Once upon a time, we had the old Cross River State (CRS), made up of today’s Akwa Ibom State and Cross River State, in the old Cross River State, we had Asbestonit company in Oron, we had the Calabar cement company, calcemco in calabar, we had the Peacock paint, we had the Oku Iboku paper mill, we had the Pamol rubber estate and the Cross River Estates limited, CREL, we had the qua and agbokim water falls, we had the obudu cattle Ranch, we had the Dr pepper bottling company in Eket, Mobil in Eket and Alscon in Ikot Abasi. We had Palmil industry in Abak. We had companies all over the old cross river state and established metro hotels all over the state and had our bank the Mercantile bank an airport and a standard stadium. We had the Calabar Rovers FC, we had the Jetimo FC in uyo and secondary schools played a vibrant Governor’s cup. You can add the ones you remember.
Today, with better education, more exposure and more intense prayers, more anointed men of God, we have two states created from the old cross river state and they were created for supposedly better management and administration. Today we have seen how those companies are better embezzled into oblivion, the employment they created disappeared, the hope they gave lost and their contributions to social development ceased.
Where are the leaders who thought out and built the state housing estate on Marian , the state secretariat and the federal housing? Where are the leaders who built the the police and Navy barracks and the customs barracks? Who built the prison, where are those leaders, where are their spirits, what did this generation do wrong?
Do we have leaders yet have a prison that animals can’t survive inside? Do we have leaders yet we don’t have better housing plans that everyone is now stealing to be able to rent a home? Do we have leaders and no sensible person wishes to send their children to a public schools, the same public schools that produced this evil greedy spirits who pose as leaders? Haba! Something is wrong with us.
We didn’t have so many churches but we had higher morals, we didn’t have so many political office holders but we had better leaders, we didn’t have so much exposure to better training facilities but we had better administrators. We have failed ourselves, failed posterity, failed God!
Today we pay higher tithes, and attend church services every other day, we attend more than one church in the hope that we will prosper, yet we are poorer socially, poorer morally and poorer spiritually. We are poor because we are collectively selfish, self centered and evil in our hearts as a people. Looking around now, one is forced to ask, is the Labour of our heroes past now in vain?