Ike Nnachi, Abakliki
The governorship candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), in the 2023 governorship election in Ebonyi State, Professor Benard Odoh, has blamed the incessant communal crises in the State to undue political interferences.
He spoke during a Radio Phone-in programme on Friday alongside his Deputy, Dr. Nkata Chukwu, monitored by our Correspondent.
The Professor of Geo-physics assured the electorate that his government will do everything to end the rampant communal clashes in the State.
He said his administration will aggressively pursue peace and social justice for all if elected to lead the State as governor.
Odoh, who bemoaned the incessant communal unrests in many communities of the State pledged that his government will resolve all disputes by being just, firm and fair to all.
He said: “At the heart of all the communal crises in Ebonyi today is political interference. The communal wars in Ebonyi are not only in Ohaukwu. There is war between Ikwo and Izzi, even down to the South there is fighting almost everywhere in the State.
“If you have people who don’t have anything to contribute, if you have people who don’t have anything to contribute, like they say, a hungry man is an angry man, you must have such kind of crises.
“We are running for this election not as an Ezza man. We are in this election because we have seen the issues and we believe that we have the right solutions to address them collectively.
“We are going to pursue effective governance and Social justice for all. If I have a brother who is causing confusion, we will use him to set example. It doesn’t matter where the person comes from.
“We must have a State where there’s rule of law and order. You cannot thrive in a place where there’s insecurity and disorder. So, we are committed to addressing the issues headlong when we come on board,” he said.
The APGA governorship candidate maintained that he and his Party’s team represent the best the citizens deserve in the 2023 general elections.
On how prepared his party is to confront the incumbent government, Odoh said his party presents a credible alternative to the two dominant political parties; APC and PDP who are locked in internal wrangling.
According to him, “Frankly speaking, the new electoral Act has sorted out a number of issues. We have seen elections in Anambra, Ekiti and now Osun State. Ebonyi has 2, 946 Polling Units and each of these Polling Units are going to be populated by our people who will come to vote.
“Among these our people are faith-based people, professionals, farmers, workers and ordinary people in those communities. We have offered ourselves to serve our people with every sense of dignity and honour them. We also encourage our people to take this opportunity very seriously. They have to take this as their project.
“We, definitely, will not be everywhere on election day. But what we are doing now is to develop a strategy to have our people at the polling units on election day. It is what I prefer to refer to as balance of terror.
“You have the APC, the PDP and the APGA. So, no political party will just sit down there and watch the wrong things take place. I believe we have about 7 months to the election and all the areas we have gaps, we are working hard to close such gaps.
“So we are not bothered about the issue of incumbency. The challenges that confront us now as a people is way above the issue of incumbency and I believe we will work our way through to the end.”
On his plans to take Ebonyi hawkers off the streets, the former Secretary to the State Government expressed sadness over the ugly development and vowed his government will vigorously pursue the implementation of a strategy plan he had developed while serving in office.
“It’s very sad that if you go to Ogbete main market as we speak now for instance and do a quick sampling of the wheelbarrow pushers and hawkers there, out of every 10 or every 20, more than 50% of them are from Ebonyi. If you do that in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt, the story is the same and it’s very sad.
“When I was in government, I did a design that will help take our people off the streets of Lagos. A very effective idea and the Lagos State Government was prepared to partner with us. They were prepared to provide training centres, implement, provide monitoring and evaluation of those processes for a period of six months to one year.
“We are going to run with that programme when we come on board. We cannot be a government that will sit in the Government House in Abakaliki and watch our people populate the streets of major cities hawking. We will not allow that to happen. We are deeply committed to educating our people. The moment we have the right policies, our people will return home.
“They are in the streets today because there’s nothing at home for them to do. If you go to Abakaliki today, the only investments you see are hotels and filling stations. We don’t have Foreign Direct Investments flowing into the State. We don’t have people investing in major industries. We don’t have production going on the State right now.
“Why? The environment is very hostile. Like I mentioned before, we are ranked 34 out of the 36 States of the Federation on the ease of doing business scale. What that implies is that no investor will put in his money in such an environment.
“And until we set up a policy that encourages investors to put in their money, we cannot create the desired jobs because government don’t create jobs. Investors create jobs. And investors don’t come until the environment is enabling.
“Once we come on board, we will put the right policies in place to drive that process. Our Agriculture sector is robust. But right now, we don’t have up to 300 hectares of land prepared for effective, mechanized Agriculture.
“We are committed to do 5, 000 hectares of mechanized farming and ramp it up within the next four to eight years in office. These are the things we need to do to ensure that people come in to invest in our State.”
Commenting on his plans for the education sector, Odoh said his government will prioritize education.
“Our priority number one is education, priority number two is education and priority number three is education. I’m a Professor of Geophysics. If I was not properly raised, I won’t be here today and same with my running mate. So, we must be deliberate about our education and our budget is going to increase in line with the standards of both UNICEF and the World Bank.
“If we don’t raise a critical mass of young people who will compete in the sector tomorrow, we are going to be in crisis. Today, our diaspora remittance is the least because we don’t have people competing in that space. So, we have a clear road-map on our manifesto on how we are going to drive our educational sector to move up in terms of performance and rankings.”
He concluded that his message remains that of hope for Ebonyi people, noting that the three senatorial zones in the State having had their fair shares should now emphasize merit rather than people cling to zoning to deny the people good democratic governance.
“We represent the future that our people are seeking to have in Ebonyi State. We represent the team that can make education and healthcare affordable too. And we are committed to ensuring a prosperous Ebonyi State for our people.”
Also reacting to a question, the Ebonyi APGA Deputy Governorship candidate, Dr. Nkata Chukwu while responding to a question on zoning said, “we in APGA and we as Ebonyi people have decided to zone to competence and merit because I do not know where hunger speaks a language.
“I do not know where hunger recognizes the paint of a house. And that’s why we keep saying look at the demographics, and vote people who can solve the problems we have in Ebonyi State.”
