Two-term senator and Imo State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship aspirant, IFEANYICHUKWU ARARAUME, talks to Assistant Editor (North), CHUKS EHIRIM, on his 2015 ambition, Rochas Okorocha’s administration and politics of zonning in the State.
Aspiration and agenda for Imo
Yes, I have the aspiration to be the governor of Imo State. This is not an aspiration I just woke up to have. If you recall, in 2007, I aspired to be the governor of Imo. I won the primaries, though it was done twice. I won the main election; it was cancelled by the forces that existed at the time. But thank God, those are things of the past now. Since 2007, we have had governors. We also had a governor since the coming of this democracy in 1999, Achike Udenwa, from 1999 to 2007. Imo, however, is lagging behind when it comes to governance. There is one governor there now. Something made me to say I want to be the governor of Imo in 2007. I am also sure you know that I served my people as a senator from 1999 to 2007. Those issues that made me to say that I wanted to be the governor of my state in 2007 have remained unsolved. Udenwa did his best in terms of infrastructural development, healthcare, education and empowerment as well as human capital development.
But what has happened from that time till now is that Imo has not been blessed with good governance. The state has been going down. I give you example; in Imo, the governor today says that he is offering free education, but the quality of education of our children in that state has gone down. In the last school certificate result, Imo was struggling to make 30 per cent pass. That wasn’t the situation in the past. Imo was one of the best states; in fact, among the first five states. We have gone down. If you look at the courses we offer in the Imo State University, Law Faculty has lost accreditation; more than five courses have lost accreditation by the National Universities Commission (NUC). Those courses are not offered there now. The teachers are not paid. The students don’t have the quality of education they should have, and deceit is another situation that we have in our education system. You and I know that education is free from primary to junior secondary by the federal government under the Universal Basic Education (UBE).
And the governor tells you he is offering Imo indigenes free education from primary to university. Of course, you know, that is not correct. The difference is that it is free education for Imo indigenes in Imo universities. What happens now to your relations or those that you pay school fees for in other universities? Imo indigenes that are in other tertiary institutions across the country don’t even receive ordinary bursary from Imo state government. Even for those in Imo universities, their numbers are depleting because he says he gives N100,000. But for you to access the N100,000 which is not even stable, you pay a deposit of N20,000 to an account and a cheque of N100,000 is given to you after your traditional ruler had said okay, you are from a particular local government in the state. There is another fee that you pay. At the end of the day, you end up paying almost N40,000. The number of Imo indigenes that are being enrolled in the university has dropped. So you have less people accessing education. You pay more and the quality has also dropped.
The free education is not working. In the area of infrastructure development, a road is constructed by an administration and is washed off before the administration completes its tenure. You go to the ministry of works and there is no documentation of any of these jobs awarded. In other words, if you go there in 2015, you won’t find anything in place. The man has no respect for the rule of law. He doesn’t obey court judgment. This is what Imo is witnessing. The governor deals with situations as he wakes up in the morning. He wakes up in the morning, drives past a place, he orders “put roundabout here”. All the major drains built by previous administrations are all blocked now. Even where you don’t have to put road, he puts one. Our healthcare system has collapsed. All the general hospitals are under lock and key. The only tertiary medical centre that we have – the Teaching Hospital in Orlu – is not working. Government and governance are continuum – what the previous governors built, no matter how beautiful the projects, are abandoned. The Ring Road started by Ikedi Ohakim is abandoned.
The original things that made us say we wanted to be the governor of Imo have not been tackled. We still have situations where even primary healthcare, health centres don’t work. If you go to the hospitals today, ordinary disposables – bandages, syringes – are not found.
Udenwa started a Faculty of Engineering in Umuna, Okigwe. The thing is still the way he left it. So you find that if these questions were answered, things would have improved. We can talk about something else, but because these questions are not answered, our people are still suffering. For a long time, we have not had elections at the local governments. The governor decides; depending on how he feels. He can appoint anybody as local government chairman. Here is a governor who came in when the tenure of the local government officials was still subsisting and the court of law gave judgment that they should continue and he disobeyed the judgment.
Today, what you have in the local governments are caretaker committees. At the end of the day, the local government is stifled. This is why we are still aspiring and I believe that if we are given opportunity, these things will be settled.
The state has suddenly become the city of roundabouts, maybe because the governor lived most of his life in the North; in a place like Jos where you have roundabouts because of railways and some intersections.
The governor, I am sure, loves bricks so much. He started building pedestrian bridges with ordinary blocks. He went to Okigwe and started building hotel. At this time and age, a state government is investing in hotels when governments the world over are divesting! If you build hotels, what do you expect the business people to do? It is not your responsibility as a government to build hotels. What you have to do as a government is to regulate and provide the enabling environment, build the infrastructure, build the roads, provide electricity and then regulate the businesses. Your tax regime must be very friendly to businesses, so that the businesses can grow.
Go to Imo, there is no road today that this man has done that is original to him. That stretch of road that is less than 800 metres to Concorde Hotel, he resurfaces it and then re-advertises it as a new road. That is not building a road; he just rehabilitated it. That road was built by Sam Mbakwe. Go to Wetheral Road, he resurfaces it, puts it on TV that he has built a road. There is no local government in Imo that does not have a general hospital. Our problem is not building general hospitals; our problem is equipping the existing hospitals and making sure there are enough medical staff that will take care of the patients. Our problem is to get modern equipment in these general hospitals. But the governor left the old hospitals, saying he wants to build general hospitals. Check any project that is built by this government, it must be cited at the highway.
This government has taken us back. I’ll give you an example. This government says they want to make school uniform; they ship out your job to China. Don’t we have enough tailors in Imo? If we don’t have in Imo, don’t we have in Abia? If we don’t have in Abia, don’t we have in Anambra? Why must the jobs of our people be shipped out to China? Why must you make desks for pupils in China? It is not done and that is not patriotism. If you look at what is happening today, you see that there is no way you can compare this government with the government of Achike Udenwa. Look at the roads that Udenwa built, they are still solid today.
Agitations for powershift to Owerri zone
The agitations from our brothers and sisters from Owerri is also very wrong. In 1998/1999, I was the pioneer chairman of All Peoples Party (APP) in Imo. I came into the party shortly before the governorship elections, and my entry into the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) made a lot of difference. In 1998/1999 when in PDP, the process to produce the governor started, it was not left for Orlu. Rochas Okorocha, who is now the governor, contested. Greg Mbadiwe contested. Udenwa contested. Three of them were from Orlu. From Owerri, we had Anumudu Humphrey, and Eze Ajoku who later became a senator. Only my zone, Okigwe, did not present any person because our brother then, the late Senator Emeka Echeruo, prevailed on our people. He was the leader of the party at that time in Imo while Innocent Nwoga was the party chairman. We had the capacity to contest for governor that time, but Echeruo said we should allow Orlu. But Owerri did not respect that. They presented aspirants. Eventually, Udenwa won. He did not win because it was exclusively zoned to Orlu – if Anumudu had won those primaries, he would have been presented by the party. In 2003, Udenwa, even as a sitting governor, was not allowed to go without participating in the primaries.
We also had two Owerri people. We had Ugochi Okoro from Owerri West, and Desmond Iwuagwu (Banax) from Ahiazu Mbaise. From Orlu, we had ThankGod Ezeani and Mrs. Betty Nnadi. There was none from Okigwe. That was why when Udenwa was going for re-election, I was the only senator that was supporting him. Arthur Nzeribe and the late Evan Enwerem were not supporting him. I insisted at that time, as the highest elected person in office, that my people should support Udenwa through his second tenure. Even our brother, Emeka Nwajiuba, who aspired to be governor, discovered that there was no ticket for him in PDP left and went to All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). In 2011, despite that we made a case for an Okigwe governor, all these people that are preaching zoning now, including somebody like Kema Chikwe, Jerry Chukwueke, Kelechi Nwagwu, the then speaker all came out from Owerri zone. About six of them came out to contest that primary. Despite that the governor was from Orlu and had done eight years, people from Orlu also came out. We had Festus Odimegwu, Tony Ezenna and Hope Uzodimma. It was not left for Okigwe. If Kema Chikwe had won that primary, nobody would have denied her the opportunity to contest that election. I won the primary that was keenly contested. It was never left for Okigwe. Now that we are talking of 2015, somebody says it is their turn. Who made it your turn? It is said that he that must go to equity should go with clean hands. If you are following political events in Imo, you would have seen that we have never had any zoning.
