By Dr Frank Osita-Chuks
Orji Uzor Kalu: Celebrating our Leaders. Part 1
Recently in an online forum of Igbo intelligentsia, a renouned Medical Practitioner and Consultant to the United Nations Organization, Dr Chibuzo Oguama dropped a comment which caught my attention and sent me on a memory lane on how we Nigerians do tend to forget out past so easily. His comments reminded me of how much we concentrate on criticizing our leaders, past and present, rather than celebrating to encourag them.
This phenomenon seems to be prevalent within the south east region (all due apologies). We are always quick to send our leaders to the gallows and their achievements to the bottomless abyss. We don’t appreciate nor celebrate them but when they die we roll out drums and close markets to give them post humus recognition, medicine after death.
Why should we wait till their demise before we accord them their well earned reputation and honour? just looking back to such leaders like Nnamdi Azikiwe, Mr. Okpara, to Emeka Odimegwe Ojukwu to mention but few, the story seems to be the same.
In his post, Dr Chibuzo expressed surprise to discover through a research, that during the administration of Dr Orji Uzor Kalu, that the Abia state government subsidized the fees of each students in Abia State Uiversity, irrespective of state of origin by N93,000 (Ninety Three Thousand Naira) leaving the students to pay only a paltry sum of N7000, which though was no small amount then. According to Dr Chibuzo, he was also surprised to discover that the same administration ran a complete FREE Education program in both the Primary and Secondary Schools throughout the 8 years of the administration. This was the only administration in the entire south east that could sustain such policy until the recent policy of Governor Okorocha of Imo state (I stand to be corrected)
It took Dr chibuzo from Enugu State to appreciate and remind me of what Dr Orji Kalu did for my people.
I could remember then how most parents from neighboring communities brought their wards to live and school in my Local Government area, Umunneochi LGA which is the only local government that is bounded by the rest four States of the South East – Enugu (Agwu), Ebonyi (Ivo and ishiagu ), Anambra (Owereizikala and Umuchukwu) and Imo (ihube /okigwe). Parents from this communities had friends in Umunneochi with whom their wards lived with so they can access the Orji Uzor Kalu FREE Education program.
In Abia state University, the school was always under pressure from parents mostly from other states who wanted their wards admitted. In most of the cases the school administration ended up admitting beyond the approved quota approved by University Commission, especially in Law, Social Sciences, Optometry and Medicine. In the social sciences, where there was no strict quota system, the crowd was so such that the school auditorium was permanently converted to a lecture hall.
Today the Abia State University environment looks very scanty with few students.
The Orji Uzor Kalu subsidy is gone and the school fees sky-rocketed far above the reach of most parents. Those who could manage to pay do so by installments each semester. The FREE primary and secondary educations have also become history.
The surprise thing is that the Orji Kalu administration was able to perform these feats with very lean monthly resources. if I am correct, It was towards the
