Ubong Attah as a Martyr

Ubong Attah as a Martyr

By Edidiong Udobia

“In this third year of my office, I want to use the opportunity to launch a vision that God gave to me in the year 2012, called the Akwa Ibom Prayer Project”. These were the words of the member representing Ibesikpo Asutan State Constituency in the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly, Mr Ubong Attah, at a recent religious event. For an overtly Christian state under a pastoral leadership, one would ordinarily expect that Mr Attah’s pronouncement would be met with thunderous shouts of hallelujah echoing across the state. Alas! the lawmaker has faced more damning criticisms, ridicule, and blatant abuses in such a short time than he has probably faced in almost his entire life.

From my point of view, Mr Attah is only a casualty of a bigger war. His proposed prayer project would not be a new thing to us especially as our state is operating under a pastoral mandate. To put it in a clearer context, across all tiers, arms and units of government, this pastoral dispensation has witnessed the gathering of people for prayer meetings more than any other purpose. From the monthly government house prayer, the monthly women solemn assembly at the government house (which I hear is replicated in many local government areas by the wives of the local government chairmen), the weekly or by-weekly solemn assembly in the local government councils, daily morning devotions in Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs), to the annual anniversary Thanksgiving services by House of Assembly, prayer meeting ranks top of government functions in line with the pastoral mandate of the present administration.

For instance, it is not a coincidence that the Chairman of Mkpat Enin Local Government Area, Mr Emmanuel Inyang, has invited people to more solemn assemblies in the council secretariat than he has invited lawn mowers to trim the grasses within the council premises, yet ’divine grace’ and ’unmerited favour’ are already carrying him to a second term. A council secretariat overgrown with grass must be making the chairman feel like the biblical David tending his father’s sheep in the bush. Mr Inyang is not only enjoying the benefits of serving in a pastoral dispensation, but has long discovered the key to the throne of grace and has used it wisely. A local government chairman who has not provided a single answer to the numerous questions of accountability and performance recently directed at him by the very people he is serving is living his life unbothered, unperturbed because he is a ‘prayerful leader’. Mr Emmanuel Inyang’s testimony is not an isolated case. As a people, we witnessed in this pastoral administration how prayers intervened on behalf of the worst set of state legislators in the history of our dear state, and grace overlooked their individual and collective failure and abysmal performance to give them undeserving second and third chances.

In this pastoral dispensation, more economic policies and critical administrative decisions have been announced at the places of worship and prayer than in boardrooms and investment meetings. We have probably lost count of the number of public policies that were first announced during a Sunday service at the synagogue in Eket. Presently, heads of government parastatals are endorsing an upcoming choir competition and counting it as part of their services to the people of Akwa Ibom because in this pastoral dispensation, hosanna must be in the highest. This theology based governance is why someone like Ubong Attah would spend three years in the House of Assembly doing absolutely nothing just to be effortlessly rewarded with a second term and it’s called ’grace’. It is the reason Ubong Attah, after three years of wasteful representation, will prioritise fulfilling his 2012 prayer vision while completely neglecting the pact he made with his people while campaigning in 2023. In this pastoral dispensation, it is more important for a legislator to launch a prayer project for Akwa Ibom than to hold a constituency briefing and empowerment for his constituents.

It is my thinking that the backlash against Ubong Attah’s vision is completely misplaced. The man has discovered that prayer, is indeed, the master key in this dispensation, and he is simply using the key to unlock the doors of political favours. Like the biblical Stephen, Ubong Attah is the martyr of this pastoral dispensation.