Guber candidates blame Abia’s underdevelopment on bad governance
Four governorship candidates in Abia have blamed the socio-economic woes and gross underdevelopment of the state on bad governance.
They spoke on Tuesday at a special town hall meeting organised by the Justice, Development and Peace/Caritas Foundation for political office seekers in the state.
The event, which took place at the Mater Dei Cathedral Secretariat, Umuahia, was attended by the Governorship Candidates of the Labour Party and African Democratic Congress, Dr Alex Otti and Bishop Sunday Onuoha, respectively.
The other governorship candidates in attendance were Chief Mascot Kalu and Akym Onyekwere of the Action Peoples Party and Action Alliance, respectively.
The candidates took turn to speak on the deplorable condition of the state, citing the dilapidation in infrastructure, unimaginable unemployment and poverty rate and humongous debt profile of the state.
They attributed the situation to greed and ineptitude of past and present administrations and pledged to reverse the trend, when elected.
They also promised to revitalise the moribund industries and set up new ones through Public Private Partnership initiative.
They hoped that the measure would not only help to create jobs, reduce the unemployment rate but enhance the state internally generated revenue.
They were also unanimous on the need to give priority attention to Aba in order to enhance its commercial, industrial and investment potentials.
They specifically promised to tackle the persisting problems of bad roads and flooding by building a good drainage system and underground tunnel to properly channel the flood waters out of the city.
The governorship hopefuls further spoke on the security challenges, godfatherism and financial autonomy for local governments and government’s failure to pay salaries and pensions regularly.
They decried the non-indigene policy that saw to the sack of hundreds of state civil servants from other states by Sen. Theodore Orji’s administration.
They promised to abolish it, describing it as obnoxious, unpopular and unacceptable.
On security vote, Otti said that he would deploy part of it to empower women and youths through co-operative societies as part of his strategy to create wealth and reduce crime.
He also promised to offset the arrears of unpaid workers’ salaries and pensions within the first six months of his assumption of office, when elected.
He said that he would create a specific Ministry for Aba, saying that he would recover the beauty of the commercial city, in line with its original master plan.
Otti, who resigned as the Managing Director of the defunct Diamond Bank Plc in 2014 to run for the 2015 governorship, said that he was “passionate” and not “desperate” to govern Abia in order to rescue the state and its citizenry from underdevelopment and poverty.
“I am passionate to become governor in order to pay salary and pensions, build schools and hospitals and necessary amenities and infrastructure.
“If this is what people refer to as being desperate so be it,” he said.
He said that those who were desperate connived to rob him of his mandate in the 2015 governorship election.
He further spoke on his relationship with Orji in 2014 and dismissed as “garbage” the allegation that he assisted his administration to allegedly launder state funds.
According to him, Orji could not have denied him the governorship ticket in PDP in 2014, if there was any such transaction between them.
On his own, Onuoha said that he would use community leaders, including the traditional rulers and president generals to fight crime.
Earlier in an opening remark, the Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Umuahia, Most Rev. Michael Ukpong, said that the meeting was organised to provide a platform for the electorate to interrogate the candidates on their programmes should any of them emerge as governor.
“It is also meant to enable the candidates to know what the people are expecting from them when they elect you as their governor,” the cleric said.
He advised the Abia electorate to be circumspect and wise in deciding who to vote for in the March 11 poll.
“You should vote for the person that will help to alleviate our suffering rather than aggravate it because our condition in Abia seems to be the worst in the whole country,” he further said.
