Chairperson: Good afternoon my people, how has it been? Anyway, there is no need to ask questions or pretend about the happenings in the country, the whole thing is glaring for everybody to see, even for a blind.
With all these shouts of “We are hungry, that is re -vibrating all over the council, we thank God we are not part of them that are hungry.
Please, did any of you hear from the Secretary at all? Though I asked him to call for this emergency meeting after our discussions some days back, now he is nowhere to be found.
As you must have read in the circular, this is an emergency meeting, and it is between the executives and our Zonal representatives within this local council, all other members of this progressive cooperative are not invited.
By now, you must have chosen your representative, who will address us at this meeting, because the only issue on the agenda is preparation for planting, as the rainy season approaches.
Before your representative’s address, I would want to remind him/ her, that the presentation must be very brief, one without fat, just straight to the points, so we can wrap up things within one hour, since we are taking all our submissions down to the local headquarters today.
You know your people, we should not play into their hands this time, I mean the” Evil Servants” sorry, Civil servants, their dribbling tactics is more than that of Maradona and Messi, put together, not to talk about their bare face stealing, in a nutshell, they are what you can refer to as nemesis of any well-intentioned government.
Representative: Good morning, everyone here present, to start with, if we could remember, this same ritual we are about performing, was done two years ago, but up till now, nothing has been heard or forthcoming from our local headquarters. Rather, we here again, trying to rack our brains for nothing, instead of taking our destiny into our own hands, and see how we can survive.
Two years ago, we put our needs together as a formidable cooperative, we highlighted some areas of unavoidable pitfalls, if government solely rely on civil servants without taking us into confidence, everything that were necessary were put together in that paper. What was left was just seamless implementation, yet they refused to toe our way, may be what is happening now wouldn’t have happened.
Chairperson: Please, representative, hold on, I think I need to come in here and make some points , you know, I am new on this seat, are you sure of all these things you are saying? That you submitted a paper two years ago, and nothing happened, you mentioned the antics of civil servants, both high and low too.
If all this were true, on this same subject matter two years ago and no action was taken, I don’t think there is any need for us to waste our precious time here.
Had it been the secretary is present here, I would have asked him to check his files right away, anyway, when he comes, we will know what to do.
Just like myself, this is a new government at the saddle, and what they have been mouthing since they came in, apart from Security issues, is food Security, let us play our own part, by re- submitting our paper, and see whether things will be different this time, who knows ,under renewed hope.
Representative: My chairperson, you mean, you did not hear or know anything about Anchor Borrowers? Na wa o, then, the government came out with good intentions, rolled out billions of naira for cooperative farmers, and other people who were interested in agricultural related fields, by all indices, the government meant well, but our civil servants, used their evil agenda to truncate what government had in stock for the larger populace, they shortchanged the government , the farmers and the people.
Honestly, I believe that government should look deeply to find out how policies get derailed by people within the system. That way they will know that the fear of civil servants is the beginning of wisdom. Had they looked at our submissions then, maybe what is happening now would not have surfaced, people shouting “We are hungry all over the place. Going forward, I believe, lessons must have been learnt, especially from the government side.
Though, we have a big challenge poking at our faces, if we refused to tame this locust called Civil Servant, it will result into another merry go round, I pray we don’t allow this we are hungry” to drown the renewed hope on food security.
Those who are taking our food stuff out of this local government Council should also be checked, we must also encourage all able-bodied people, who are interested in farming and related agricultural ventures, even, if it is on subsistence level.
Chairperson: Representative, you have made my day, if we come together, always like this, to sing from same hymn book, we will banish hunger from this land.
Thank you very much.