14/05/2023
An Exaugural Message To Prof. Ben, Our Great Hero
Dear Professor Ben, I write to you as a firm believer of your leadership doctrine, a zealot and one of your foremost disciples. Before your arrival as Governor, leadership blight has been a deep-seated structural deformity where the state has been feeding on a recycled leadership of a stale generation, a situation that had long been sustained by the deceptive notion that youth are the leaders of tomorrow, a tomorrow which arrival has taken eternity, and has made the younger generation to lose hope of ever seeing any silver lining in the sky.
The helpless state and despondency of the younger minds seemed endless; they saw no hope of that tomorrow ever arriving and had resigned to their fate. But you surfaced at a time when their night of travails peaked its very darkest: you beckoned on the dawn of hope and the sun that executes new dawns flipped from the far horizon at your behest. You came and gave a proper definition to “that tomorrow” in the promised leadership of the youth. You made that tomorrow to become today which has made most youth, whose families had no names, to give names to their families, and most youth whose families had no voices to give voices to their families. Today, many youth have ascended higher rungs of leadership responsibilities at both state and federal at your instance.
The state had been at its lowest ebb with privation, hardship and frustration, dangerously, compounding to systemic distress. But You came with the wind of awakening and fanned the reborn of new hopes, with new opportunities echoing at every inch of our staggering landscape. You came with a new trajectory that is replete with promising prospects; today, our atmosphere is rife with the abundance of enlivening fulfilments and the future is now more re-assuring than the past. You have led us to attain the grand ideal of all-round satisfaction.This has, further, firmed my core believe that leadership, indeed, comes from the Most High and that no occurrence in the affairs of men ever happens by chance, but that every unrehearsed event in history is being tele-guided by Providence.
Indeed, you are a sage, a bud of hope and the seed of faith. You have won the implicit confidence of the people because of your feat of installing fairness and egality; because of your feat of uniting the people across backgrounds and generations and your milestone of building a sound political superstructure that rests on the solid foundation of "Ethics": by insisting that the fairness and equality in power rotation can never be interrupted in your time, you have installed the instrument of peace and harmony that can hardly be out-spaced by the cloud of mutual misgivings which was already building-up amongst the three elements that make up the state.
You are always eager to forgive, even when forgiveness is not sought for by your offenders.
You have always advanced the cause of peace with intentional solicitude because you know that peace is not, merely, a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which such goal is attained. With your refined approach, you have demolished all camps of angry isolation by making consensus-building an all-inclusive affair and, for the first time, the people are given that sense of involvement in the governing process.
Your Excellency, your unwillingness to always avenge the numerous offensives launched against you; your resolve to always revisit those that injure you, rather, with benevolence, has already earned you an excellent corner in pious estate. I wish people know that the tears you always shed is the reflection of your innocence and innermost purity of the heart. I wish people know that you always feel embarrassed, when empathy drags your emotions to tears, but that you are always in a position you cannot help it. You are, indeed, a unique character of unobtrusive bearing.
You stood firm in the conviction that you inherited a state with limitless possibilities and you effected the pursuit of its accomplishment with civility and candor.The revolution you brought, provoked war against you, and you, defenselessly, stood all alone by yourself against the hordes that abhor the change you bare. You paid with huge price, a sacrifice that caused your heart to bleed, yet, you considered it worthwhile, hence it has improved on the lot of your people. You have proven that, in resilience, we can develop a character and courage that will surmount every challenge. Of a truth, you represent a true definition of “a statesman” who prioritizes the wellbeing and improvement of the next generation as his most perceived concern.
You have always emphasized that development is only meaningful when humanity becomes its epicenter. Consequently, you launched a ruthless war to fend-off the crude trials of hardship that plagued our unprivileged society; you stretched your arm of compassion to lift up many who are trapped in the slumps of despair and hopelessness and you triumphed because your determination never yielded to any distraction or compromise. While everyone went to sleep, you stayed awake, you weep in your closet, not because you failed, but because you felt you have not done enough.
You taught us that permissiveness to variety of nuisance elements often encountered in governance process or leadership, enhances improvement that gives rise to excellence; you taught us that the civility we so craved for, is neither a tactic nor sentiment, but a preferred choice of trust over cynicism; you taught us that true success does not flicker, neither does it happen suddenly, nor comes easily, but is attained, mostly, through dint of grueling efforts; you taught us that where determination reigns, probability roams as a stranger.
You met a hapless people whose collective dignity was eroded by the deep wounds of abject privation and you demonstrated a blunt unwillingness to entertain such humiliating undoing against your people. Consequently, you set your able hands on the plunge to relieve them from such throes and reinstated their confidence by your schemes that opened the flood-gates of prosperity. Never, in our state, had the promise of prosperity been this vivid; never had the restoration of our collective dignity been this assured, and never had the echoes of opportunities been this resounding.
You met a system in a state of inertia and, as a radical revivalist, you expanded the frontiers of new possibilities with consequential excitement that came with high tone of enthusiasm because of the overall improvement experienced. You have been deliberate and intentional in your inclusive leadership pattern which has been met with a wide ranging acceptance and commendation. Your Excellency, sir, your Statecraft signature is not only matchless, but legendary.
For almost eight years, your countenance had always worn a compassionate smile, yet, your tender heart has been rife with the burden of guarding the delicate trust conferred on your care, while that same innocent heart kept bleeding from the injury inflicted by cruel villains who don't even understand the exhaustive efforts you have been putting in place to better their living conditions. It has, indeed, been a great weight of responsibility on your tender shoulders.
You are never stocked in any complicated situation: is it the tyranny of fear that you have not, effortlessly, crushed with hope? is it the stench of cynicism that you have not neutralized with hard work? Or is it the tumor of negative and divisive politics that you have not cured with ethical surgery? You have initiated a process that has renewed our shared commitments to improving on our holistic values.
Obviously, your statecraft direction has never failed in sub-serving general welfare and advancing common interest. Your programmes and intents had always been deliberate in meeting honest needs and prudent safety. You have never failed on your own path of fulfilling the extant social contract. Your sterling records in leadership remains unmatched and greatly admired. Your Excellency, one thing is sure: in the future, when history beckons on stewardship auditing, your name shall be found in the golden page of history’s most revered chapter.
With your solomonian wisdom, Lutheran oratory and mosaic leadership, you have created a new dimension of mentorship where impartation of knowledge, wisdom and charisma are underscored to be fundamental in every meaningful and productive mentorship. I am the greatest beneficiary of your thought pattern.
You came and met a state with a demeaning history of checkered economic and socio-political development, you halted the flickers through radical reforms that saw the transformation of her landscape with, remarkably, impressive landmarks. You removed every road block that has been responsible for economic stagnation and exhaustion because you know that the people’s prosperity is the fundamental responsibility of government which you headed.
You have been a victim of fatal attacks for not towing the path of indiscretion; for refusing to surrender our common treasure in the hands of the rich few, at the expense of the impoverished majority. On numerous occasions, you have been pushed to the wall, but have refused to invoke the monstrous powers that came with your office. You hold the power of life, which is your constitutional prerogative of setting the condemned free, just as you hold the power of death with the prerogative of approving the termination of the life of he that is condemned by law, yet, you chose to, only, invoke the powers of life, because you believed there are possibilities of repentance that must be accorded the opportunity of second chance. What a refined statesman you are!
When it became obvious that the only path that leads to the direction of our common destiny is the weary one, you, courageously, took the lead and the navigation has been very rewarding. The milestones you have set on the path of our journey to greatness has began to construct our new pillars of history to be relished by generations unborn.You have laid an economic and socio-political foundation for a very prolific social reproduction in our state.This will make our state a delight, not just in our country, but in our glorious continent. And at the wake of your reign, the people will realize how indebted they are to you. Your Excellency, Indeed, you have done so well and Cross River is in your debt.
From: Eval Asikong
