Just last week while we are still in a celebration mood as Gov. Ugwuanyi reclaimed Rangers International FC lost glory by winning the federation cup after 35 years – beating Kano Pillars in Asaba, I read with a mixture of amusement and sadness the article written by the gubernatorial candidate of the United Progressive Party (UPP), Ekene Uzodinma, about Gov. Ugwuanyi titled: “Governor Ugwuanyi’s Conspiracy Against Ndi Enugu”. While one would have expected the utterly green-horned fellow to learn the subtle art of selling himself, he has been riding on the incumbent’s name and fame to get to his destination.
Without mincing words, it is clear that the UPP has made an error in electing Uzodinma to be its flag-bearer in next year’s guber election. How it made such an error when it should have taken a great first step is something the party may not recover from – especially, given the trouncing it is going to take at the polls. It cannot win this race with a horse shot in the foot; one that would rather neigh than race.
It may interest Uzodinma to know that intelligent people don’t attack personalities; they stay on the discourse and reel out facts or contradictions on rejoinders like this. Why he dedicated a huge portion of the article to lie is another issue not interesting enough to delve into.
It is an established fact that payment of salaries is a thing every reasonable governor/government does as an achievement or not, one just needs to look at APC states like Adamawa, Kogi, Osun and Bauchi to make sense of that. Even toddlers in the state know that Governor Ugwuanyi has done for the state a 100 times more than many who came before him.
Uzodinma actually thinks he means well for the state with his propagandist rants. He should ask the APC, the party in power now, how that worked for it after the first three and half years of an unprecedented baptism of fire – which it spent blaming a government which gave and did more for Nigerians than it would ever do. That singular notion convinced me that Uzodinma has long lost his faculty of reasoning, he is not in the race to win it (but to cause more chaos) and needs to see a psychiatrist if really he is an indigene of the state. How does one appraise a man who has never rolled out one blueprint to make things work (if he wins) but has spent the last few weeks since his emergence making a mess of another’s legacies?
Despite the big political witch-hunt and distractions from ingrates like Uzodinma and his ilk, Gov. Ugwuanyi has not lost focus of the essence of governance, especially as it concerns improving the lives of the citizenry by ensuring that he delivers on infrastructural development that will affect the people (directly and indirectly).
For instance, Ugwuanyi has been commended for achieving several things much more than all his predecessors put together. One is his ability to dismantle the menace and excesses of herdsmen in the state, restoring peace (an issue which once portrayed the state in a negative light).
Ugwuanyi has constructed over 2000 kilometres of road networks around the state, upgraded hospitals, constructed/renovated schools, entrenched a policy of youth/women empowerment, began the turn-around in education, started work on the water reticulation project in the metropolis etc.
Even in the midst of the economic crunch and technical recession, Ugwuanyi has improved the living conditions of Ndi Enugu through laudable and human development-oriented projects.
While Uzodinma is the candidate of a party (that must be regretting its decision now, I must add) and a man who needs not be prodded to give in to a litany of grammatical terms, he needs to write less and observe more. More importantly, he needs to understand that politics is a game of calculation and interests and, rather than sitting on his back, criticizing and writing ‘great’ rhetorics, he needs to work towards outmaneuvering the manipulators (if there are any).
Uzodinma’s hands wrote without his brain, as he enumerated all Ugwuanyi has done wrong. Great; let us say Ugwaunyi did all those wrongs (but, of course, he did not). How about the ones he got right? For example, the N100,000 seed money doled out to the 750 beneficiaries of the skills acquisition programme under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – after they completed their one-year, free vocational training in focal areas such as tailoring, hair-dressing, barbing and aluminum works apprenticeship, the 5-million naira autonomous development fund across all the autonomous communities in Enugu State, including Uzodinma’s community.
Ugwuanyi’s government considers health to be the bread of the people of Enugu and his administration showed this with its release of N12.4 million for the anti-measles campaign in the state – a move which brought the World Health Organisation to the state to commend him for his initiative. This is besides other interventions in health.
In July, the administration of Ugwuanyi released the sum of N400, 238,237 as its counterpart fund payment to the state’s Rural Access and Mobility Project (RAMP II) for rural projects in the state (an initiative championed by the partnership between the World Bank, French Development Agency, as well as the Enugu and Federal governments), in order to improve the ease of transportation and bring sustained access to the rural population through rehabilitation and maintenance of key rural roads in selected states in the country.
In February 2018, Ugwuanyi’s administration awarded contracts for the construction of six major roads across the state at the sum of N2.4 billion, covering the Eha-Amufu-Nkalagu federal road at Isi-Uzo Local Government Area, which has been in a deplorable condition. Other roads included the extension of the Agbani-Afor Amurri road; the extension of Ituku road; the construction of Ogonogoeji Ndi Agu Akpugo road (Atavu Bailey Bridge –Afor Onovo); the construction of 42 metre span Bailey bridge and road works across River Nyama to Amechi-linking Umuogo and Umuagba Amechi Uno/ Obinagu community, all in Nkanu West L.G.A. Uzodinma’s selfishness shines through here; just because he and his handlers/master did not get any of the contracts does not mean that the people of Enugu did not benefit or that the projects were left at sea.
On the modest achievements of the government in economic development, one is impressed to note that the far reaching reforms initiated by Governor Ugwuanyi’s administration in the state’s Internal Revenue Service saw to the significant increase in the internally-generated revenue (IGR), from N14 billion in 2016 to N18.4 billion in the first 10 months of 2017. On infrastructure, which is the focal point of the government, it is pertinent to note that irrespective of the bleak economic realities in the country, the administration has been able to execute verifiable massive road projects both in the urban and rural areas across the state in just first two years, covering over 141 kilometers of intra and inter-state roads – an unbeatable feat in the annals of the state. It has also recorded tremendous feat in the maintenance of infrastructure built by past administrations, such as failed portions of roads, street and traffic lights, notwithstanding different cannibalisation suffered in the hands of vandals. For more effective operation of street lights in Enugu, the present administration recently procured 25-unit 60 KVA generating sets, which are being installed to replace the aged ones in Enugu metropolis as well as fresh installation in the university town of Nsukka. This was in addition to the 10 units of 200 KVA generators earlier procured to replace the ones that had been in use for over seven years.
What is Uzodinma actually ranting about? How did the UPP shoot itself in the leg by settling for a scribe to vie for the seat of the governor of a state as serious as ours? He is such a joke, a poor excuse for a candidate. How can he be a great governor when he has no blue-print and can’t even tell the people who have got great listening ears how he hopes to change their fortunes if (ever) he becomes governor?
Uzodinma must understand that politics is not an endeavour for children who, armed with a pen and paper and media connections, think that they can write their way into office. If he loves writing, he should vacate his party’s ticket for another who is an action person while he, clearly, a thought leader, enjoys all the fun with his pen. How about that?
We need serious people to give other serious people a fight for their money’s worth. No one needs a propagandist who has got a faint pen to write us all into delirium when we need him to tell us how he can make us all beneficiaries of the commonwealth.
Until Uzodinma is ready to show himself to be a serious fellow worth his salt and worthy of our vote, he needs to take a chill-pill and stop organising his campaigns on social media. Governance is serious business and those who take part in it must be serious fellows.
Gov. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi is God’s anointed for the building of a new Enugu State. Touch not the anointed and do the prophet no harm. Enugu State is in the Hands of God.
