“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 o! 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 on social media) showed some people dressed 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 winners of the Nigerian football league.
To milk every bit of its 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 its 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 the government does is hog headlines with high-sounding projects, the press ignores the cries of Enugu people who are being bent by crippling taxation and promises that are 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 finished 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 supposed to be acts of a genius.
These conferences reinforced the earlier narratives of a state in Nigeria about to transform into a mini-Singapore, or Dubai, in a space of two years. The mainstream media and social media nearly got overwhelmed with good stories of the unprecedented development of Enugu State, brought upon under the leadership of Governor Peter Mbah, the Lee Kuan Yew of our time.
To complete the transformation of the state, markets were demolished to build motor parks. Such upending of priority, it still makes everyone wonder how a bus terminal became even 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 onto social media of a double-decker bus, said then to have been acquired by the state government as addition 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 trophy parade of Rangers, a time when eyeballs were exactly in their millions, but that was the time 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 who made the now viral video were anxious to know whether it was that small incline that such a new bus could not climb. The kindhearted person they were inquiring from, was apparently more concerned about the safety of those pushing the old lady, thus asking them to leave the front o f the vehicle.
That is the Enugu Governor 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 Enugu competes against only Abia State in terms of infrastructural development; some even insist 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 in pushing the false narratives to such length 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 resulted in 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 was going to revamp the way our children back home received their education at the primary level, similar to what we see in movies happen in Chinese schools.
Children are supposed to be exposed to the sciences and applied arts quite early. There were supposed to be teachers trained specially and 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 happened while the massive campaign was spreading all over the place. Some of the buildings began to collapse. And while it was being tolerated as construction errors that were not impossible when such vast infrastructure projects were going on all over the state, a few people began to question the manner in which contracts for the buildings were awarded.
Then the Sujimoto scandal blew open. Sujimoto Construction, a real estate and construction outfit, is owned by flamboyant businessman, Olasijibomi Ogundele. His company received a handsome N5.7 billion to construct 22 of the smart schools, but somehow could not progress the jobs, and the EFCC was invited.
Ogundele was arrested and was eventually squeezed until the sum of 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 of whether this has either been recovered or written off. The smart school dream continued anyway, and although there were no special teachers recruited as promised, the 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 that the governor had initiated, which caused him to force the demolition of markets in Nsukka and other parts of the state, has continued to dither.
In Nsukka, also in June, one bus, obviously travelling from Enugu to Nsukka, was caught in a flood that took over 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 for as long as anyone can remember and Governor Mbah has promised to attend to it, but so far has refused to do so.
Many would want to ask Governor Mbah 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?
The Enugu State, which Governor Mbah has branded as a tech and investment paradise, is in reality not as future-forward as the megaphones are claiming. The state is bleeding, the businesses in the state are crumpled as taxes and levies rob small businesses of the gas they need to survive their life-support machines.
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 and attempting your best dancing 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!
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Ikem Okuhu, a journalist, author, PR professional, brand strategist and teacher, is the Executive Producer of C-Suite Cafe podcast as well as CEO of BRANDish, publishers of BRANDish, Nigeria’s first nationally circulating Brands and Marketing magazine. He has a career that has traversed print media, oil & gas, banking and entrepreneurship. Ikem is the author of the book, “PITCH: Debunking Marketing’s Strongest Myths”, a dispassionate exposition of the dos and don’ts of successful engagement in the marketplace, especially the Nigerian marketplace. He can be reached on + 234 8095121535 (text only) or brandishauthority@gmail.com
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