Wills Seeks Immortalisation Of Okilo, Diete-Spiff, Others

Hon. Iniruo Wills, a development advocate, has harped on the need to immortalize Niger Delta legends like King Alfred Diete-Spiff, the late Chief Melford Okilo and Harold Dappa-Biriye through the establishment and naming of governance and development institutions after them.
Wills stated this on the heels of the 16th memorial programme of the late Chief Melford Okilo, the first civilian Governor of old Rivers State held in Port Harcourt on Friday.
He stated that the people of Rivers State experienced their best governance under the respective administrations of Diete-Spiff and Okilo.
He suggested that the ex-governors as well as other past prominent political leaders like Dappa-Biriye should be immortalized by building and naming the said schools after them.
He said, “It is instructive that in the fifty-seven years since the original Rivers State was created, the best two administrations the people of the state have had were the Alfred Diete-Spiff and Melford Okilo Administrations.
“Forty-one years after Okilo left office in 1983, no governor of Rivers State or present day Bayelsa State has performed anywhere near the qualitative range of Okilo.
“Otherwise, Rivers and Bayelsa States would have been abreast with or even ahead of Lagos State in development indicators.
“Thus, one meaningful way to immortalize authentic governance legends like Okilo, Diete-Spiff and Harold Dappa-Biriye beyond annual lectures and physical monuments is to establish or foster and name after them top-rank schools of governance and development that can aim to be benchmarked against global gold standards like Harvard’s Kennedy school of governance and Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew school of public policy, both of which are also named after icons of governance in America and Singapore.”
He suggested that there should be a collaborative partnership between state governments, Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and the BRACED Commission to fund the establishment of the schools.
“A practical pathway to achieving that is for NDDC to work with the Rivers and Bayelsa State Governments, along with the BRACED Commission and some development philanthropies to set up the Okilo school of Governance, re-establish sea school Isaka as an ultra-modern Diete-Spiff Sea College, and institute a premium quality Dappa-Biriye Fellowship on Development Studies,” he said.
Wills who is a former commissioner for the environment in Bayelsa State advised the Rivers State Government to also “consider revitalising and renaming the Point Block building in Port Harcourt as Diete-Spiff Governance Towers now that the pioneer Governor is still on this side of life
“This way, we can both train political and other leaders in these institutions to govern like our real icons and have living monuments that the populace can always use to measure the performance of present and future administrations.”