, and inhabited by apes struggling with basic necessities of life. It was discovered by settlers who left the comfort of their homes but are being sidelined today by Ebonyi thugs-turned politicians.
Its waters are contaminated, air polluted and rain acidic and cancer-prone. Its weather is sunny, harsh, humid and dusty as well. Its rice is sandy and can damage lungs. Its yams are sugary and diabetic and have killed many that came to the state. It has a government of the fools, by the fools and for the fools which is non-performing and very discriminatory too. It has a town union hall called government house. The streets are dirty, not well planned and the structures unattractive. Its court is piled up with cases of goat and cassava thefts. Its electricity gives half-current and boreholes sunk in Ebonyi produce dirty and salty liquid. The roads are death-trapped pathways and their dual carriage ways are rough and laughter-provoking.
This myth has passed to a commonplace such that many Ebonyians are now spiteful of their projects, dissociating themselves from Ebonyi dream. Some people think themselves different and another section thinks itself superior, heaving Ebonyi problem on the prevalence of sectional mentality. Success and failure of Ebonyi belongs to all. The political interest is not helping to promote image rebranding of the state. People with different political agenda instead of engaging in constructive criticisms go for character defamation and adopt propaganda to paint Ebonyi dark. Some even import wars to discredit a government without knowing that the corporate image of the state is tainted alongside. People think good governance is only when they are in-charge; when they spend nights at brothels at government’s expense as it used to be.
Ebonyi is a collective project. No person or section is so powerful to hold collective image to ransom. While one cannot deny failures and shortcomings when compared to other states, Ebonyi man has an obligation to back at the distance he has come, when Vanco Hotel was the most magnificent building in the city for instance. When one deletes bitter memories, one makes mistakes. While Ebonyi is not yet what it ought to be, it is no longer what it was, evidence that Ebonyi is working.
The school system is heavily criticized. The university in the state is unorganized, poorly funded and managed, and left in the hands of aged and mediocre administrators who are tribalistic and under political detection. It is the only university where professors roast yams to lecture hall and its products are cultists and okada riders. Yet non-indigenes pay N750, 000 concessional fees just to be given admission into a University called Ebonyi. They leave the best universities and schools and pay heavily to learn ignorance in the Nazareth of Abakaliki and would even want to dominate students’ union leadership. While Ebonyi standard in education is not the best you can see, yet the system is working.
Ebonyi state is misgoverned. Agreed. The leaders are poor, old, in-exposed, wicked, and discriminatory. Accepted. The governor is an analogue, hardhearted and out of vogue with modern values like looting. A blessing. In fact, if it were not in Ebonyi he would not have been made a governor or would have been since impeached. True! Ebonyi legislatures wear boxers to chambers to fight and do nothing else. The politicians are farmers and former okada riders. Yet, these critic-visitors aspire even for the highest elective position in a state called Ebonyi. They cry wolf when they are not well represented in political appointment. They marry sons and daughters of mediocre politicians just to get connections in the state. The Igbos will say: agbarusi ngene, e kuru ngeln nuo, (after disturbing a stream, one inevitably drinks from it).
Ebonyi has hospitals that are dilapidated, underfunded, and mismanaged. But even the critics would want to occupy all the positions in dilapidated hospitals. Only a dilapidated personality with a dilapidated qualifications and experience would seek for a job in a dilapidated hospital and cry wolf when he is not given. Ebonyi has no industry. But its image did not fare better when it had the biggest cement industry in West Africa-Nigercem. Even with only salt industry, Ebonyi is working.
Whenever you drive on the newly constructed or rather ongoing Onuebonyi-Ishieke Ochudo dual carriage ways, you get an impression that your tires are flat or out of alignment. And when you move along Abakaliki-Afikpo dual carriage way, you appear to be crossing a tunnel. Ebonyi hasn’t the best of double lanes at all but no matter how rough, Ebonyi has double lanes.
Caveat! Ebonyi has a long way to go to prove critics wrong. Why must Ebonyi continue to score things wrongly? Ebonyi does her things her own ways. How can roads built with shovels last for instance? Our urban lacks good roads, yet we keeping pushing the poor out of public awareness, banning Okada and artisans form operating in public. It will not be long and these anomalies become Ebonyi standards. We shouldn’t pride that Ebonyi is working.
