THE HAND THAT BEARS IKPEAZ'S FIVE PILLARS, EMMA WRITES FROM UMUAHIA
Emmanuel Ugwu, in Umuahia, writes on the inauguration of
the cabinet members
time,Governor Victor Ikpeazu may not have found it easy to
assemble a workable cabinet that would translate his dream
for Abia into realty. It was evident in the long wait by the
people of Abia to see the colour of the cabinet constituted
by the fourth democratically elected governor of the state.
He needed to find and assemble the men and women to
bear the weight of the five pillars he identified as the main
thrust of his administration.
These pillars, as identified by the governor, are education,
agriculture, infrastructure, trade and commerce, as well as oil
and gas.
Implementing these goals would require people that share
thevision of the state chief executive and possess the drive
to make things happen positively.
Insinuation
After over five months in office, the governor on
Tuesday, November 10, finally inaugurated a 20-member
cabinet comprising new and old hands. The swearing-in
ceremony, which created a carnival atmosphere within and
around the premises of Michael Okpara Auditorium,
Umuahia, ended speculations surrounding the delay in
appointment of commissioners.
Though 20 commissioners were sworn-in at once, the
cabinet currently has 21 members, as the Attorney General
and Commissioner for Justice, Chief Umeh Kalu, was
already working and waiting for others to join him. He had
held the same cabinet post in the last administration and
was re-appointed and sworn-in just about two weeks after
Ikpeazu assumed office.
The opposition had been insinuating that Ikpeazu’s delay
in constituting his cabinet was due to the petition at the
tribunal challenging his victory. But this suggestion was
roundly dismissed by the governor’s special adviser, media,
Mr. Ugochukwu Emezue, who insisted that the case at
tribunal did not in any way contribute to the delay in forming
the cabinet. He reminded those linking tribunal issues with
appointment of commissioners that Ikpeazu “is not running
an interim government,” hence he could not have waited for
tribunal judgement to be delivered before naming his
cabinet.
The SSAinsisted that the governor was always sure of his
mandate and was merely consulting wide in search of the
men and women with “the requisite ability, capacity and
passion to make Abia better.”
The list of the 20 commissioners appointed by the governor
was submitted to the House of Assembly on October 16
while the tribunal verdict was delivered on November 3, a
day after the lawmakers commenced the screening of the
then commissioner- nominees.
‘Five Pillars’
Right from the onset of his administration, Ikpeazu had
identified five pillars on which he would drive development
of the state.
These are education, agriculture, infrastructure, oil and gas,
and trade and commerce. According to him, the men and
women he has assembled are expected to carry the five
pillars and not walk but run at very fast pace because “Abia
is in a hurry” to accelerate to the next level of development.
So for the members of Ikpeazu’s cabinet it would not be an
easy task to carry the heavy pillars and accelerate with the
governor.
But the state chief executive did not see it as a tall order.
He says they must work like a team to ensure success, as
no ministry and, by extension, no commissioner is superior
to the other. He reasoned that the mobility of his cabinet
would depend on their ability to be team players .
The Team
The team of commissioners is a potpourri of experienced
hands drawn from the public and private sectors. At least
seven of the commissioners were in the last administration
either as cabinet members or other positions. In addition to
the Commissioner for Justice, who retained the same post,
Uche Ihediwa, who was Commissioner for Housing in the
last government, came back to head the Ministry of Lands
and Urban Renewal while Eboh Ihekwereme was assigned to
Physical Planning/Urban Renewal.
Chief Chinwe Nwanganga served as Commissioner
for Environment in the last administration but has now found
himself in the Ministry of Sports; Mrs. Chinedu Brown was
assigned to women affairs, a ministry she had headed
before. The deputy chief of staff in the last administration,
Chief Charles Ogbonnaya,was brought into the new
administration as Commissioner for Local Government and
Chieftaincy Affairs.
For both Hon. Eziuche Ubani and Hon. Uzo Azubuike,
their appointment into the Ikpeazu cabinet represents a
transition from the legislative arm of government to the
executive. Ubani, who was in the House of Representatives
between 2007 and 2015 on behalf of the people of
Obingwa/Osisioma/Ugwunagbo federal constituency, is
saddled with the huge responsibility of reducing the
infrastructure deficit in the state, having been assigned to
the Ministry of Works.
Azubuike, after two terms in the House of Assembly, was
elected to represent Aba North and Aba South federal
constituency in the House of Representatives. At the end of
his first tenure, Azubuike wanted a renewal of mandate in
2015 but didn’t succeed at the Pool.
His job now is to make Abia leverage on its potentials in
agriculture to make its economy less dependent on oil and
also
create jobs by making agriculture attractive to the young
generation of Abians. Commissioner for Finance Obinna
Oriaku
and the Commissioner for Trade and Investments, Mrs. Kate
Enwereji Nwosu, both have backgrounds in the financial
sector.
They have onerous tasks on their hands to device ways Abia
could navigate out of the current economic nightmare and
stay
afloat without depending largely on federal allocation for
survival.
Screening
Even before they took their oaths of office, the new
commissioners were already giving the impression that they
were
aware of the ailments debilitating Abia. This much played
out
during their screening on the floor of the state legislative
chamber. One after the other, as commissioner-nominees,
they
expressed their readiness to apply the needed medications
suitable for each sector of the state’s economy to achieve
overall
healthy growth and development. Azubuike said in his years
as a
lawmaker both at the state and national levels he had
always
“complained of executive arrogance” and his appointment as
a
commissioner had, therefore, presented with the opportunity
to
correct those things “we’ve been getting wrong on the part
of the
executive. I will change them.” He assured added, “For
government to work there must be synergy between the
executive
and legislature.”
In apparent response to the muted questions as why he
should
come down to serve as commissioner after his political
career
had taken him the National Assembly, the lawmaker said he
was
desirous to get Abia moving forward, hence “even if I had
been
appointed to serve at Aba council I would have accepted.”
Ubani expressed the same sentiment when the Speaker
asked
him to talk to the state lawmakers on how Abia could
benefit
from his experience in journalism and in the National
Assembly.
“We’ve done the Abuja part and now it’s time to come home
and
help in its (Abia’s) development,” he said, adding that Abia
has
“slowed down in development”. Ubani pointed out that Abia
State
was blessed with abundant human resources in every
profession,
citing the medical profession where Abia has over 3,000
professionals most of who practice abroad or in other parts
of
Nigeria. He felt it was high time Abia professionals started
deploying their talents for the development to their home
state.
Ubani said that his appointment as commissioner “is the
first
time I’m coming to serve Abia”. He stated that having made
his
mark in journalism, travelled to dozens of countries and
served as
lawmaker at the federal level, all the experience and
knowledge
he had garnered over the years “is of no use if I can’t
leverage
on it” to contribute to the development of Abia. According
to
him, God’s Own State needs a paradigm shift for its
development, adding that what the state needs is just to
strike
the right chord as “we have the capacity to surpass the
states
used as reference points” in Nigeria.
Ogbonnaya pointedly disagreed with those saying that Abia
has
not done well in its quest for development. “We have done
very,
very well but with political will we can do better,” he said.
To him, Abia could surmount the globally induced economic
difficulties if the state could leverage on its internally
generated
revenue potentials. Ogbonnaya, who has been in government
for
many years, advocated a return to the communal system of
tax
collection using the traditional institutions.
According to him, the method yielded better dividends in the
1980s, when it was in use, than the present system of tax
collection, which is not very effective. While emphasising the
need
for people to pay taxes promptly, he also decried the
leakages in
government revenue, especially in the councils and promised
that
“tsunami will happen” in the local governments to save the
system from high level corruption and progressive decay.
Oriaku, who headed the economic team of Ikpeazu even
before
he was appointed Commissioner for Finance, painted an
ugly
picture of financial mismanagement going on in the local
government system. He told the state legislators that
“extraordinary measures” were needed to block the
leakages”.
Oriaku disclosed on the floor of the Assembly that the
Economic
Team in the course of its interventions discovered that the
Auditor-general of local governments was “taking N8 million
every
month outside his salary” while the Local Government
Commission was taking N10 million from council
allocations.
He
said with an over-bloated monthly wage bill of N900 million
and
the illegal deductions nothing much would be left out of a
N1.5
billion allocation to enable the local governments embark on
development projects. “We must have that political will to
take
decisions,” he said. “If we reduce the local government
wage bill
to something that is manageable, I think the local
governments
would have money to do other things.”
Synergy
No doubt, the commissioners have got their hands full in
bearing
the pillars that would take Abia to higher levels of
development
as envisaged by Ikpeazu. At a press briefing on the
outcome of
the maiden meeting of the state executive council, the
Commissioner for Information, Mr. Bonnie Iwuoha, said that
the
governor had asked them to work as a team and synergise
in
order to achieve the set goal. He stated that solo acting
and
individualistic tendencies would be done away with in the
running
of government affairs.
Illustrating how the governor expected his commissioners to
synergise, Iwuoha explained that nothing stopped an
engineer in a
different ministry, for instance, from offering professional
advice
to the Commissioner for Works on how best to execute
government’s road projects.
The commissioners acknowledged that they had a tough job
to
do. According to Ubani, “It’s going to be very challenging
given
the challenges facing the state – infrastructure, expanding
revenue base, improving education, among others.” But he
assured that they were equal to the task, saying, “It is only a
man
that is ready to work who can put together the kind of team
assembled by Governor Ikpeazu.”
The Commissioner for Transport, Mrs. Nnenna Obewu
Onwuka,
was equally upbeat on the capability of the Ikpeazu team to
do
well for Abia people. “The governor is an action governor
and we
will just have to follow suit. We will work very hard to deliver
Abia’s new face,” she said.
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