AMID a tight campaign schedule, the Abia State Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) Governorship Candidate, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu, in this
encounter spoke among others on his plans for Abia and how to actualise them,
if elected. He admitted that Governor Orji has set a hurdle in terms of
achievements but said he will run faster because he is younger.
His take on comments that he is a neophyte and stooge of
Governor Theodore Orji
I had my doctorate degree before my 30th birthday. I have
taught in four universities, including being the external examiner of master’s
degree students of University of Nigeria, Nsukka. It is not possible for
someone to think of me as a stooge. All this can only exist within the realms
of political propaganda. Almost every candidate in the race was once in the
PDP, so apparently they all wanted to be stooges. They started singing
different tunes when the PDP people said, “we want change but we want to change
into certainty not into darkness’ and the civil servants said, “we want someone
who can keep our jobs and pay us, not someone who will do right-sizing or
down-sizing and retrench us at the end of the day.”
There is no governor in Nigeria that is anybody’s stooge.
And if you played a role in canvassing for votes or helped a governor to be
elected, you can’t expect the governor to be your stooge. You can only bring
ideas that are beautiful on the table and if its falls into the main frame of a
focused administration.
Superior logic
Abia people know that I am the only person that is humble
enough to entertain all shades of opinion, logic and suggestions. If your logic
is superior we will go and test it. If mine is superior you go with me. I am
not coming with any airs of arrogance. I am humble enough to say that I need
the support of the people of Abia and hopeful that they will give me.
The challenge of taking over and matching Governor Orji’s
records?
The governor has enormous goodwill and he has carried
himself as a gentleman. He has a lot of respect among the elders, and the common
people of Abia. He is a huge challenge. But I know that by the time the people
understand my style, the difference will show. I will try to be as meticulous
as Orji but I will run faster because I am younger.
His plans: The
first plan is our people. Abia is peopled by people with capacity in various
areas. Our human capital is second to none and we are the best traders and very
good in commerce. We are also very good with the things we can do with our
hands. So in the years ahead we want to leverage on these advantages that God
has given us to make sure that the economy of Abia rests on strong pillars of
trade and commerce, small and medium scale enterprises.
Of course we are in oil and gas but we want to let the
advantage of oil and gas recede to the background because we are just marginal
producers. So oil will not be on the front burner of our economic decisions in
the days ahead.
We have another advantage. If you look at Aba for example,
the city is at the confluence of about seven other cities in the South-East and
South-South. The city is about 30 minutes drive to Ikot Ekpene, Port Harcourt,
Owerri and Umuahia among others. The strategic location of this city makes it
what sugar is to ants and it attracts people. So we must leverage this strategic
geographical location of Aba to place world class infrastructure around Aba so
that we can return trade and commerce and build industrial clusters using the
German model.
What I mean by that is the apprenticeship system where we
have family line businesses. But government must intervene in terms of giving
access to world class finishing and equipment so that there can be mass
production, finished products that can compete for space in shops in top shops
in European markets.
European markets
We will also do a mass reorientation of the way our people
think. The time has gone when people will talk down on the people of Abia. We
want to say that we are the best in the world and that we will attract the
attention of not only the best in Nigeria but also in Africa to Abia in the
days ahead. This is our focus.
Plans for Aba… People
talk about Aba just because they are thinking about votes. I talk about Aba
with more passion because that is where I come from. I don’t have a house in
any other part of the world than in Aba. Nobody is more interested in the Aba
problem as myself, because you can’t be more Catholic than the Pope. And
nobody has a better plan for Aba. First, I have a proper diagnostics of the Aba
problem. Aba’s problem is rooted in the fact that infrastructural stock, in
terms of drainage, houses, roads, have been static for awhile and the
population has grown geometrically. And when that happens, it means that there
will be more pressure on the roads and the drainages and they will start
collapsing.
The drainage system has remained unmanned and unserviced
because it is underground. Once you have underground drainage system, you must maintain
it. You must go through it every year. And it has been left for almost 50 years
and some people have also constructed buildings across the drainage system. We
have three storey buildings and churches across the drainage systems.
What we want to do is first of all to do a ring road around
Aba. I said earlier that Aba is in the centre of our plans because it is at the
confluence of the states in the South-East South-South and our industrial
clusters are going to take off from Aba. What you can get in Aba in terms of
internally generated revenue can help you develop other parts of Abia including
Umunneochi and other places.
So we want to do a ring road while we revisit the existing
roads, remodel them and redesign them.
We have two options on draining and de-flooding. One, there
is an underground drainage system, which has been silted to the brim and that
is why each time it rains there will flooding.
Underground drainage
So, do we open up and use open drainage system or do we
continue with the underground system where we have to get experts to open the
underground drainage for it to enter into the Aba River? But draining straight
into the Aba River is also not environmentally sustainable. So we are thinking
about a secondary water plant around Aba River that would capture the storm
water, treat it up to secondary level and then return it to the river so that
aquatic life can thrive.
Do you have the political will to redesign Aba given the
houses that will be affected?
Politically and socially, you have to localize your
strengths and weaknesses. What did it take the incumbent governor to remove the
market in Umuahia to Ubani? He is a son of the soil. His people are the people
that own shops there and he found the political will.
For those who have constructed buildings across the
drainages, those buildings will go. One kilometre of drainage will serve the
entire city of five million people but a single house will serve just a family.
We can’t allow your selfishness to put us all at risk. So we must do what we
need to do when we get there.
BY Clifford Ndujihe
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