Dear Governor Okowa, please where is the promised Warri/Uvwie and Environs Development Agency?
By GbaramatuVoice Editorial Board
When Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, the Executive Governor of Delta State, announced on Wednesday, May 1, 2019, at a victory concert organized in Asaba, Delta state that plans are underway to establish Warri/Uvwie and Environs Development Agency, to address the deplorable state of roads in Warri, residents and GbaramatuVoice management and staff in particular were happy.
Like the generality of Warri residents, our joy at GbaramatuVoice were further fed by the governor statement that the bill for the creation of the agency was before the State House of Assembly and would be passed into law very soon, noting that residents of Warri and Uvwie would be the first beneficiaries of the developmental strides of the new agency when it swings into action.
Indeed, the state government established as promised established the agency but doubt remains.
About two years after that agency was created, residents of the once oil rich city and the commercial nerve centre of not just the state but the entire country, are still asking whether the Okowa’s promised “messiah” has come or if they should wait for another agency to truly come and develop Warri.
The agency in the newspaper’s estimation has earned a mark as second state government owned agency that exists only in frames after Delta State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission (DESOPADEC).
The above judgment by GbaramatuVoice is predicated on the fact that as a news organization with one of its operational offices in Warri, we can make bold to say that, save for the agency’s physical address at Effurun, appointment of Comrade Ovuozourie Macaulay as the Agency’s Director General which was widely publicized, and lately, some feeble attempts in the name of drainage construction, we have no any other information about the Agency’s life cycle.
More specifically, GbaramatuVoice editorial board can say without fear of contradiction that we have never seen or told of a particular electricity pole erected by the Agency as part of its electrification initiative. Or a bad portion of road in Effrun or Warri city patched by the Agency as part of its effort to support infrastructure improvement in the state.
This is condemnable!
At this point, the newspaper is tempted to ask: What is the problem with the Agency? What set the stage for the agency’s inability to perform? Is it underfunding or lack of manpower or interference from the state government? Or should we believe that it was originally designed to fail like other agencies in the state? Or better still structured to exist only in frames?
Regardless of what others may say, the newspaper believes that it is not in any way a good commentary that Warri/Uvwie and Environs Development Agency exists, yet, the city is in total darkness and the roads/streets impassable. It also does not demonstrate good leadership prowess on the part of the governor that he created an agency without supervising mechanism. Such leadership failures can only fragment such a leader’s reputation.
Governor Okowa must also remember that such failures in the past earned him jeers instead of cheers and hatred.
As noted in our previous commentary on Warri city, the report drew your attention to the fact that under your watch, Warri has become an emerging slum. GbaramatuVoice believes that this is not a legacy you will like to leave behind.
The best time to act and change the narrative is now!
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