A Man Of Passion And Commitment To Good Governance – Emem Okon Ph.D, ED Kebetkache/PH Leadership School

I remember when he started the Center For Responsive Politics in Port Harcourt and he was doing civic education and I remember that once, he had a project and invited me and along with one or two of his staff, we went to Eleme. On that project, he was teaching community people how to engage with government, how to write to government, get something from government-it was mainly on participation in governance. I learnt a lot from that project.
Another component of the programme that I participated in was when he brought together all the communities that participated in that project. I remember joining him to Eleme, where he met with chiefs; the Eleme people were from like, five communities brought together-all communities made presentations on how they engaged with government. Some engaged with state, some local government and they were reporting back. That was when I had direct encounter with such engagement.
And I also remember that when he became a commissioner of the Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission, RESIEC, that was the only time NGOs in Rivers State got money from government to carry out voter education and civic education. He gave N1million to each NGO and Kebetkache benefitted. There was a meeting, I was in Abuja, Sotonye, who used to work with us attended the meeting. By about 3-4pm, he called and said, “Madam, it’s like they are giving money.” They were talking about voter education and truly, RESIEC gave NGOs one, one million naira to do voter education, Kebetkache did the voter education in Eleme.
To me, since then, we have not had any such thing in Rivers State and that shows his passion and commitment to civic education.
Another thing I will add is that he is part of our Leadership School faculty board. Since we started, his lecture is on ‘How to be a chief executive officer’ or ‘What it takes to be a CEO.’ The very first graduation, he was the guest speaker and this fifth graduation, he was the guest lecturer and the topic was, ‘Non-Positional Leadership.’ So, I have seen that commitment and that passion to instill discipline in the citizens for people to know about governance and for people to be interested in governance, building character in the human person. To me, it is like the change we expect in our society begins with us. We should be interested in what is going on around us and we should also be conscious of our civic responsibilities and our obligations.
In all, I will say that he is one of those people that have been an inspiration to me right from when I was working with the Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, IHRHL. I remember that as at that time, Nimi had been a resource person once or twice during our activities and I learnt a lot from those interactions.
So, I will use this opportunity to wish him a happy 60th birthday anniversary and also say that on behalf of myself as head of Kebetkache and director of the Leadership School, Port Harcourt, we wish him a happy birthday as he marks this new milestone, and we are still open and willing to learn so much from him and also appreciate and thank him for all the sacrifices and contributions to the Leadership School. He comes all the way from Abuja to take his lectures and it is not every time that we buy his ticket and, he does not mind.
That goes a long way to show that he is very interested in building the society by also building human capacity. That much we appreciate and I feel that the best way we can show that appreciation for his contributions is for us to begin to live that life, to develop those qualities and also begin to mentor other people and impart the knowledge and information to other people.