Presidential Election Won’t Determine Winner Of Imo Gov Poll, Says Uzodimma
The Governor of Imo State, Hope Uzodimma says the result of the presidential election in Imo State won’t have any bearing on the upcoming governorship election in the state in November.
The Labour Party scored over 300,000 votes in the February 25 presidential election in Imo State compared to the 66,171 votes Uzodimma’s All Progressives Congress got in the state. However, Uzodimma said the governorship election is a different kettle of fish, saying he has all it takes to win a second term in office in the November 11 election.
Presidential election in Nigeria is not calculated or used to assess governorship election. In a presidential election, the result is called according to votes in all states of Nigeria. In the number of votes cast in Nigeria, APC won.
“In the governorship election, the result will be based on votes cast in Imo State. And until that is done nobody is going to beat his chest to tell you this is going to be the result,” Uzodimma said
Also speaking on the hypographic survey/dredging of sea route from Oguta Lake to the Atlantic Ocean which was flagged of on Thursday, the governor said the project will generate 500,000 jobs by the time it is completed.
Uzodimma though said detailed data for the all the benefits of the project cannot determined at this preliminary stage, he is confident it will create enough jobs to tackle youth unemployment.
We are at the conception stage of the project and the latest now which is the flagging-off of the project is what we call preliminary engineering. It is after the preliminary engineering that we will now do the detailed engineering by which time the necessary data required to have a high integrity detailed engineering would have been gotten.
“However, from the point of concept, it is assumed that on completion this project is capable of generating 500,000 jobs,” Uzodimma said.
“The agitation you see in the South-East, the confusion you see in Nigeria, the radicality you see among our youths can be blamed on idleness, unemployment and I am sure that the Federal Government of Nigeria under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari is interested in creating employment for our youth,” the governor added.
