From Okey Sampson, Umuahia
For some women of the Methodist Church of Nigeria in Abia State, the people of the state deserve a better deal. According to them, the state has not done well since its creation 31 years ago. So, they took Abia’s case to God by embarking on spiritual cleansing of the state.
As part of the spiritual cleansing, the women marched to strategic locations in Umuahia, the state capital, where they made supplications and intercessions for Abia to be in the league of progressive states in Nigeria. The women encircled the Abia Tower at the city centre on Aba Road where they asked for forgiveness and prayed to God to liberate the state.
Speaking with journalists, leader of the women, Rev. Caleb Ekenna, who introduced himself as a roving missionary, decried what he called the annoying retrogression in the state. He said Abia has clocked 31 years but has nothing on ground to justify its age, unlike sister states, including younger ones who are many streets ahead of “God’s Own State”.
The cleric said the women decided to cry to God for his intervention over the plights of the state, which he blamed on sin and bad leadership. He said that both the leaders and the people of the state had provoked God and incurred his wrath through their sinful ways.
He said: “We are begging God to forgive us. Abia is now 31 but there is nothing to show for it. We are backward. Other states have left us behind.
“We are crying to God to forgive us because our atrocities are too much. The level of sin commited in this state is high. There is bloodshed, idolatry, fornication and other abominable acts. We need urgent divine intervention.”
The cleric said what the state needs in 2023 is an honest person to govern it.
The women were wailing in prayer, pleading and uprooting every faulty foundation for God to send good leaders to help Abia State.
Contrary to held views in some quarters however, Governor Okezie Ikpeazu believes his administration has done a lot to take the state out of its infrastructural decadency and quagmire.
In his broadcast during the 31st anniversary of the state, Ikpeazu said: “One thing I am not in doubt of is the fact that we have taken Abia State further than we met it seven years ago.
“Our works speak for us. We have delivered many pioneering and indelible landmark infrastructural projects across various sectors of Abia State. These projects will serve as monuments to the work we did during our time long after we have left the stage.
“We have over 150 roads, which our administration has commenced and delivered in the course of our tenure. We are strongly advancing work on another 48 roads and we have a target to finish them before we hand over to the next administration by May 29, 2023”.
Ikpeazu, nonetheless, was quick to admit that, in the face of the said successes, his administration faced some challenges in the past seven years. He said some of the challenges were in the areas of insecurity and payment of workers’ salary, as some of the workers in the state are owed several months of salary.