Press Release: Re; who will take to the streets to protest if Uche Ogah wins?".
ABIANS IN SUPPORT OF EQUITY (8 Uwalaka Street, Umuahia...08177771405)
The unsigned publication was attributed to an unknown group called "TRUE ABIANS FOR DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVE".
Ordinarily, we should not bother to respond to an unsigned publication by a phantom group that has elected to divide our people into "true" and "false" Abians, except for the fact that the said advertorial was published by a supposed national newspaper, SUN Newspaper, that has apparently thrown good journalistic practices to the winds, in pursuit of parochial and narrow partisan inclinations of its owners and sponsors.
We have long discovered that the puerile tissues of lies was authored by agents of the desperate politicians who want to steal Ikpeazu mandate from the court.
It is ironic enough that the publication was made to support the inordinate quest of a certain Lawani Uche Ogah whose origin as a "true" Abian has repeatedly been questioned by people familiar with his ancestry, in his nefarious push to steal the mandate given to Dr Okezie Ikpeazu by the good people of Abia State and confirmed by the Supreme Court of Nigeria.
In the first place, the objective of the authors of the publication is very clear; justify stealing of Governor Ikpeazu's mandate by making the incumbent look bad and non performing as dully elected Governor of Abia State.
Fortunately for real Abians who do not fall into the category of true or false citizens, even if, but not conceding, the Governor is "non performing" the fact of it does not legally justify the attempt to steal his mandate by would be Robin Hoods of modern Abia State.
It is the people of Abia State that have the powers to decide, after 4 years, if the man they voted for in 2015 has done enough to be re-elected or otherwise. That decision is only expected to be made through the ballot box in 2019 and not earlier through brazen attempted robbery by desperate fraudsters who never contested or presented themselves to Abians for election in 2015.
For the purpose of putting the records straight we wish to respond to a few of the issues raised in the publication to avoid allowing a repeated lie to look like the truth.
Governor Okezie Ikpeazu is currently on his 20th month as Governor of Abia State, including the time he unnecessarily spent at various courts defending his mandate against sore losers of his party primaries and the general election. Within that period, it is a known fact that the Governor has taken the state to heights that seemed unimaginable since the state was created in 1991.
Within the 20 months that he has served as Governor, at least 15 roads have been reconstructed at Aba alone in an unprecedented effort at infrastructural renewal of a scale that was last witnessed in the town between 1979 and 1983 during the administration of Late Chief Sam Mbakwe as Governor of old Imo State. Additionally, more than 30 other roads are currently undergoing reconstruction at Aba.
While nobody will claim that Governor Okezie Ikpeazu has done everything there is to do to solve the road infrastructure challenges at Aba and Abia State, the following roads are there for all to see and use:
Omni link road, Adventist Road, Kamalu street, Chima Nwafo road, Umuocham road
Umuehilegbu road, Owerri road, off Okigwe road, Ochefu road, Weeks street, Owerrinta road, Ehere road, Umuola road, Ukaegbu road, Umuochela road (Isialangwa south)
Umuobiakwa Ring road, among others.
Aside from the massive drainage desilting works done at Aba, the following roads were realsphated by the current Ikpeazu administration in the commercial nerve centre of the state.
Reasphalted/potholes free roads in Aba
George street, Park road, Pound road, St micheals road, Hospital road, Jubilee road, School road, Ehi road, East street, among others.
It will therefore be disingenuous for anyone to claim that the Governor has not done anything about road infrastructure improvement in Aba. What can be said is that there are still a lot more to be done. Those living at or doing business at the already reconstructed roads will certainly dispute claims of non improvement in road infrastructure at Aba within the past 20 months while others living at those areas that are yet to done are right to demand for attention by the state government.
Suffice it to state that other parts of the state have witnessed road infrastructure improvement efforts of the equity driven Okezie administration.
Namely: Kaduna street, Abam street Awolowo street, Umuwaya Road, Road II, Federal low-cost Housing Estate Umuahia, Niger Road Umuahia.
Also, construction of Okon–Aku Bridge in Ohafia, Abiriba ring road, Uwalaka Street Link Road To Factory Road Umuahia, Ubakala Street, Warri by Club Road, Bende Road , Army check-Point, Bank Road, Abia Tower Round About Umuahia, Imo Ndinkpa Bridge in Umunneochi.
In addition to the above 35 completed projects, the P.D.P. government of Dr. Okezie Victor Ikpeazu is at different stages of work on road infrastructure in the seventeen local government areas of the state. Of special importance is the on-going construction work on the UkwuMango/Ariaria/Faulks/Brass Road that is key to Ariaria international market and MCC-Samek road.
Also to be noted is the use of world class local and international construction companies such as Setraco and Arab Contractors to execute the road projects.
On the disbursement of the Paris Club refund of N10.6b to Abia State, the State Chairman of the Nigeria Labor Congress, Comrade Uchenna Obigwe recently told newsmen that "GOVERNOR IKPEAZU SHOWED GREAT LEADERSHIP, MATURITY AND COMPASSION" . The number one labor leader in the state praised the Governor for the transparent management of the 50% allocated to payment of workers salaries and informed the world that all the Labour unions were involved in and satisfied with the management of the funds. He also repeated his previous statement that it was Labor that managed the state's bail out funds through a similar committee set up by the Governor in 2015.
It is important to recall that President Buhari instructed states that received the Paris Club refunds to ensure that 50% of the money is deployed to payment of salary and pension arrears. In response, Governor Ikpeazu on the 30th of December 2016 approached the State House of Assembly with a request to approve the appropriation of the funds as follows:
N5.3 billion on Salary arrears and pensions.
N1.7 billion on road constructions.
N2.5 billion on bridges.
N685 million on Hospitals
N200 million for street lighting.
Subsequent to the approval by the house, the Governor set up a committee made up of mostly executives and leaders of the State's Labour unions to determine how the N5.3b is to be shared. At the end of the committee's work, they requested additional N700m from the Government which has already been sourced by the Governor and provided.
It is pertinent to note that without touching the Paris Club refunds, Governor Ikpeazu paid two months of salaries in December 2016 to enable workers celebrate the Yuletide season with their friends and families and also provided free buses to help Abians living in the North and the South West to return home and celebrate with their people without bearing the brunt of the skyrocketing transportation cost.
The principal challenge with teachers salaries in the state has been the suspected over bloated wage bill arising from the high number of ghost workers which was revealed through a careful review of payroll patterns across the state. For instance, it is difficult to explain how Ohafia LGA with less schools than Abia South LGA will have more teachers and by far higher teachers wage bill.
It was in order to identify and remove suspected ghost workers that the Government decided in December to pay teachers on its payroll with crossed cheques instead of the usual direct transfers to designated accounts. That exercise has yielded over 130 uncashed cheques in one LGA already with more expected.
Apparently, the ghost workers syndrome is so deeply entrenched that even after the government used various systems and processes to reduce the wage bill by over N500m in 2015/2016 the perpetrators still managed to slip off the radar of the verification effort.
We are aware that following the completion of the work of the committee saddled with the job of disbursing the Paris Club refunds, workers salaries have been lodged at the bank for payment as decided by the committee of mostly union leaders. It is only a matter of days before workers in various MDAs and parastatals receive alert from their banks.
Furthermore, we have noted with deep concern the apparent mismanagement of certain revenue generating parastatals of the state like Abia State Polytechnic Aba, Abia State Teaching Hospital Aba and Abia Line Transport company. It beats our imagination that these parastatals that receive subventions from government in addition to internally generated revenues which they pocket are unable to pay workers salaries as at when due.
A case in point is Abia State Polytechnic which received bail out funds of Two Billion Naira from the Okezie administration in 2015 and yet has fallen behind in salary payments. On the flip side, Abia State University Uturu with less student population is able to pay salaries regularly without any outstanding.
We therefore welcome the recent announcement by Governor Okezie Ikpeazu to the effect that the non performing and apparently wasteful boards of Abia State University Teaching Hospital Aba and Abia line transport company have been sacked. We expect similar overhaul of the board and management team of Abia State Polytechnic with replacement by competent individuals who will place workers salaries and wellbeing ahead of capital projects designed to fleece the institutions.
There is nobody in Nigeria who is not aware of the current economic challenges of the country. Officially, we are in recession with revenues to the states grossly reduced. Before the emergence of the Okezie administration, statutory allocations to the state was in the range of N5b to N8b monthly. But since the coming of the government the average monthly allocation has dropped to N2b and in some months N1.6b.
The state's wage bill has been reduced to N2.4b through a determined pruning of ghost workers out of the inherited wage bill of over N3b. While the government chose not to rationalize its workforce because of the expected impact on the workforce, it should not be expected that the government will invest all the allocations of the state in payment of salaries of workers who make up less than 5% of the state's population while shirking its responsibilities to the remaining 95%.
The need to spread the limited resources of the state to serve the greatest number of people informed the decision of the government to rotate salary payment between MDAs while investing the rest in security, infrastructure improvement, agriculture, healthcare, ICT, education etc.
Indeed. If achievement in office and prudent management of limited resources is the sole consideration for deciding the pending Supreme Court case, we believe Governor Ikpeazu will be reaffirmed a second time by the Supreme Court possibly with stern warning to his opponents to stop distracting his administration with frivolous litigations.
Yet all Abians understand that their Governor's taxes were fully deducted from his salary for the period under dispute. They are therefore angry and worried that a man who NEVER presented himself to the people for election is attempting to STEAL the mandate they freely gave to the Governor.
Much more worrisome to the people of the state are the boasts of the would be power usurper that he has pocketed 4 out of the 7 judges of the Supreme Court with generous financial inducements and will "dethrone the Governor without heaven falling". While we share in the belief that power belongs to God and He alone gives it to whomsoever he pleases, it is unthinkable to expect the people of Abia State to sit idly and watch a gang of conspirators and their Robin Hood get to the seat of Abia State Governor by any other means other than the ballot box.
Yes, we will resist any attempt to throw Abia into avoidable crises after what we went through to solve the equity challenge in the state. Our confidence in God and the judiciary is unshaken and we expect those involved in the matter to respect the votes of the majority of our people and the letters and spirit of Nigeria's constitution.
There is no justification for stealing a democratic mandate given by the people and if indeed that happens Abians will respond.
Signed
FOR: ABIANS IN SUPPORT OF EQUITY
Okali Kalu Agwu
Onyinyechi Uzoma
Gift Iroegbulam
Peter Onyekwere
Ugwumba Chukwuma
Ifeanyi Uchenna Obisike
Ude Onyemaechi
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