When citizens leave their respective homes in search of jobs that they could be gainfully employed, their hope and aspiration often hit the bricks wall, given that many of the jobs governments across the country advertise that they have created are nowhere to be found.
This brings a statement made by Steve Jobs into focus, which is: Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right. Without mincing word, the residents of Rivers State are waiting to see the 10, 000 jobs promised by the Rivers State Governor, Barr Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, which he said are especially for the youths.
Represented by his Chief of Staff, Mr Chukwuemeka Woke, while marking the coronation and prayer in admiration of Chief Mike Elechi as Obua Weze in Elele, Ikwerre local government area, Wike said that the 10,000 jobs would be created with the expansion of Resonpalm Oil Plantation in Ubima.
Wike detailed that the jobs would be through agriculture. In the voice of Wike through a statement by Mr Simeon Nwakaudu, the governor’s Special Assistant on Electronic Media, “Aside the development of infrastructure across the state, we are working with private investors to create 10,000 jobs through key agriculture projects”.
We believe that this is not a time for rhetoric. The 10,000 jobs if truly given to the people would help alleviate the vast dearth of job opportunities in the state. This is said because the Supreme Court had said that Wike was the better leader chosen by the electorates in the state, so he should not disappoint.
While we are waiting for the 10,000 jobs, the state needs more than that. However, it will be essential that Wike established those jobs on ground rather than making them media establishments. Nigerians know that minimum wage of workers in the country is always zero. And so, while creating jobs is good, it will be better if the take home of workers in Rivers State is enhanced.
We were fed up with the successive governments in the state who made the people to see them as money driven and the common man in the street was not identified in truth and honest. Many people are looking up to Wike as a peacemaker and to be one who unites, not divides. Many families in Rivers State are today losing their families to poverty and we want a governor who will not only bail out companies and parastatals but also these families and individuals whose only future is founded on hope which is elusive.
Making a good governor or leader is up to self. In an article of Friday, 16 Oct 2015, John W. Schoen, CNBC.com Economics Reporter, diagnosed the different campaigns rhetoric by the Democrats and Republicans in the USA.
In that verdict, Schoen said, “The Republicans believe that if you lower taxes — especially on business — they’ll create more jobs and by creating more jobs they’ll create more income,” said private economist Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Advisors. “The Democrats think the problem isn’t necessarily jobs — and the only way you get wages to rise is by forcing wages up, through support of union actions or minimum wages.”
We found out from Schoen that the politicians do not live to their promises once they are elected with checks revealing that in the last 40 years, some 350 governors who have served in the 50 statehouses in the USA., Republican governors, as a group, engendered higher wages while Democrats have bred more jobs.
Schoen went further to say, “Of the roughly 64 million jobs created throughout the country since January 1976, more than half have been created on a Democratic governor’s watch. During periods when Republicans occupied a state’s governor’s mansions, overall wages posted bigger gains, in total, than the periods when Democratic governors were in office.”
In spite of that, we have had some leaders in Rivers State who funded schools but allowed education and reading to totter. Wike should know that his integrity is standing on a test-tube of time being valued by the words he says and by the confidence he reposes on the people in truth and in spirit.
We know that Wike is a very intelligent person. We want him to make democracy to reign over the incessant ‘war’ that the opposition All Progressives (APC) in the state wants from him. We believe that Wike, having passed through stages of life that were not rosy and cozy, he will not allow the residents of Rivers State to grumble.
The world is getting very difficult by the day and workers who do not show mettle in their work places do not get along with the people. This is applicable to leaders! People are expecting the best from Wike because he has shown some competence. Much is expected from a competent worker.
If Wike, perhaps, is yet to come to terms with the qualities expected of a governor in term of job creation, Alain de Botton’s “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work” may help. The author asks a salient question, “When does a job feel meaningful?”
Botton later gives the answer, saying, “Whenever it allows us to generate delight or reduce suffering in others. Though, we are often taught to think of ourselves as inherently selfish, the longing to act meaningfully in our work seems just as stubborn a part of our make-up as our appetite for status or money.
“It is because we are meaning-focused animals rather than simply materialistic ones that we can reasonably contemplate surrendering security for a career helping to bring drinking water to rural Malawi or might quit a job in consumer goods for one in cardiac nursing, aware that when it comes to improving the human condition a well-controlled defibrillator has the edge over even the finest biscuit.”
Wike should not be under any pressure to give people hope that he will not fulfill later. The residents of Rivers State need countless job opportunities. They need libraries, not amouries; they need not chaos, but peace; discrimination is not in their diary, but tolerance; they want lawlessness to be hounded away, not justice; they do not need secrecy, but transparency and among all, they do not need hypocrisy, but fairness.
Odimegwu Onwumere is the Coordinator, Concerned Non-Indigenes In Rivers State (CONIRIV). Tel: 08057778358. Email: [email protected]
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