Chief Press Secretary to Abia State governor, Godwin Adindu, tells Editor, Politics/Features, EMEKA ALEX DURU, some of the activities of his principal, Okezie Ikpeazu, in the first 100 days of his administration.
Ours is not a government on pages of computer-simulated projects. We shall not make noise on what we are doing. By the time we are through, it is the people that will speak for us. Our achievements will speak for us.”
With these remarks, Abia State governor, Dr. Victor Okezie Ikpeazu, raised a banner of hope to the Abia electorate, assuring them that his administration is on course in fixing the state.
The assurance incidentally comes even as the governor is locked in a crunchy legal battle with the candidate of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Dr. Alex Otti, over the outcome of the April 2015 governorship election in the state. Otti has been challenging the declaration of Ikpeazu as the winner of the exercise at the state’s election petition tribunal.
But the governor, who spoke through his Chief Press Secretary (CPS), Godwin Adindu, maintained that he is not distracted by the issues in the court, especially as they are matters with the judiciary.
“Ours is to deliver governance. The issues in the tribunal are essentially affairs of the judiciary. It is better they are left with the issues there,” he said.
He added however that in the last 100 days when the new administration took off in Abia, it has maintained sure-footed steps in taking the state to the next level.
He listed evolution of a new political orientation, among the initiatives in this direction. By this, he said, Ikpeazu has taken an unprecedented step in demystifying the myth associated with the office of the governor.
According to him, the governor has instructed: “Don’t call me, ‘His Excellency’. Don’t add ‘Executive’ to my name. Just address me simply as ‘Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu, governor of Abia State’.” With this unusual declaration, he said, Ikpeazu assumed the common governor status. And the immediate impact of the new orientation is the absence of air in governance and change of perception of power in Abia.
Adindu further recalled that the governor had also instructed him: “Tell the people to remove all billboards and posters bearing my portrait. Tell contractors not to put my portrait on their signage, but to project their works. No praise-singing jingles. Let’s just do the work.”
Part of the work that has begun in earnest, he said, is the head-on confrontation with the environmental challenge that has held down Aba, the commercial nerve centre of the state, for years. Aside its status as the melting pot of South East and South South entrepreneurial engagements, Aba had offered a kindred setting for indigenes of the defunct Eastern Region, that there was hardly any family that had no representation in the city.
But in irony of sorts, the city had witnessed unprecedented neglect in the hands of successive administrations, from local and federal level, since the end of the Civil War in 1970. With possible exception of the late Dr. Sam Mbakwe’s administration (1979 to 1983) of old Imo State that made commendable efforts at fixing Aba, subsequent military and civilian governments had criminally ignored the city.
Aside making its rehabilitation a campaign issue during election periods since the onset of the current dispensation, nothing of significance had been done in returning it to its past glory. Even when attempts appeared to have been made to give the city attention, such instances had at best been cosmetic.
The result has been that Aba, over time, had gradually drifted from its city status to a virtual state of a jungle where, sadly, might became right. In the process, the master plan of the town, which had been handed a municipal status by the English colonial authorities back in 1904, was distorted, as residents grabbed and erected structures on every available space, to the extent of blocking waterways. This has seen the town perennially flooded, aside the resultant debilitating traffic.
Obviously cashing in on the chaotic situation, criminals of all hues had literally been let loose in the city, in the process, making life unexciting for the residents.
Ikpeazu seems determined to put a halt to the menace.
“Over the years, people built anyhow in Aba; on the roads, drainages. And we are saying it cannot be so,” the governor insisted.
TheNiche gathered that part of the efforts in opening up the city is demolition of illegal structures that are defacing the town and blocking the drainages. Adindu gave reasons for the courageous action. He said: “We have to take drastic actions to get Aba right. When we destroy the illegal structures, people come out to cheer.”
To achieve the aim of restoring the commercial city to its old glory, the government, it was gathered, has established the Office of Aba Urban Renewal. The goal, according to Adindu, is to drive the new effort towards the infrastructural renewal of the city, and ensure that Aba is transformed to a city of basic modern amenities.
The office will also restore order and sanity in building of shops, kiosks, office and residential buildings, drive the new programmes towards the park reform and general rehabilitation work.
Some of the agenda, he said, were at various stages of actualisation. These include the dredging of the Aba River, de-silting of drainages, as well as construction of 27 roads.
The roads and other dividends of governance are not restricted to Aba, but cut across Umuahia and Abia North. “As the governor is working in Aba, he is working in Umuahia and Abia North,” he said.
Ikpeazu’s administration, according to Adindu, has also put in place an innovation – the Integrated Payroll Verification System (IPVS), through which it conducts staff auditing to ascertain the actual strength of the workforce in the state. The major gain in the exercise is the elimination of ghost-worker syndrome in Abia civil service. The government has also, by the initiative, saved over N170 million from being stolen from the state’s coffers.
“How does the government get the money with which it hopes to carry out its activities?” our reporter asked the CPS.
His response was prompt: “Where there is the will, there is always the way.”
TheNiche, however, learnt that the government aims at moving its Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) from its current N500 million base to N1.5 billion. Adindu stressed that the amount is still a projection that has not been attained.
The administration, he said, has programmes at encouraging local entrepreneurship, apparently to shore up its revenue base aside keeping the people meaningfully engaged.
It is in this respect that the governor, according to him, has taken up the role of the chief brand ambassador of ‘Made in Aba’ goods.
This, Adindu said, is in addition to the setting up Marketing and Standard Regulatory Board to ensure that the Aba entrepreneur is encouraged. A cluster for Aba shoe and bag makers is also being envisioned in this regard at Umukailika Village, off Ogbor Hill.
The CPS spoke on other agenda and activities of the administration in re-inventing Abia. These include tourism/investment promotion, healthcare enhancement, pension reform and payment of pensioners’ salaries. Actualisation of the projects, he enthused, would convince the Abia electorate that, for the first time, a leader that is set to do things right has emerged in the state. Both critics and admirers of Governor Ikpeazu are holding him on this pledge.
