A Governorship Aspirant of Abia State under the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, Etigwe Uwa SAN has vowed to upgrade the industrial standard of the state and empower youths.
The governorship aspirant stated this in Abuja on Friday after undergoing a screening exercise by the political party. He said that Abia State is blessed with numerous resources, hence the need for a leader who will harness such resources for economic development.
On how he hopes to solve the problem of insecurity, the Senior Advocate of Nigeria said that he would empower the youths of the state with employment, adding that with meaningful engagement, young people would not indulge in crime.
He said, “I have a plan for Abia, and the first thing I’d like to say is that Abia is blessed with huge resources. The entrepreneurial power in Abia is so much. What Abia needs is leadership that will harness the resources of the state and turn the state into one of the greatest economies in Nigeria, perhaps in west Africa.
“The garment and footwear industry in Abia is one that we can maximise its potential. We can turn that industry into an outsourcing destination for most designers in the world so that the highly sophisticated and highly developed market does not produce only for the Nigerian market of say 20, 30 or 200 million people, they should be producing for the world.
“The issue of insecurity has to be dealt with, we are not going to be reinventing the will, so I intend to deal with the security issues in the state by dealing with manpower development, by trying to ensure that there is employment, by trying to ensure that we have a social safety net that takes care of people who have nothing at all.
“If somebody is gainfully employed, the chances are that he will not go into the kind of things that are creating insecurity. And if you remember there was a time when we had similar issues in other parts of the country, there is a way it was dealt with.”
