EVERY VILLAGE IN IGBOLAND 7

BY M A C ODU

This piece will be the last of the series. It will aim at providing some guidance to Ndigbo for a wholesome evolution of all our peoples in Igboland. It will not be sacrosanct. But it will be forthright.

Every village is part of an autonomous community. Usually four to six or even seven villages make up an autonomous community in Igboland. Where there is high pressure leadership, even three villages can make up an autonomous community.

Each autonomous community should have a development union. The development union should be made up of virile youth in whom vests the organs for prosecuting community development schemes.

It is desirable that the sanguine relationships should exist between the development unions in each community and the clan head. For the clan head without development union is like a head without a neck.

Although the clan head may have representatives called Ndenze in each village in his council, development unions should be independent democratic organizations that should ameliorate despotic tendencies which goes with monarchical organs.

The desirable relationship between clan heads and development unions is that the executive committee of the development union while their term of office subsists should be members of Eze in Council, relating with Ndenze and Eze or Clan Head in all matters of culture and tradition as well as community development and security.

The Eze being a life time position should be sufficiently magnanimous to accommodate within his palace an office for a virile development union.

He must however not be seen to interfere with the processes of development union activities and projects.

Development Unions should form the fourth tier of government with Local Governments as the third accountable tier to both state and Federal Government.

The development unions should receive allocations for projects from Local Governments and account to Local Governments for such funds through the Eze in Council.

Projects found vital to the aspirations of the majority of people in a clan should receive attention of each local government especially if such projects receive the approval of Eze in Council and the development unions in each fourth tier.

This will obviate the necessity of too much governance. Nothing precludes local government from sucking development unions into the benefits system of government where they fulfill their roles adequately.

The current Local Governments in Igboland are not cognate with the local structures for meeting the aspirations of Ndigbo.

This concept of partnership and integration is a vital desideratum for efficient running of local governments in Igboland.

At this time development unions operate without remuneration of officers and without connection with Local Government Administration.

That floating structure should be dismantled and development unions should become effective fourth tier with the serious role of addressing development issues with the Eze in Council in each autonomous community.

The Local Government should henceforth take interest in the process election of community development unions since wages should be paid for organs that take up such responsibilities on behalf of the people.

Only people who have in the past shown concern for the community should aspire to leadership at this fourth tier.

Each member of the executive should subscribe leadership that should qualify him or her for Local Government position in future.

This new tier requires that all members of the village must be fully aware of their corporate connection with the Clan Head or Eze or Obi or Igwe.

It behoves every member to take the selection or election of a clan head as a serious matter.

The clan head bears group Karma with all the members of his community.

He must not be one who is an adventurer or charlatan or a person of doubtful character.
Ndigbo are saddled at this time with bands of fraudsters and cocaine pushers who sought to legitimize their means of livelihood with clan headship.

We are bound to wait until they all pass on before any changes can be made. Their lives are bound to be short since they will continually be in combat with volitions of decent people which are like burning coal chunks upon their heads.

The contender for clan headship must be a settled and accomplished person who has the love of the community at heart.

He must have had a full life in some activity and must have resolved to return to his community to fulfill leadership duties which he naturally owes his community for being a citizen of that community especially if he has attained some measure of self-worth.

He must have shown his commitment to the community before aspiring to be a clan head.

It is the community leadership that must use the constitution to prevent gamblers for fame and fortune from impugning community purity by foisting on the people an inappropriate clan head.

In today’s circumstances a clan head is the chief security officer of the clan, responsible to the Local Government Chairman of the LGA for culture and tradition, and peace and security in the clan.

It is to be taken for granted that a Local Government Chairman should be democratically elected. He should not be imposed on the people. It is a vital desideratum that a Local Government Chairman should be fully aware of all the development unions in his constituency in the process of electioneering.

He should on winning power call up all development unions irrespective of party affiliations to the task of development of the resources of the people and proper management of such resources. Ndigbo have had more than enough of governance that has no nexus with the needs and aspirations of the people over whom they have charge.

It should be patent that misadventures in political leadership of the past fifty years or so have led to deadly weakening of the development structures and increasing aloofness of the people with the real goals of statecraft.

Ndigbo are for the most part alienated from their political leadership. Leadership has been an elitist undertaking to feather the nests of a few.

The Local Government Chairman should stimulate interest in citizens to participate in all development activities on Build Operate and Transfer basis.

Some citizens in each village have access to funds or goodwill and perhaps even cash for taking care of structures that may be assets yielding abundant revenue for services in the community.

The development unions will have the task of motivating such citizens toward making such contributions that should also enhance their well being within the community.

In a milieu in which our citizens take flight to foreign lands, this joint venture between citizens and development unions at one level and citizens and local governments at a higher level are required intensively and extensively now that neglect of governments have wreaked nearly irreversible havoc on structures in local governments especially schools, medicare facilities, markets, abattoirs, and community centres.

Culpable neglect has rendered these institutions inadequate for use in contemporary society.

In cases where communities developed these institutions through self-help programmes, the intervention of community development unions is a desperate necessity.

Governments at State and Local Government levels have proven helpless to maintain structures they have illegally inherited from self-help efforts of communities.

Such Local Governments should facilitate the refurbishment of these institutions in partnership with development unions and citizens with access to capital.

Long term Build operate and Transfer contracts should be executed in tripartite relationship to ensure that all levels of government are involved and that investment security is assured.

This shall be the only revival line left to community facilities in the future.

I personally do not see any light at the end of the tunnel with the quality of leadership at this time for some respite to our status as impoverished people.