Was it that small incline that the bus could not climb,’ queried one bystander, watching the grounded double-decker bus rolled out by the Enugu State Government for the Rangers of Enugu NPFL trophy parade in Enugu, the state capital.
‘It is so! It could not climb it,” rang the voice of a man, who appeared to be concerned with the safety of the volunteers pushing the grounded double-decker bus. “Look, you people should get away from the way of that vehicle. You people should give way.”
The video (which trended across social media) showed some people in white T-shirts pushing a double-decker bus up an incline. The white shirts were obviously the home jersey of Enugu Rangers Football Club, which was recently adjudged the winners of the Nigerian football league.
To milk all the publicity capital, the Enugu State Government announced that there was going to be a trophy parade across the major streets of the capital to celebrate what was Rangers’ second league trophy in three seasons and the third since 2016.
Rangers have been receiving some good attention under this administration. Being its second league triumph under Governor Peter Mbah, it was meant to serve immense PR purposes, and for a government that has invested in keeping the front door clean rather than orchestrate real and measurable deliverables that would impact the lives, livelihoods and businesses of the people, the government has done most of its greatest jobs in the area of convincing everybody who feeds from the media of his great achievements.
The biggest praise-singers of the Mbah administration, apart from the hirelings that sit on the drivers’ seats of its PR machine, are folks who do not live in Enugu State, and the few others who land at the airport and transit to Anambra or Ebonyi and the few other neighbouring states that use the Akanu Ibiam Airport for travel.
These people got nurtured in the well-cooked PR broth orchestrated to ensure that the front door is squeaky-clean. I once said that the administration got its media right. They concentrated on getting the dominant Lagos press under its feet, not by force but by carefully getting some of its most influential men as media consultants.
This ensured that they were right in front of everybody, and that every story that is not complimentary is gated out of the news. In Enugu, free speech was not free. You have to be unreasonably hard-headed to attempt exercising that right.
So when all that the government does hog headlines with high-sounding projects, the press ignored the cries of the Enugu people who have been bent by crippling taxation and promises that were not being fulfilled.
Enugu, as far as the government was concerned, began and ended with the areas proximate to the Government House and adjoining neighbourhoods of huge transit traffic: the roads from the airport, through Trans Ekulu, Abakaliki Road, Ogui Road and Independence Layout were rehabilitated, apparently to impress people who are coming into the state through the airport.
He completed the make-up by partially completing the International Conference Centre building, and opened the doors for the Nigerian Guild of Editors Conference, and then the Nigerian Bar Association annual conference. Those were acts of genius
These conferences reinforced earlier narratives of a state in Nigeria about to transform into a mini-Singapore or Dubai within two years. The mainstream media and social media nearly got overwhelmed with good stories of the unprecedented development of Enugu State, brought about under Mbah’s leadership, the Lee Kwan Yew of our time.
To complete the state’s transformation, markets were demolished to build motor parks. Such upending of priority, it still makes everyone wonder how a bus terminal became as important as, and even of greater priority than, markets where thousands of people traded every day.
Brand new long buses were procured to use these sprawling motor parks, but not before the rains blew the roofs off the poorly constructed and yet-to-be-completed, yet hurriedly commissioned one in the capital, Enugu. The space set aside and ring-fenced for the motor park in Enugu looks like it is 20 times the needed size.
Many would be quick to say that’s a forward-thinking government in action, but if they are not moving all the private inter-state and intra-state motor parks in the state to this location, it’s a wonder why the government embarked on such a gigantic project?
Good news came when Rangers, the darling football club of the old eastern Nigeria, won the league crown, and pictures began to sneak into the social media of a double-decker bus, said then to have been acquired by the State government as additions to the fleet of buses already ferrying passengers to and from various parts of the state.
The overly excited, especially the human megaphones who do not live in Enugu, began a round of praise and worship of a governor who was out to make the southeast an investment haven. But things began to unravel in a matter of days when the bus, I suppose, newly procured, could not survive its first voyage.
It was introduced during the Rangers’ trophy parade, a time when eyeballs would be in their millions, but that was when it chose to show it was clay-footed. Obviously not as new as its colour appeared, the bus, with a brand-new body but obviously an aged heart, could not make it up a small incline, prompting all and sundry to rally around to help the old lady home.
Those making the now-viral video were anxious to know whether it was that small incline that a new bus could not climb. The kindhearted person they were inquiring of, from the tone of his voice, was more concerned about the safety of those pushing the old lady, asking them to leave the vehicle’s front.
That is the Enugu that Mbah is building: a smart state, with smart cities, smart transportation systems, smart hospitals and smart schools. I don’t know if he is feeling the embarrassment that those of us watching his theatrical subnational branding are feeling.
You cannot change the fortunes of a state by creating plastic infrastructure and claiming they are made of solid metal and concrete. Soon, people would be wiser, and even if you succeed in holding them under your spell until you do your two terms, there is still life after office. People will forget, and whether you are here or in the hereafter, you will be remembered and cited in history as the person behind the bad things that happened at a certain epoch.
Social media recruits have long claimed that Enugu competes only with Abia State in terms of infrastructural development; some even insist that Enugu is faring better than Abia. The twin events of the Nigerian Guild of Editors and the Nigerian Bar Association conferences have done the state so much good and helped push false narratives to such lengths that one begins to imagine how much falsehood could travel when properly orchestrated.
Those trumpeting the achievements in Enugu on both social and mainstream media have been seeing the smart schools, said to be the government’s marquee achievements, collapsing all over the state; they are not seeing the roofs of the smart schools flying off after romancing their first rainy-season gusts of wind.
The smart school system was introduced with aplomb and hailed as the next best thing after the chain of events that led to the discovery of the light bulb, following the roles played by Alessandro Volta, Humphrey Davy, Joseph Swan, and then Thomas Edison. It was meant to be a system that would revamp the way our children back home received their primary education, similar to what we see in movies about Chinese schools.
Children are supposed to be exposed to the sciences and applied arts quite early. There were supposed to be specially trained teachers, equipped to provide such specialised education. Construction started almost simultaneously across the 260 council wards in the state, after the pilot was commissioned in the governor’s hometown of Owoh, in Nkanu East Local Government Area.
But the first disappointments occurred while the massive campaign was spreading everywhere. Some of the buildings began to collapse. And while it was tolerated as construction errors that were not impossible when such vast infrastructure projects were underway all over the state, a few people began to question the manner in which contracts for the buildings were awarded.
Tomorrow is here is driving on a 1918 flooded road
Then the Sujimoto scandal happened. Sujimoto Construction, a real estate and construction outfit owned by flamboyant businessman Olasijibomi Ogundele. His company received a handsome N5.7 billion to construct 22 smart schools, but somehow could not complete the jobs, prompting the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to be invited.
Ogundele was arrested and was eventually squeezed until N1.28 billion was recovered and handed over to the state government.
That left a balance of about N4.42 billion, and no word has been heard on whether it has been recovered or written off. The smart school dream continued anyway, and although no special teachers were recruited as promised, schools commenced in a few more places. Others, however, continued to face the evil winds of collapse. The rainy seasons of 2025 and the current one of 2026 have determined the fates of many of the smart schools, the latest of which happened somewhere in Igbo Etiti Local Government Area early in June.
As the smart schools are falling under the weight of poor engineering works, the bus transport the governor initiated, which led to the demolition of markets in Nsukka and other parts of the state, has continued to dither.
In Nsukka, also in June, one bus, apparently travelling from Enugu to Nsukka, was caught in a flood that inundated portions of Enugu road, the town’s major road. Citizens recorded the bus as the flood was flowing into the vehicle through the front passenger door
Roads are bad across the state. The Enugu road has been experiencing flooding of disturbing magnitudes since time immemorial, and Mbah has promised to attend to it, but so far has refused.
Many would want to ask the governor whether it is the same Enugu road and similar roads across the state that he had in mind in procuring double-decker buses, or a futuristic one he intends to construct after he wins his second tenure?
Enugu State, which Mbah has branded as a tech and investment paradise, is, in reality, not as future-forward as the megaphones claim. The state is bleeding; businesses in the state are crumpled as taxes and levies rob small businesses of the gas they need to keep their life-support machines running.
Branding is everybody’s game. Anybody can attempt to brand and rebrand a state. But this must not be built on propaganda and false narratives. You can impress a few people by creating false appearances, but that is just for the short term. In the long term, the badly sewn fabric will burst from every seam, and that could happen anytime, anywhere. It could happen when you are in the village square, attempting your best dance steps.
The people of Enugu State deserve to know why a bus that has never been used for any passenger service would fail to work on the very first day it was called to duty. That is one misfire too many!
