‘Why PDP will retain Enugu’

The Director of Communications of Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi Campaign Organisation, Nana Ogbodo, spoke with CHRIS ORJI on the governor’s second term bid and other issues.

What is Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi’s selling point in his quest for a second term?

They are legion. I am proud to say that the governor has lifted the souls of many forgotten communities in the state who are having a lease of unexpected new life. He has opened up many forgotten roads by extending road construction beyond the city of Enugu. Nsukka the University town is now wearing a fantastic new look. The people of Isi Uzo can now afford to wear white garments during the dry season without been covered by the Eha-Anufu powder and also go home even during the rainy season as a result of Governor Ugwuanyi’s uncommon thoughtfulness. The long-abandoned bridge that had arrested development in the whole of the area, and the all-important Eha-Amufu road have been constructed. The people of Ubahu, Owo, Amechi Idodo, etc, can now travel to their local government headquarters without having to pass through four other local governments because Governor Ugwuanyi built bridges and the road to the council headquarters.  The Amuri people would continually sing Gburu Gburu for rescuing them from the dark ages of sinister abandonment. The Governor has revolutionized the art of even-spread of amenities such that anywhere you are in Enugu State today, you cannot escape his eyes literally speaking because his achievements would inevitably stare at you! He stares at you by the quantum of infrastructure he has unleashed on the state. In the 460 communities in Enugu State, there is none of them that is not currently executing one project or the other of their specific choices at the behest of the governor’s N10 Million Naira grant. In the Enugu metropolis, we cannot forget such roads like Airport Roundabout-Orie Emene-St. Patrick-Eke Obinagu Road; the Orie Emene-Adoration Ground Road; Edward Nnaji Street-Ogwuagor Road; Amaetiti-Ugboye, Abakpa Nike etc, all in Enugu East local government Area; or the New Market-Miliken Hill-Ngwo -9th Mile Corner Road; Ibuzor Street Independence Layout; New Market-Camp 1 and Extension etc, all in Enugu North Local Government Area; or the Dualization of Opi-Nsukka road; Opi-Obollo Afor Road; Post Office Roundabout-Odenigbo-Ogurugu-Ikenga Hotels etc, all in Nsukka Local Government Area, or the Ohom Orba-Nkwo-Orba Market Road, Obolo Eke Junction-Agala-Okpaligbo, etc.

But, beyond these physical infrastructure, he has lowered the political temperature in the state and instituted an atmosphere of peace never before experienced in the state; introduced a new political culture founded in ecumenism whereof, notwithstanding your political persuasion, you are recognized for who you are and accorded your due. Enugu is today the most peaceful state in the country, arguably the only place the rich as well as the poor can sleep with their two eyes well closed. But, even more so, he has envisioned a life after oil money and thus has institutionalised the creative capacity for Enugu to sustain on the internally generated revenue. Enugu is today ranked only second in the country after Lagos on the World Bank index on Ease of Doing Business. All these are the necessary conducive environment for the sustainability of the state beyond oil. On the social plain, it is certainly not an accident that Rangers International football club rose from 35 years of abject hopelessness to become double champions in a space of only two years! Are you surprised that Governor Ugwuanyi is the Sun Newspaper Governor-of-the year 2018? It takes passion and untrammeled vision to achieve all these in so short a period.

But, has the governor met the standard set by his predecessors in relation to infrastructural development?

It would be naïve to assume that everyone in Enugu would go the way of Gov. Ugwuanyi, or even the PDP as a party. Don’t forget that what we are practicing is “partisan politics,” which is a game based purely on party lines. I therefore, do not envisage a situation where a member of APGA or indeed any of the whopping number of 86 registered political parties whose duty ordinarily is to raise a red flag against the PDP in order to gain ascendancy would accord the PDP an acclaim. In politics, those who are greedy of applause would hardly give a cheer to an opponent. It may however, be pedestrian for me to begin to rehash Ugwuanyi’s developmental strides again in this interview. But, because you live in Enugu, there is hardly any much I know that you may not know either. The facts speak for themselves. Have you imagined how much Governor Ugwuanyi has labored to recreate the essence of governance beyond such simplistic factors like reticulation of water or the like? How does one for instance, explain the imperviousness in governance such that, notwithstanding the unparalleled financial windfall that defined the previous administrations in the state, pensioners were been owed their gratuities dating back to 2001? Ditto the arrears of pensions and salaries. Governor Ugwuanyi, even in this dreary season of recession in the economy and consequent cash crunch, whereby almost all his colleague governors employed any money that comes their way for other uses, was able to eschew the pressure of other contending issues and clear all the arrears of salaries owed the civil servants in the state; and brought gratuities payment up by so many years! This is a man filled with compassion such that even in his private life, he has never left any man poorer than he met him and who with, there are no broken promises! Governor Ugwuanyi has excelled in both the tangible and intangible indexes of governance, the physical and emotional, the temporal and spiritual!

Can the governor beat the APC candidate, Ayogu Eze, in next year’s election?

I would like to be circumspect on the issue of who actually is the governorship candidate of the APC in the state because the matter is still before the courts and therefore remains subjudice. But talking hypothetically, as a resident of Enugu, do you actually see Senator Ayogu Eze as a veritable threat to the second term ambition of His Excellency, Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi? Where are his structures for the supposed battle? He came into Enugu barely two months ago since 2015, and it speaks volume to imagine that of all her supposed membership, it is the man who joined the party barely one month before the primaries that would emerge as the governorship candidate of a party that wishes to be taken seriously in the state. It shows desperation, driven essentially by an expediency to clutch at any available straw. The APC may indeed be the party at the centre, but they are hardly present yet in Enugu state. This is not 2007 when some people knew the results of elections days before the Election Day. Even President Muhamadu Buhari knows this much as could be gleaned from the intensity of his campaigns. But here in Enugu some people are docile, apparently confused, and only revel in the wishful but infantile bogey of the supposed magical wand of a federal might. The APC in the state is at best still a fledging political party made up essentially of some seemingly irreconcilable emergency godfathers that are perpetually at war with each other. As at now, we do not know who actually the chairman of the party in the state is, neither do we actually know their governorship candidate. It still remains a rope of sands and a maze in a maze.

Even going further, it must not be forgotten that this is not the first time Ayogu and Governor Ugwuanyi would be squaring up against each other.

In 2015, Senator Ayogu, as a serving senator, who held the powerful position as the Chairman of the Committee on Works, and even more so, as a very close ally of the then President Goodluck Jonathan seemed to have had a better momentum, yet Governor Ugwuanyi was able to reduce all these to ordinary and triumph at the 2015 PDP governorship primaries. He pursued the case up to the Supreme Court, and the rest as they say, is now history. I reckon with the fact that one could sometimes simply be emotional about a certain defeat, but I think the most compelling issue that should bother every right-thinking indigene of the state should be how to sustain the uncommon milestones already achieved by this administration in making Enugu sustain beyond monthly allocation from Abuja.

There is also this suggestion that this administration has not invested in industries that can create employment and generate further revenues for the state.

It is indeed interesting how much comfortable some people can still afford to live in the past. It is anachronistic to still expect governments to be “building” industries by sheer presence of concrete bricks and some machines. Experience has thought us that this paradigm of development is wasteful both in time and space.