I realised early, as I grew into adulthood in
Rivers State that the average Rivers man was a proud man. This is even worse
with those of us from the Ijaw extraction, we were bold and fearless in calling
a spade a spade; we called the bluff of the wealthiest of men asking them to
get to hell with whatever gift they bore and allow us the freedom to express
ourselves without undue influence -that was the pride of the true Rivers man.
Today, what I see is frightening, as the same
fearless people are cowed into lies and deceit just for personal gains. They
line their pockets up with peanuts from political overlords and double speak
without an iota of shame. They are ready to defend skewed and unpopular
vendetta-ridden policies out of bias. It is very sad and shameful that the
Rivers man has suddenly lost his voice in this NEW Rivers State, swallowing
hook, line and sinker, the balderdash of a drowning macabre dancer.
I was employed into the Rivers State Sustainable
Development Agency (RSSDA) barely eight months after Mr. Noble Egbert Pepple
became the Executive Director of the Agency in October 2010. I served in the
Agency in the capacity of Technical Assistant to the Executive Director/CEO and
Manager, Government Relations. By virtue of my position as Technical Assistant
to the ED/CEO I was also a member of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) - the
highest decision making management team of the Agency.
It is a fact that as at the time Mr. Pepple got
on board RSSDA, there were legacy issues he inherited from his predecessor such
as:
1. Absence of a well-defined organisational structure.
2. Undue influence of politicians in the
Scholarship Award process.
3. Absence of the Agency’s Board as stipulated
by law.
4. Properly defined key performance indicators
for project implementation.
5. Students sent to Indian Universities the Federal Ministry of
Education in Nigeria had not verified their accreditation status.
6. Use of consultants to drive scholarship
process
Amidst these challenges, His Excellency, Rt.
Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, did not shut-down the Agency, neither did he
abandon the vision of RSSDA which in the first instance was not his vision, but
that of his predecessor, Dr Peter Otunnuya Odili (RSSDA started as Rivers State
Sustainable Development Project, RSSDP - a project under then Governor Peter
Odili, with Odein Ajubogobia as its first Executive Director). Instead, he
appointed a new Executive Director/CEO, in the person of Mr. Noble Egbert
Pepple in the first quarter of 2010 to replace Mr. Bolaji Ogunseye and charged
him with the responsibility of fixing the problems.
This well thought-out strategy by Governor
Amaechi yielded the following results:
1. Mr. Noble E. Pepple with the help of Accenture, started out by setting out a clear and well defined Organisational Structure for the Agency.
2. Mr. Pepple, to ensure transparency of the
process and adhering to global best practices introduced a policy that banned
children and wards of members of staff of the Agency from applying for the
Scholarships. He also put an end to the seemingly undue influence of
politicians over the scholarship program by approaching Governor Amaechi in the
company of the Agency’s Chairman Sir Precious Omuku, requesting the Governor to
officially set aside 30% of the scholarship for the political class to which
Governor Wike was also a beneficiary. This was referred to as the Protocol List
which I coordinated by virtue of my position as the Government Relations
Manager of RSSDA. In other words, if you feel you are influential in Rivers
State, go to the Governor and if he agrees to include you in his 30% that is
fine. Otherwise, your child or ward will be subjected to competing for the
remaining 70% with others via a transparent test/interview process driven by
Cinfores and some University professors respectively. RSSDA has always made
this process including the official 30% public in several press interviews.
3. The RSSDA Board is a very complex one. As a
matter of fact it is the most complex Board of all the parastatals in Rivers
State. However, after over3 years of hard work both from the office of Governor
Amaechi and the then State House of Assembly, the Board was finally set-up and
inaugurated, with the captains of different industries on-board in 2014. Our
expectations were very high as all the board members came with several years of
experience and anticipated value addition. Regrettably, hardly had the members
settled in to work before Governor Wike dissolved the Board with a wave of the
hand. Over three years high level consultation and interfacing just wasted
because of an obvious lack of the sense of continuity.
4. Mr. Noble Pepple redefined the Agency’s
project implementation strategy with the following key performance indicators:
Partnership, Sustainability, a well-defined Social Component to be borne by
RSSDA just to accommodate the poor and finally, Market Access. That was the
model on which subsequent projects like the Songhai Farm, the Alanblankia
Project, and the DADTCO Rivers Cassava Initiative were built on; giving them a
stand-alone status to stand the test of time.
5. The issue of the students in India was
resolved as Mr. Noble Pepple commissioned me to drive the process which
required me to engage with the then Minister for Education and her Minister of
State for Education and current Governor of Rivers State, Mr. Nyesom Wike.
After six months of moving back and forth, the Federal Ministry of Education
eventually confirmed the accreditation status of all the Universities our
students were attending in India, and the students were allowed to proceed to
NYSC.
6. Mr. Noble E. Pepple discontinued the use of
consultants to drive the scholarship process as he considered it an unnecessary
burden on the Agency. As at the 1st quarter of 2011 barely one year in office,
Mr. Pepple had commenced the disengagement of consultants, making room for
internalized driving of the Scholarship process and direct engagement with the
students abroad.
It is therefore an outright act of wickedness
for someone to accuse Amaechi of using consultants to drive the scholarship
process when in the first instance most of what the writer of this article
dished out as defence for Mr. Wike’s poorly thought out strategy – returning
Rivers students on a Government Scholarship are legacy issues that the same
Amaechi’s administration had long addressed and resolved. Besides, the
financials dished out by this writer is another bundle of lies, as RSSDA never
spent anything near N60m per student on a first degree program.
The truth of the matter which is also very
glaring to all eyes in Rivers State is that Amaechi sustained the scholarship
program and several other programs he initiated while in office. He even paid
RSSDA staff salaries up to May 2015 when he left office. Wike has not paid
RSSDA staff salary for even one month since he came on board, as a matter of
fact, I received up to my May salary before I stepped out of that office on
27th May 2015 and I am very much aware that since then, workers of the Agency
have not been paid. Wike is only attacking RSSDA and punishing innocent Rivers
State students because he is under the assumption that RSSDA was sympathetic to
APC during the last elections.
Is it not laughable that a man who borrows One Billion Naira per day is not able to spend N500m every month to sort out Rivers
Students abroad? Is it not also laughable that a Commissioner for Agriculture
is handling scholarship matters? Is it not ridiculous that the only Agency in
Rivers State that releases its annual report to the public is now being smeared
with litany of accusations? It is only small heads who won’t understand that
Wike did not destroy RSSDA the day he told the workers to go home, he actually
destroyed it barely one week after he was sworn in when he went on air to tell
the world that the RSSDA scholarship was a sham. Like I mentioned earlier, the
Agency’s policy trust was centred on driving projects through partnership,
which was why its Board was set-up with key players in the multinational
sector, having made that statement, the wrong signal was sent to those
multinationals and even if he had not dissolved the Board, they would have
pulled themselves out.
I wish to state for the avoidance of doubt, that
Amaechi has not paid me to do this write-up, I am a man of integrity and I am
comfortable to a very large extent. As a British and Nigerian lawyer I will
always have garri on my table, so although I am a member of the APC I am beyond
petty party politicking and cannot be paid by anyone to do dirty works. All I
have written here is to the best of my knowledge the truth of the matter and I
can’t stand not saying it especially because I was involved.
Clinton Dan-Jumbo Esq
Former Manager,
Government Relations (RSSDA)
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