Burutu Like Mind Comrades (BLMC) and Vanguard for Good Governance (VGG) in a joint Letter write Burutu LGA First Blood, Hon Goodknows Angele.
Read Full Gist below!
"We Burutu Like Mind Comrades
Burutu, Delta State.
Injoin Vanguard for good governance,
Akure, Ondo State.
We humbly submit our letter to the office of our leader. Rt. Hon.Godknows Angele whose in-charge of the council.
"On a topic "a concerned case between our leaders and it citizen's" that is, { depriving the Masses of it's fundamental Human Rights }"
Dear Sir,
Our heart bleed's, as we write this note to you, Mr Chairman looking at the status of our rural communities, which has prompt Vanguard for good governance to asks a question?. Is the game over, can Burutu LGA experience development now it because the unconstitutional pains and suffering our people endure instead of merriment for divident of democracy. Do you know our people have been crying silently for centuries, even when the system of our underdevelopment has been unveil but decide to let go.... Good People, __Pan African's are kind hearted people, you know, very peaceful people who don't revenge evil for evil, even when abused, always asking for God's forgiveness for the sin of other's.
__The TRue NaTure oF thE CReAtOR._
Dearest Sir, Let us start with concrete illustration as follows.¶¶¶¶
"As a social scientists, the society is our laboratory" listened with aching and rapt attention as I launched into a passionate narrative of the challenges facing our people as we discuss.
Without wasting your time, let look at our Education system, as a scholar, What is Education ?.According to Mahatma Gandhi defined education as, ‘By education, I mean drawing out of the best in child and man body, mind and spirit.’ "the qualities of Education. Sidney Hook has described the goals of education as follows:
✓ To develop the powers of critical independent thought;
✓ To induce sensitiveness of perception, receptiveness to new ideas and imaginative sympathy with the experiences of others
"The rights of all children from early childhood stem from the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The declaration proclaimed in article 1: ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’. The declaration states that human rights begin at birth and that childhood is a period demanding special care and assistance [art. 25 (2)]. The 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child affirmed that: ‘mankind owes to the child the best it has to give’, including education. This was amplified by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966 which states that: ‘education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and the sense of its dignity, and shall strengthen the respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, the Nigeria’s National Policy on Education (FRN 1998), it is stated that the Federal Government has adopted education as an instrument for effecting National Development in all areas of the nation. However, this does not reflect the situation in rural Nigeria where there is overwhelming widespread of illiteracy.
Education in Burutu is characterized with very poor infrastructure, insufficient academic staff, insecurity, and non-payment of academic staff among others. It is common knowledge that majority of the population live in rural areas. Burutuan's are predominantly rural dwellers as the vast majority of her population live in rural area. Generally, rural areas in Nigeria are incessantly neglected by the government when it comes to development of any form, educational development inclusive. Despite the fact that rural dwellers in Burutu LGA are usually not recognized on government development activities, no notable institutions like other neighbors who are privileged to host two University in one senatorial District of this state.
"while the nation’s wealth is derived from the rural areas across the creeks of Burutu local Government among other resources possessed by the Nigerian Government are hugely deposited in rural areas.
The under development in Burutu as a Local government has been linked to lack of development in the creeks and camps. a view states that no serious active, conscious, sensitive, and organized government would want to neglect rural communities development.
Lack of development has a positive correlation with the neglect of rural areas. Rural neglects brings negative consequences such as exodus of rural dwellers to urban areas, with resulting problems of unemployment, crimes, prostitution, child labour, insecurity, money laundering, bribery, poverty, proliferation of shanty living areas, spread of diseases, and overstretching of the facilities and infrastructures in the urban areas. Having travelled to and through rural areas in our local government to investigate the progress of our Educational level, the sight of education facilities in rural areas of Burutu LGA and the entire Niger Delta is disheartening, particularly in this 21st century, our schools are still unkept, from broken classroom walls, to opened roofs, damaged chalk board, over population and lack of sufficient chairs and tables in classes, bushy environment that houses reptiles to mention a few, the educational plight in Burutu LGA calls for immediate “unpolitical” attention. Having visited some rural schools in the creek's, the current situation tends to endanger the future if not revived. "In some communities they is no schooling activities going on, pupils are just going to school neclecting learning. This is one of the critical challenges.
Education is to a nation what the mind is to the body, just as a diseased mind is handicapped in the coordination and direction of the bodily activities. Therefore, the single most significant complex of social – control tools for national development is found in the educational system. Since majority of the population still live in rural areas, education which is believed to be the bedrock of any serious nation’s development should experience serious development in rural areas, hence it is expected of Burutu LGA and relevant stakeholders to take the issues of education in rural areas seriously.
∆Challenges confronting our local government educational systems are.
¶Lack of Infrastructure: There is a huge infrastructural deficit in rural education development in our communities. Majority of the rural schools are poorly built and very old with damaged roofs and walls. Other educational facilities such as chairs and tables are usually not sufficient; libraries do not exist in many rural schools.
¶Poor Legislative Oversight Duty is a serious way the legislature can check the executive by supervising projects awarded and asking important questions on budget and expenses on such project. However, the legislators have performed poorly in their oversight function. Thus, some of the approved rural schools are not well constructed or not constructed at all.
¶Insufficient Academic Staff: There has been an incessant shortage of academic staff in rural schools for many years in Burutu. This explains why a teacher can be saddled to teach two or more subjects/courses, sometimes outside his/her discipline.
¶Poor Learning Facilities: Learning facilities in rural communities are in very poor conditions, if at all they exist. Computer laboratories, internet and other things that will expose the children to global standard in their studies are absent.
¶Poverty:This is an underlining factor in our society, as a whole. People in rural areas live below a plate of food The poverty level is so high for them to afford schooling opportunities for their children.
¶Corruption:This problem has affected us negatively in all sectors. Embezzlement of educational funds, scholarship and grants has marred the effort to develop education, especially in local areas.
¶Critically assessing the first post-independence National Educational Nigerian Conference on Curriculum development organized in 1969 by the Nigerian Educational Council with the following resolutions:
✓ Provision and expansion of educational facilities to ensure education gets to the door step of every Nigerian child.
✓ Overhauling and reforming the content of general education to make it more responsive to the socio-economic needs of the country.
✓ Development and consolidating the nation’s higher education in response to the manpower needs of the country.
✓ Developing technological education in order to meet the growing needs of the nation.
All these resolutions failed because of the lack of commitment from the government. Education is fundamental to growth and development, and serves as critical indices to measure progress of development agenda. Therefore, deliberate effort should be made to develop the sector particularly in rural areas. This will include provision of educational infrastructures and facilities, sustainable curriculum and policies, employment of more academic staff, strengthening oversight function on educational facilities and scholarship for students. Education is the most powerful tool of reducing poverty, ensuring peace and stability and advancing a people through inventions, a nation cannot grow beyond her level of education, for Burutu to grow, education must grow.
Hence, we call on you, our father, brother cum mentor to please solve this educational problem befalling our people because if not taken proper care of, will consume our future, God forbid. but positive actions must be taken to avert this unseen consequences.
¶Secondly, __[[ Health ]] this most vital issue affecting our people, limiting creative mindset from achieving her goals, as a result of illness, mostly caused by poor environmental sanitation, No drinkable water, spill's few to mention.
Record has it that , due to effect of constant spill's from poorly maintained oil drilling equipment and exploration facilitIes on our environment and this effects can be grouped into liver damage, respiratory damage, increased cancer risk, reproductive damage and higher levels of some toxics (hydrocarbons and heavy metals), decreased immunity of which biomarkers have uncovered irreparable harm to humans exposed to oil and gas from oil spills.
✓Oil toxicity: Our understanding of oil toxicity has expanded by studying the effects of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Oil consists of many different toxic compounds. These toxic compounds can cause severe health problems like heart damage, stunted growth, immune system effects, and even death.
This is considered in the light of some international law principles and statutory provisions in Nigeria The Nigerian state can be said to be criminally liable for yet failing to regulate the continued pollution within the Nigerian territorial environment
(Irrespective the actual participant),
✓ Leadership and governance for Health. goals of this priority Area 1 is to create and sustain an enabling environment for the delivery of quality health care and development, we can decide to play politic's but this concerns our life, the human life? what keep that life? HEALTH, good Health.
"There is no piece of legislation describing the national health system and defining the health function of each of the three tier of government. therefore, the federal, State and local government support in a corrdinated manner, a three tier system of health care ( National Health Policy 2004 ). The Local Government Authority is responsible for managing the PHC facilities and also the Local Government Service Commission are technical professional's working in the PHC facilities with support from ( NPHCDA, SPHCDA ) the SMoH, in a bid to promote safe motherhood and reduce maternal deaths, family planing, antenatel, delivery of the most primary and all secondary health facilities. Nurses who been trained on life saving skills ( LSS ) and Doctor's on elongated life saving skills ( DSS ), should be made available at our hospital's and maternity's
Thirdly,,
[[ AGRICULTURE ]]
Burutu Local Government is bordered to the north by Warri North, to the east by Bomadi LGA to the south by the Gulf of Guinea of the Atlantic Ocean. not only large in area—the second largest in Nigeria but also the bread winner of this State, Nigeria.
Burutu LGA has no shortage of arable land overall, but there is an extreme shortage of farmland in the most densely settled area's where crude oil is been located and exploited. This has forced large numbers of rural farmers to abundant agriculture. often, However, we have sent a letter to multinationals to respond to this constant spill's on our environment which have restricted our people the access to farmland in some localities that appear to have abundant cultivable land for lack of farming equipment for commercialisations purpose, in some area's, over grazing have severely limited the land area available for cultivation.
Our people who obtain a living from agricultural production. Most are small-scale subsistence farmers who produce only a little surplus for sale and who derive additional income from one or more cash crops and from the sale of local crafts. Because neccessary equipment are not provided by the Government to plant, the hoe and matchet (machete) continue to be the dominant farm implements which can never exports our goods globaly. So therefore, we Burutu like mind comrades plead you to provide mordern agricultural farming tools, fertilizers to farmers to cultivate effectively for commercial purpose and also build markets with good environment to sell our products, where provision of loan's will be available for tax payers to invest more for the growth of our economy.
finally, with the open wound your unfeeling actions have continued to inflict on the generality of Burutu LGA youth's who you constantly refer to as "Leaders of tomorrow”. The profound increase of unskilled youths in our society when combined with the increasingly dangerous politics of neglect, spawns gloomy prognostication about our collective future as youths of this great local government.
At this point, we charge you to create skills aquisition programme for youths to acquire skills for self dependent and also create employment opportunities for others to hijack as a result of this programme which will reduce sea piracy, prostitution, immigration and many more for the betterment of our society at large and will be a great attribute to your administration.
Signed:
Comrade Daniel Dickson
National President,
Burutu Like Mind Comrades
Comrade Isaac Elagha
National Secretary,
Burutu Like Mind Comrades.
Comrade Abuja Eketu
National Publicity Secretary,
Burutu Like Mind Comrades
Comrade David Owotorufa
National Vice President,
Burutu Like Mind Comrades
Comrade Timipre Ndoni
National Spokesman,
Burutu Like Mind Comrades