NASS Members Running for Guber are Hustlers

— Barr. Obunike Ohaegbu, Fmr. Federal Commissioner Public Complaints Commission

DATE Tue, Jul 9, 2019, 5:47 AM

The Ezesinachi N’ Ukpor and former Federal Commissioner, Public Complaints Commission Dara (Barr.) Obunike Ohaegbu, a Lawyer and PDP Chieftain has taken the Government of Anambra State to task in the areas of health, education, agriculture, roads and other critical sectors. He did not only criticize, he also proffered solutions to these nagging challenges. Vintage Times Editor Don Peter Okoro was among the select Journalists he interacted with.

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Sir What Is Your Take On The State of Affairs In Anambra State?

At all times, wherever you find yourself or whatever position you find yourself, there will always be room for improvement, but in Anambra, we have a bigger challenge because it is like nothing is happening in critical areas. A lot of investments have been made but nothing is visible. For instance, let me draw your attention to the health sector. The secondary health care in Anambra State is almost non-existent. It will not be wrong to say that the Anambra State Government is not involved in the health sector in Anambra State. That is why if you come to Anambra State, you see a lot of Private Hospitals. We supposedly have over 500 Primary Health Centres in Anambra State but unfortunately, none of them can be classified as Health Centre in the proper definition of that.

General Hospitals that are supposed to be the Secondary Health institutions are not better either. We have about 32 General Hospitals; you will be shocked to know that almost all of them are not functioning. The situation is that we have Medical Doctors appointed as CMDs and they run those Hospitals as sole Administrators. They function as sole Administrators; they only go to those Hospitals on their clinical days. The implication is that once the Head is not there, nothing happens.

I have done my research; you will be surprised that the Doctors in Anambra State, as at today, are the least paid in the whole Federation. So, those who are not well paid are not expected to do any better. In most hospitals, they do not have supporting staff. So, a Medical Doctor who is in charge of the hospital probably does not have a cleaner. That is why most General Hospitals, including Ukpor General Hospital is over grown with weeds. Of course, almost 70% of the General Hospitals in Anambra State were built by the host communities but taken over by the State, but, of course, that is not an excuse. The Abuja Declaration 2001 made it mandatory that we shall have 15% allocation to the Health Sector. Yet, what they have been appropriated in the last few years is about 3% and the actual releases should be about 1.5%. Probably, they just pay the meager salaries.

What we should do in Anambra State is to declare a State of Emergency in the Health Sector and every available fund should be channeled towards revitalizing the Health Sector in the State. It is so shocking some Local Governments in Anambra State do not have Secondary Health Institutions. We have 21 Local Government Areas, out of that, 5 of them do not have any General Hospital. You cannot be surprised because you know Nnewi for one does not have a General Hospital. And Nnewi town is arguably the most populous community in Anambra South Senatorial Zone. I am sure the Government makes a sizeable percentage of the State’s IGR from Nnewi but plays no role whatsoever in the health of the people who live in Nnewi and you run a Government. Can you imagine that?

You may not believe it; Onitsha South does not have a General Hospital. There is one in Onitsha North, so you can imagine the kind of pressures in Onitsha General Hospital. Anambra West does not have a General Hospital. Ayamelum does not have a General Hospital; Oyi does not have a General Hospital. What will it cost for the State Government to say in the next 6 months, all investments should be in the Health Sector? That is the only way you can make any meaningful impact there, rejig the management. That is the easiest way to impact positively on the lives of Ndi Anambra.

In education, you have something almost similar, but the good thing in the education sector is that a lot of investments were made during the government of Mr. Peter Obi. Literally, Gov Obi declared State of Emergency in the Education Sector. If you check the records, Anambra used to come 1st in WAEC and others for two, three consecutive years, but presently has stepped down to 2nd In WAEC and 6th In NECO. It is not an improvement. Governance is not about road construction, that is important, but, there are things that cannot be joked with.

Initially I was thinking of how National Health Insurance should be implemented in Anambra State where pensioners, civil servants, businessmen, rural women, children, in fact everybody should have access to free Medicare, but I discovered that you cannot have access to something that is not even in existence. You take a trip to the Federal Medical Institution in Nnewi, you see people who are there because of Malaria, typhoid and other minor sicknesses that should have been taken care of by the 592 Primary Health Centers in the State out of which 32 are supposedly in Nnewi town and 98 in the old Nnewi LGA.

I am really concerned that we are not getting so many things right. When I think about what our people pass through in the project Nigeria. I am always concerned when people are maltreated because they are Igbos in Lagos and other cities outside the Igboland. These are people who have no challenges paying their taxes, levies and bills. They go to slumps invest their billions to develop the place, but when it gets to the point of exercising their rights on who is going to govern them, they will be told that they are not from there. I could remember how Okota was when I visited Lagos after my junior WAEC in 1989. Can you imagine how much Ndi Igbo invested to develop the area but they cannot exercise their constitutionally guaranteed franchise in the area. So, the Governors of Ndi igbo, especially the Governor of Anambra State should make the State to be conducive for Ndi Igbo to do business. A lot of multi billion naira businessmen relocated their business head offices from Nnewi to Lagos. Anambra State should have a deliberate policy targeted at getting them back and now is the right time.

When I was growing up, I could remember people from Cameroon, Gongola (present Adamawa and Taraba)and all parts of Nigeria and West Africa were coming to Nnewi and Onitsha to buy their products. As a student in UNIZIK, anytime from 12:00 noon, you will see Peugeot wagons/911 trucks fully loaded heading to the North. None of that is happening now. We should ask ourselves that basic question. These are fundamental issues that require some deliberate actions of the State government in making Anambra State great again. Peter Obi laid the required foundation, unfortunately, his successor has failed to build on what he met on ground.

What Is Responsible For This?

What is responsible is the decay in infrastructure and security. You cannot access Onitsha from Awka, because of the state of the road. I know people will quickly say that the road is a federal road but they will forget that people did ten lanes from Bridge Head to Onitsha. It is a Federal Road but it was convenient for them to build three monuments within 1kilometre of each other in Awka and celebrate them as flyovers

BUT IT REMAINS A FEDERAL ROAD

That is where you start having problems when you say this is for Federal, this is for State. Anything that is in your State and is being enjoyed by your people; you should make effort to see that it is properly taken care of. You cannot sit back in the comfort of your room and expect things to happen. And that is why as a State, we need to get connected to the National Grid Politically, by belonging to a National Political Party. Of course as a member of PDP, I will not advocate for people to join APC. We need to get connected. And we have only two major Political Parties in Nigeria, one is PDP the other is APC. And my advice is that Anambra should join PDP. Check all the States we have in the Federation, it is only Anambra State that is neither in PDP nor APC. What this means is that you can hardly get audience at the National level.

The other day I was embarrassed when our Governor visited the President. All the handlers and aides of the Governor were on the social media to celebrate the Governor’s “achievement”. Assuming he was a PDP Governor, the APC President at all times would be happy to receive him. He will be happy to have audience with him. You should have people you interact with. I think in less than two years from now, Anambra would have another opportunity of taking another decision, but before then, we should start thinking of things we are expected to do. We should understand ourselves.

A lot of things should be done in education; if you look at the schools we have about 1061 public primary schools in the State in addition to the private schools. Government owns 355 out of the 1061 while 706 belongs to the mission (Catholics 436 while Anglicans 272), but in the ones owned by the government especially in the rural areas have about two teachers while the rest were employed by the parents through the PTA. Almost known of them has non-tutorial staffs except in the schools the PTAs employed gatemen. The Rural/Urban disparities are shocking. It is unbelievable what you have on ground.

In the 2016/2017 academic session, we had 9423 teachers (421males and 9002 Females) in the entire 1061 primary schools in Anambra with about 309,440 pupils, you find out that above 70% of the teachers are in the urban areas. In the 2017/2018 Academic Session, the story was almost the same. The teachers were 9229 but unfortunately, the males were 212 while females were 9017. It is obvious that a lot has to be done to make the teaching profession in Anambra State more attractive because even in the number of pupils, we have more males than females but the ratio of male to female in the teaching profession is 1:43. The disparity is scary. In the same 2017/2018 Academic Session, we had 307112 pupils out of which males were 157,896 while females were 149,216.

As I mentioned earlier, most of those qualified Teachers are in urban areas. In most areas in the rural areas you have only 2 or 3 teachers in a school. The other ones you see teaching the pupils are employed by the parents or mission. It is an aberration, but everybody knows that is happening in Anambra. In a lot of schools in the rural areas, it is the parents who have to cater and make sure that their kids are in schools, who ordinarily should have access to free education in Anambra State but are now being compelled to make sure that Teachers are paid and when they are paid, thereby bothering parents with what should be one of the basic responsibilities of the State Government.

What Do You Think Is The Cause Of All These. Is It Lack Of Funds Or Incompetence?

Well incompetence is too strong a word, but I think it has to do with the challenge of putting priorities right. We do not focus on areas we should look at. If you look at agriculture for instance, there is nothing there. As we speak today the Governor of Anambra State His Excellency Chief Dr. Willie Obiano, Akpokuedike of Aguleri is from Anambra North. What can you say he has done, that can outlive his administration in terms of empowering the people of Anambra North?

On September 26^th, 2015 when the Governor had Stakeholders Engagement at the Lodge in Amawbia, he informed the world that the government had attracted over $660m for Agriculture in Anambra State and MOUs have been signed for the Investments in Agriculture in the State. Three years after, go to the Ministry of Agriculture and ask them question on the location of the Investments and they will make you will look stupid. Where are those investments and interventions? Yes you could say one or two persons you used to know in Aguleri who were managing to survive are now multi billionaires. Such billions are sustainable, because this is the money you probably get from the Government one way or the other. There is no structure on ground to make that money sustainable. And nothing creates job more than agriculture. Can you tell me of any well mechanized agricultural farm anywhere in Anambra State as we speak? None of those things you hear that are being done is on ground. I have visited the Ministry of Agriculture severally and I have not seen any. Nobody has given me the location of where these investments are. Let me tell you what is happening, one of my brothers from Amichi here, has a factory where he processes and packages rice and all that. He is a private businessman; he obviously sources his rice grains from anywhere and everywhere. I patronize and buy rice from him, but I know that most of that rice is from kebbi and other neighboring States like Benue. Where in Anambra do you find the rice that sustains the factory and others in the State?

What about the Exportation of Vegetable (Ugu)?

Of course, I know about those ones; they exist only on the pages of Newspaper. I have tried to find out where that is being done. I have been to the Ministry of Agriculture to get information and we have not been able to get that. We will be happy if anybody can assist us. I challenge anyone that knows the location of the farms to assist me with the address.

It was said that Vegetable (Ugu) Worth 2.5 Billion naira Was Exported The Other Day?

Where you got such Ugu, people should know. At least the Ministry of Agriculture should know. I challenge the Ministry of Agriculture of Anambra State to show us where those things are being found. I have hired consultants to find out. I have consulted retired civil servants from those Ministries, but nobody seems to know what is going on probably, except the Governor and his social media handlers.

Sir, the Obiano Led APGA Government Said They Have Zoned The Governorship To Anambra South, What Is Your Take?

There could be problem with somebody introducing something and somebody implementing it. I could remember that in the National Conference of 1994/95 the position of Anambra as articulated by the late Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu and projected by Dr. Alex Ekwueme was that for the sake of equity that the Governorship should rotate among the three senatorial zones. That was the platform on which they wanted to build zoning at the Federal level which I know if it had been implemented at that time, the Igbos would have gotten their turn now. In the last election I was the Secretary of Anambra Union, the Convener was Prof. ABC Nwosu, a lot of prominent Ndi-Anambra were involved. The position of the Anambra Union was that it is the turn of Anambra North to complete their term and they should not be interrupted. On that basis, a lot of Ndi-Anambra South people who wanted to show interest were persuaded to allow Anambra North to complete their 4 years. On that basis, we made those from Anambra North who were going to run for the Governorship to make commitment that they were going to run for only four years. A lot of them that ran on the platform of P.D.P accepted that.

After the primaries, the candidate of the party, Oseloka Obaze, OHO adopted that and campaigned on the basis of that and spoke to a lot of Ndi-Anambra that he was going to be there for four years to complete the tenure of Anambra North, after which it will be the turn of Anambra South. It was not by coincidence that APC, P.D.P and APGA had their candidates from Anambra-North. Of course, during that period, there were people; I won’t want to call them renegades who tried to challenge that. And there will always be such people who would be opposed to that, but majority of Ndi-Anambra know or believe that there is zoning in Anambra state and we can’t run away from it at this point.

And let me warn that any political party that picks a candidate outside Anambra South has cut off an entire zone and secondly has cut off the people who believe that zoning is good for Ndi-Anambra. Thirdly you have equally cut off people who believe that it should be their turn after this. The only party that has made a categorical Statement that their candidate is coming from Anambra South is APGA. So any other party that wants to win election should have their candidate from Anambra South. In fact, the denial of zoning in Anambra-State is unfortunate.

CAN YOU CONFIRM THE RUMOURS THAT SOME MEMBERS OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY ARE RUNNING FOR ANAMBRA GUBER?

I do not believe that the people who were inaugurated two weeks ago are running for the Anambra State Governorship. It would be deceitful for any of them to do so. They just campaigned for a job which duration is four years. They cannot abandon such job to seek for another one. In any event, the electorates would suffer for such alleged ambition. You campaigned on the basis that you are a ranking member and convinced the people that it would not be in their interest for them to elect a fresh hand and you turn around to abandon the people to the same fresh hands? Or you campaigned that you are the only one that can give the people the required strong voice and only to abandon them to the same people you made them vote against? It would amount to hustling for any of the NASS Members to abandon his/her duties in Abuja to start campaigning for the Anambra Guber. I can tell you for free that all the people representing Anambra in the National Assembly are respectable gentlemen and ladies. They are not hustlers.

I have worked closely with the National Assembly for at least 13 years. The moment anyone in the NASS indicates interest in the State Guber his/her Constituency suffers. The little envelop for projects he would get for representing the Constituency would now be shared for the State. He will hire aides from outside his Constituency and that leads to several other distractions from his/her Constituency. It is never healthy for his/her Constituency. If the person wins, the Constituency would have no representative until INEC conducts a bye election. Morally, it is wrong for anyone to seek for a NASS position primarily to be able to seek for the gubernatorial ambition. That would amount to deceit and I know our representatives are not deceitful. Check the records. Constituencies suffer for the gubernatorial ambitions of their representatives. If you said you are the best to attract project to Ndi Anambra from Abuja, it is better you focus on that. There is nothing wrong if we get a Speaker or a Senate President. Our people should learn to be patient and focused.

One final Question, Do You Have a Guber Ambition? Because it is your turn and you are eminently qualified

From what you said, I have looked at the educational qualification, I am qualified. I have also looked at the age qualification, I am qualified. I have served as the C.E.O of a Federal Agency and worked very closely with the National Assembly. So why not if the time comes and I notice that some key people in Anambra have confidence in me. Why not, I will offer myself as one of the people to be considered for that position.