By Chesa Chesa
The 2023 Governorship candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in Abia State, Professor Gregory Ibeh, says he has invested so much in material and human resources into Abia to guarantee his unflinching commitment to rescuing the “most abandoned State” if he is elected next year.
His assurance came at the weekend when he featured as guest of a virtual interview session hosted by Abia Media Forum (AMF) comprising journalists from the State.
Against the background of complaints from several quarters about the current state of governance in the State, Prof. Ibeh told the journalists he remained the most qualified to succeed Okezie Ikpeazu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and make Abia a model State in Nigeria.
The APGA candidate, who is alao the founder of Gregory University, Uturu, Abia State, declared that “none of my opponents in the 2023 election has my kind of pedigree. None of them has the level of investment I have in Abia State, and they know it.
“I am the highest employer of labour in the State. I have more than one 1,000 academic and non-academic staff, as well as students numbering over 3,000.”
Prof Ibeh, an international developmental entrepreneur and consultant to global firms and governments, recalled his selfless and patriotic interventions to boost health infrastructure in Abia, including support for Abia State University Teaching Hospital al(ABSUTH) despite obstacles he faced from the State government.
“In 2003, they asked me for money to complete ABSUTH in Aba; I wired N160 million to help complete the project before the institution got the accreditation for medicine. Up until this moment, the government of Abia State is still indebted to me.
“I have upgraded the Amachara Hospital in Umuahia. At the FMC Umuahia, I am building hostels there to accommodate our clinical scholars. We have lost accreditation for medicine at ABSUTH, but ours at Gregory University is still on.
“I invested hugely during the COVID-19 pandemic, to the extent that I expected the Governor to write a personal letter thanking me, but he never did. Now I am building the 1,000-bed teaching hospital at Ezinnachi, along the expressway”, he stated.
Still on the pandemic, he said that “during the Covid-19, I donated 850 bags of rice, three ambulances, testing equipment for Covid because I was the supplier of these machines for NCDC.
“By the time Covid ended, or about ending, hunger was still biting; and they had not shared the budgeted food. I embarked on sharing food in every local government in Abia State with the university buses. I fumigated every market in Abia, with my university workers.”
Prof. Ibeh explained that he felt betrayed by his former party, the PDP, on which platform he had earlier tried to secure a governorship ticket in 2014, which is why he opted to pitch his tent with APGA.
He recalled that the Governor had then asked him to wait because he was still a young man, and needed to first nurture his newly established Gregory University.
“When it came to 2022, I came out again to run but the party denied me the opportunity so I moved to APGA.
“Since I joined APGA I have embarked on what I started in 1991, medical outreach in all the local government areas.
“I commenced on the surgeries, I have treated our brothers and sisters, I have given out 16,000 eye glasses; I have over 400 Abians on scholarship from the 17 local governments in the university. My buses run free transport in the State”, he revealed.
Further declaring that his blueprint for governance bestrides his pedigree in business and academics, Prof. Ibeh stated that having experienced poverty himself and seen what other less privileged go through, his allegiance is only to the people of Abia State.
He pledged to decentralise governance in Abia and deploy modern technology in which he is tested and trusted from experience he garnered over the years working with Israeli entrepreneurs and government.
“I am not coming into the system on the back of anybody godfather, to deny Abians their right. Nobody is propping me up. None of the persons aspiring to lead Abia is better placed than me.
“At 58, my family and I are accomplished already. So there’s nothing else I want to do than to serve my people, which is why I am offering myself for service as Governor of Abia State”, he added.
