The Author of Declaration, Gemma Malley surmised what a call to service should connote when she wrote:
“I vow to serve, to pay my dues
And train myself for Legal use.
I vow to bear the Surplus shame
And repay Nature for the same
I vow to listen, not to speak;
To steel myself when I am weak.
I vow to work and most of all
To serve the State if it should call.”
It is on the aegis of this that an Abam born, Prince Ike Okorafor , from the progeny of the late paramount ruler of Ohafor, Eze Ike Okarafor heeded that loud call to service. He has decided to bear the Surplus shame to hearken to the cries and agitation of the citizenry who beckoned on him to be their servant.
The Prince of Ohafor by profession is a certified Educationist who served as a Lecturer at the Federal College of Education, Zaria, having earlier served under the New York Education Department. Prince Okorafor is a Political Scientist, a Maternal Health Specialist certified by Long Island University, Brooklyn and by practice a Social Doctor: the latter he chose in a bid to unhang the Albatross around his neck as evident in the pressure mounted on him by well meaning citizens of Arochukwu State Constituency to intervene and salvage a system programmed to fail.
Originally resident in the United States, Prince Okorafor, not oblivious of the fact that true leadership is an opportunity to serve, and not a trumpet call to self-importance, decided to ditch the immediate comfort of the Western world, to revert home with the mandate to rescue residents of Arochukwu from the reins of bad leadership that stemmed from uninformed political choices in the past. He is on a mission to fill the lacuna in Arochukwu occasioned by the dearth of servant-leadership in the zone, and upon realization of the fact that Abia politics has become a scene of dunken holiday carnage in tracky discos, he went into what can be termed a ‘kaleidoscopic research’ that majored in comparative administration, perhaps to understand the wider concept of western democracy. His research was also primed to know why the U. S of 51 States should be more successful than a country of 36 States.
His case-study-states were Florida, New York and New Jersey. From the research, ideas were birthed and hatched, and one of the cumulative effect of the study are the ‘niceties’ of Western democracy, part of what he intends to infuse into the legislative arm of the God’s Own State; The ABIA HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY, as he prepares to represent AROCHUKWU STATE CONSTITUENCY come 2023. These niceties and peculiarities will be catalogued in his bills and motions which will form the basis for the policy statements of the State government as well as re-wheel Arochukwu State into a High pedestal of development.
The Social Doctor has plunged his stethoscope and has readily commenced the healing process in Abam where he has registered students for WAEC, organized sensitization programs for young teenage girls and female adults within the childbearing age. In this prime, one cannot overemphasize the mammoth infestation of goodwill, the series of innovations and changes that is about to hit Arochukwu State Constituency.
There is no doubt that Youths are at the driver seat of social crime but we cannot be blind to the fact that the state apparatus on employment hasn’t favored majority of them, hence, the resort to crimes and their equivalents. Now having undergone a course of suffering, with the civil servants having to labour under onerous taxation measures, without receiving sufficient social amenities to justify them making them become victims of economic annihilation, the Arochukwu People must therefore reinvent their identity and heritage by asserting their birthright, without apologies. This political liberation on both Youths and civil servants can only be effective if it anchored by a fellow youth and a civil servant emeritus who understands both the complexities and simplicities of governance. Suffice it to say that Ike Okorafor is the prophesied messiah for the people of Arochukwu State Constituency.
This is the best time for the people of Arochukwu to come together and embrace the reformer who has been exposed to the opulence of western political culture and is ready to make a difference, change the narrative and bring succor to the people whose names are now synonymous with the word “opprobrium”, it is time to shun extreme individualism, party fundamentalism without recourse to their beleaguered ideologies and usher in Ike Okorafor into the legislative seat of Arochukwu State Constituency.
Remember the words of Winston Churchill: “Our future is in our hands. Our lives are what we choose to make them”.
The future is now!
Mary Thompson For Media Team
22nd February, 2022.
