Peter Mbah Town Hall Meeting: A Call For a Total Service to the People
By Ugwuja Theophilus
Town hall meetings, otherwise known as town hall forums, are a way for local and national politicians to meet with their constituents either to hear from them on topics of interest or to discuss specific upcoming legislation or regulation.
Town hall meetings as organized by politicians are often held in a variety of locations distributed across a voting district so that leaders can receive feedback from a larger population of electorates at the constituents.
Recently, the guber candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Enugu State, Dr. Peter Ndubuisi Mbah had on Tuesday, 8 November, 2022 kicked off a town hall meeting which was scheduled to be conducted in all the 68 Development Centres of the state. This act is rarely seen among today’s Nigerian politicians.
Why would Peter engage in this stressful journey that will take a long number of days? The answers are not far-fetched as it involves the following:
(a) Peter Mbah’s town hall meeting avails the people the chance to voice their opinions and speak their minds to the guber candidate. This in particular helps to create a transparent line of communication between him and the people, thereby opening his eyes to the details of the needs of the people.
(b) The town hall meeting will ultimately help in a great way to bring everyone together, cultivating a real sense of community and team spirit between him and the people.
(c) It will go a long way in helping him identify the needs of the people according to their scale of preference and priority.
(d) It shows every member of the society/community how they will fit into the large-scale trajectory of his administration, which is a surefire way to boost their sense of participation in societal development.
The journey of the town hall meeting embarked upon by the Enugu PDP guber candidate has corroborated his slogan ‘’Tomorrow Is Here’’. According to him, what is the need to procrastinate when you can actually do it now? Peter has set on a journey of catapulting Enugu State to an enviable height through taking his time to go and interact directly with those at the grassroots, engaging them in a face-to-face series of discussions, identifying their needs and documenting them. This will in turn help with easy step by step tackling of their needs and problems after his inauguration in May 2023.
At the town hall meetings held with the four Development Centers in Aninri Local Government Area, Mbah assured the people that he would draw a map in his office where the requests made by the people shall be kept and documented for use immediately he was sworn in as a governor.
He further said that his administration shall take governance as a serious project and make sure that he would have enough information that will guide his decision making processes in government. “We are here because we want to hit the ground running. We wouldn’t want a situation where we commence an execution of a project for the people, only for them to start agitating that the project isn’t their major need,” Mbah said.
The above statement speaks volume of a leader who is visionary, friendly, emphatic and full of empathy about the needs of his people. The society becomes happy with their leaders once their major needs are met. His development strategy is the kind that will allow the people of Enugu State to have the ownership of the government and see themselves in it. This agrees with Mr. Mbah’s voiced resolve to run a people-focused government.
Truly, his town hall meeting is an ample opportunity for Ndi Enugu to saddle him with the duty to serve his people totally on his emergence; to work for the general good of the people. This will ensure it’s not about selfishly enriching oneself at the loss of the people, as it’s easily seen in the polity of some Nigerian states.
Let’s join hands and welcome our tomorrow now. It’s about time!
