It was the Governor of Abia State, Dr. Theodore Orji, who disclosed this to me in an interview in his office. According to the Governor, the company attributed its decision to “economic reasons”, whatever that meant.

This followed hot on the heels of the dastardly decision of Aero Contractors airline to abandon its Owerri route following the reopening of Port Harcourt International Airport earlier this year. The action of the two companies created the negative impression of deserting the economy of the South East.

But that did not stop Aero from maintaining a sales desk at the Concorde Hotel, Owerri, thus, betraying its irresponsible exploitative strategies. The action of Aero prompted Imo federal parliamentarians, Senators Chris Anyanwu and Osita Izunaso, to call a press conference.

I wrote an article calling Aero’s bluff and advising the government of Imo State to press ahead with its plans to make the Imo Airport a truly viable international aviation facility.

However, its appears that both Aero and the Nigerian Breweries have now decided to swallow their words. They are staging comebacks. I have it on good authority that Aero has applied to return to Owerri Airport.

It is clear now even to Aero that the Owerri Airport is one of the most profitable regional routes outside Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt.

The three airlines that have faithfully maintained their business engagements there - Arik, Chanchangi and Virgin Nigeria - come and go with virtual full loads 24/7. And now, Aero is hurrying back to tap into it! My people have a saying: Onu kwuru njo g’ekwu mma. The mouth that condemns shall eventually commend. Senators Anyanwu and Izunaso, I told you so!

The same good news is coming back to the Aba brewing plant. The company, according to information, had scaled down its staff strength in Aba from 600 to 150, probably just enough to keep the premises and its machines safe without any useful economic activity.

But now, according to the Brewery Manager of the Aba plant, Mr. Eugene Odikanwa, NB PLC is fully restoring it staff strength and pumping a new funding lifeline to the tune of N4 billion.

This information was made available to Governor Theodore Orji when Odikanwa led a team of his managers to brief the State’s Chief Executive on actions the company is taking to bounce back fully. I, therefore, commend the NB PLC for its wise decision to return to its roots where it has functioned for over 50 years.

I spent my primary school days in Aba. We grew up to know the Breweries as part and parcel of the Aba socio-economic and cultural landscape. In fact, I know for sure that the Nigerian Breweries played a large role in bringing the great Aba River, popularly known as “Waterside” to its present state of virtual extinction due to continuous dumping of solid and chemical wastes over the decades.

It was this river that helped make Aba the city of commerce and technology for which it is world renowned. It provided access to the Atlantic Ocean and became the passageway through which the people of King Jaja of Opobo came over one hundred years ago to settle and trade along the banks of the “Waterside” in Aba.

The Opobo people, who like my own Abiriba, speak a “strange” strain of Igbo dialect (an admixture of Igbo and Igbani, an offshoot of Ijaw language) are famous in Aba’s cultural calendar for their very colourful Owu cultural dance, which involves the very vigorous and skilful trembling of the backside by both men and women in their well-organised “boathouse” contingents.

With the atrophy of the Aba River, most of the Opobo people who depended on it for their livelihood have left Aba. The few that remain are there because Aba has become their hometown.

If Aba people were conscious of their rights, they should have punitively sued the Breweries for helping bring this environmental disaster on their town and abandoning it for the “economic reasons” which they played a big role in creating.

Everything that happens comes with its useful lessons. According to Black American ghetto dwellers: “all’s good in tha neighbourhood”. The main lesson in the Aero and NB PLC sagas in Owerri and Aba is that private commercial companies will always make business decisions.

No one can really impute political reasons for their decision to close shop, just as no one can attribute their return to political concession.

But one can blame them for being fair-weather friends who took flight at the slightest sign or illusion of adversity. While they have their right to make their business decisions, there should be social watchdogs, like the media and NGOs, to hold them socially responsible for their actions that create collateral damage, such as the extinction of the great Aba River.

The second lesson is even more important. Governments should realise the imperative of creating conducive atmospheres for economic activities to thrive in their domains. The two companies ran away because of perceived adverse conditions. It also follows that they returned because the governments of Abia and Imo States have created better conditions for their businesses to flower.

Both governments did not sit on their palms waiting for the Federal Government to rehabilitate federal roads in their states.

Governor Orji told Odikanwa and his team that his government has been rehabilitating roads in his state without distinguishing between state and federal roads.

Also, Governor Ikedi Ohakim of Imo did not wait for the federal government to upgrade the Sam Mbakwe International Airport in Owerri, its environs and access roads.

He took the task head-on. It was the steps the state government took that have made even some Rivers, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom and Anambra State-bound air travellers to prefer to transit through the Owerri Airport because it is safer and more convenient. The era of waiting for the federal government to do its duties is over.

The federal government is simply incapable of functioning effectively outside Abuja. Take a checklist of items on the concurrent list and see how effectively the federal government has fared – health, education, roads, agriculture, even power supply and what have you.

Do your private scoring of the federal government in all these areas and you will never come up with a B grading in any of them. So, why wait? It proves the point that our currently centralised federalism is a major culprit to blame for the nation’s underdevelopment in 48 years of independence.

There should be a bigger agitation for the decentralisation of power and delegation of more functions and funds to the states, where the real action is.

Lagos State is charging ahead in this direction. Let more states join the effort. The impending constitutional amendment is a great opportunity for us to do this.

As the great novelist, the late James Ene Henshaw, would put it: This is Our Chance!

Farida is home to roost

We can now forget the war on corruption. Our new Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC), lady cop Farida Waziri, has said all. First of all, information had it that files on 31 alleged corrupt former governors have vanished from EFCC’s custody.

How do you prosecute someone whose case file has vanished? Second, we are told that former President Olusegun Obasanjo has no case of corruption to answer.

Not one former governor is behind bars.

In fact, the passports and travel documents of most of those on trial have been released to them and some them have been celebrating with owambe parties abroad.

President Yar’Adua’s lukewarm attitude to the war on corruption, which showed in the appointment of a pro-defence Attorney General and Justice Minister, Michael Aondoakaa, and the crumpling of Nuhu Ribadu’s EFCC, culminated in the appointment of an ex-police officer who now gives the impression that we may never see anyone pay for the corruption of Obasanjo’s eight years in power.

Very little has happened in Yar’Adua’s 17 months-old tenure to deter treasury looters. We seem to be back where we started. A pity.

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