*Describes Uzodimma as a failed governor
*Says he’ll prioritise education, security, health, infrastructure if voted into office
The Governorship candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in Imo State, Sen. Athan Nneji Achonu, granted interview recently to some Editors on his plans for the state if elected governor of the state. He also spoke on his political trajectory, insisting that grassroots development and improvement in the overall security and welbeing of the citizenry should be the primary purpose of those in government. Excerpts of the interview by MALACHY UZENDU and OKEY MUOGBO
On being a placeholder for Gov. Uzodinma?
If I’m a journalist and they say somebody is a placeholder for the governor, it is my job to investigate the veracity of that claim. If Labour Party is said to be the party to beat in Imo State and Igboland generally and I do a poll to try to guage the feelings of the electorates to see where they are leaning towards, honestly I will expect the Labour Party’s Governorship Candidate who wins the primary of his party to at least collect $100 million to sell out to Hope Uzodinma , not $1 million. It’s an insult to ascribe to me as collecting $1 million to be placeholder to Hope.
I will expect that Hope Uzodinma will offer that candidate at least $100 million dollars to step down for him because the man (LP candidate) has almost won the election, without campaigning. Even in the last election, where did you see the candidate that won in the actual voting?.
Then, myself, Athan Nneji Achonu, you investigate me; you find out my capacity, the level of contacts I have in this country, which is more than his. The level of respect that I am accorded in this country, because of my integrity and my personality, which he doesn’t have.
How can I then collect only $1 million to sell out as claimed ? It’s $100 million that can be offered before i begin to consider, if it must be such. If I’m that hungry now, if I’ve suddenly become hungry to be his placeholder, at least I should demand $100 million for God’s sake.
His plans to confront the problems given what happened at the last election, and why he is in the race?
I can’t expose the plans that I have; I’m ready for the election. I’m very, very, very, ready to secure Imo.
I’ve often asked myself, why am I alive because I’ve been through so many things in my life? God protected me, saved me, kept me alive. I believe it is for this leadership and I’m very very ready to take Uzodimma on. He doesn’t believe in voting; he has never really won any election. If you investigate properly, you see that he has never really won any election. I’m going to defeat him in his local government. That I can guarantee you.
Highlight what you will do when you become governor?
The first thing I’m going to do is to fully grant autonomy to local governments. Since Obasanjo left the stage up toll today, I’ve funded that agitation, I’ve sponsored it.
After being inaugurated, I will set in motion machinery for the freest and fairest election in black Africa.
So we need to lead by example. So we’ll do that. Why am I insistent on local government autonomy? I’ve been saying that, if you Google me, in so many interviews I’ve granted, go to YouTube, you will see a lot of them. I’ve always believed that it was since they hijacked the local government system that criminality took over our societies. You know the local governments used to patronize these local warlords. These men, the big men in the villages, the strong men, they used to be contractors; they used to build drainages; they used to grade roads and make money. But the moment governors started to pocket Local government money, all hell broke lose. There is no way you will be an elected councillor and a criminal comes into that immediate environment and you will not notice that.
That’s why if you look at some of my billboards, I was advocating vigilante for communities and local governments. So, immediately after being sworn-in, the first bill I’m going to send to the House of Assembly will be to set up vigilante in every local government.
So I’m gonna work in partnership with all the arms of government, based on mutual respect.
I was advocating in the plan that we have that in every local government area we have vigilante. They have the Police, Civil Defence, DSS. Every local government has these structures already and I’m going to make them work for the people and collaborate and not frighten the people.
I’m going to, within the first one year, have gas companies working in Imo state, anchoring into the law the fact that state governments can produce their own power. So we’re going to get into partnership with power companies to give them the enabling environment. They’ll come and give us power 24/7 in Imo State. We have mapped out six industrial layouts, two per senatorial zone to push out needed industrail revolution in tje state.
Charity, they say, starts at home. Already, my home town is an industrial agricultural processing zone. So, I’m gonna enlarge it so other people can come and invest. People can come and be producing tomatoes, canning, processing fish. I have a cattle stockade that can accommodate 5,000 cattle. I’m now breeding ehi Igbo (Igbo native cows) because it was going extinct. Right, now I have 53 and I’m buying more and more. So my focus actually is job creation, industrialization, that’s why I’m focusing on power.
I have a license to operate a refinery. I’ll activate it, by sell it because for the next eight years, I will be busy.
Running a refinery is not an easy business. But I will encourage people to come and take over or get their own license and have another refinery there. I have already completed plans with Afri-Exim Bank, and ADB, to support industries in Imo State. I have the Imo Airport there, which I tried to take over as a private individual to activate, to become the hub for West Africa. I’m going to activate it and make it a thriving cargo airport.
I had begged Gov. Hope Uzodinma, when he was chairman of Aviation in the Senate to support me in that, but it didn’t work. He didn’t give me any support. Look at Ghana, it’s now the international hub for Africa. Ghana, as small as Imo State, is making giant strides, but Lagos Airport has stopped growing. The Lagos airport is surrounded, no room for expansion. But here in Imo, we have land, Ngor-Okpuala has a lot of land. You can have phase one, phase two, phase three, phase four. I brought the people who built the airport, I engaged them, I paid them millions to come and do a study for me, to take it over. Jonathan gave me to go ahead.
But before you know it, all the land around it has been acquired by government just because I was involved. So I just kept away.
So now all those ideas I have, I’m going to bring them into play to create a lot of job opportunities. Look at Orlu. They are mainly into pharmaceutical business. I approached Orange Drugs for him to assist implememt something i told him can assist the people there, but he didn’t support me, so he’s there to answer this, for people to go and verify. I approached him, I got banks to finance it. I
wanted to do a pharmaceutical pack in that area, so that we create the enabling environment for investors to come. And I approached him about it; I invited him and talked about it at that time, long time ago. So, those things are already in the kitty.
What we are after is development, a way to create opportunities for young people.
For example, as a private person, I’ve set up a studio in my village. We will invite young musicians who are talented, who don’t have money to record themselves. When they come and play there and we like their music, we record them on credit, so that they can grow from there. So we have a plans for sports as well, because that’s the thing that’s making our young people generate income that are not direct employment. We can now train them, give them the opportunity to excel and then they move from there.
We are going around the whole state to sensitize the youth, football clubs, sports activities, towards that so that it will be on-going, so that once we take over, we hit the ground running.
On Imo debt Profile?
The huge depth profile of the state is unbelievable. There are people who have been owed six years salary as at the last time we checked. When Hope Uzodimma’s government came, they said that they have found a lot of ghost workers, as a result there are so many people who were laid off; people who have been working all their lives, and three years now going to four years, no salary for them, and the pensioners. That will be a very big headache for the in-coming government. Also money that has been borrowed by this administration is unbelievably too high.
G8ven the huge debt profile of the state, only “a mad man” like me can have an idea of how we can come out of it successfully. For me, as a private individual, I make use my brain to create businesses; thats the talent God gave me. I’m going to do that for the state. I’m going to find a way for our state to survive. I’ve told them, those pensioners and workers, that we shall pay them but not overnight, but in a gradual manner, with timeline.
Do you know the worst this administration of Hope Uzodimma did, they have stiffled the future of our children and young ones. Imo used to be 1st or 2nd in education nationally, but we are now 24th in education; we are now 24th unfortunately.
Therefore, education will be our major focus because if you are not educated youth and people, you can’t a strong work force; you have to go outside to bring your workforce. Therefore, we have to first re-educate our teachers, because all the food ones have run away. They’re in New Zealand, in Australia, in USA, in the UK, in Canada, teaching. So, the remaining teachers, we have to re-educate, and retool.
On women and women empowerment?
Our women are very hardworking, very resilient. I’ve had to trust women a lot. I’ve had to rely on them for survival in my business. Do you know why I always work with women? So I allow them to boss me in my business. I will also allow them to boss us in the government. I’m going to give women a lot of opportunities as governor.
How would you describe Uzodimma’s administration in the past years?
Number one, the only thing people say he has done is road. But those roads are tax credit, it’s not state money. So where is his state money? But the worst is that the road Buhari came and commissioned have collapsed. There is no road anywhere inside Owerri . No road, no internal road in the entire Owerri. Just drive from IMSU to Mbaise-Owerri road. That road Buhari commissioned doesn’t exist anymore. It has washed out.
So the road he’s building, they are tax credit; that is something this big companies do. For example, let me tell you what they do like this Owerri-Umuahia road, that is on-going, is a Seplat.
It’s their own tax credit. Instead of paying tax, they bring the money and apply it on road. They choose the construction company.
So, I don’t know what he has done except not being able to protect lives and property. In a society, when somebody commits a crime, you arrest them and prosecute them. You don’t come out with helicopter gunship to bomb them; bomb their houses. It’s not done anywhere in the world except in Imo.
Plans for the youth?
We have plans for the youth; Sports Academy. In addition to that, we plan to develop our youth, especially in the area of ICT. We will turn IMO State to the next Silicon Valley of Africa, which is doable. A whole lot of us are aware of what the young people are doing now from home, even with their phones. We see that happening in Yaba, and nothing stops us from bringing that home and ensuring that we’re able to mainstream our young people in ICT. We will do what we call the ICT-Kiosks where every local government will be interconnected, so there’s going to be peer-to-peer connectivity and interaction amongst them, and we hope to get the very best of.
those in the IT software companies to come in and help our youth to develop that. And by so doing, we would also think of how much that will add to our GDP, coming from the young people.
In the Health, the former governor of Imo State, Rochas Okorocha, started something that was fantastic. The health system he did across the 27 LGAs that would have actually turned Imo State into medical tourism hub. That would have done a lot of good. It would have revolutionized healthcare in Nigeria. That vision was amazing but the implementation was flawed. So, we will revitalise that.
Looking at that project, most of you will agree with me that Imo would have been the center of medicare in Nigeria. I will therefore rejig and make it work. What would it have cost us getting world-class health management firms,
hand it over, concession it to them. And by so doing, you could have a renal center in Obowo for instance, have heart transplant center in Mbitolu, ENT specialists in different parts of the state? What we record in the country as medical flights is a whole lot, and that revenue alone would have been coming to Imo State. Imo is already a place many people want to come and see. So, adding all of these infrastructures would have been amazing. So we are hitting the ground running from day one.
Embezzlement of Health Center contract natiinwide running into billions?
I saw it in the press, and that I have embezzled the entire budget. We have built and equipped 26 health centres. They are like mini hospitals, cottage hospitals in Imo State. And why they have abandoned them is because I built them. In fact, there is one in the Owerri Municipal. When Rochas Okorocha was governor of Imo state, the former President’s wife, Mrs. Patience Jonathan wanted to come and commission it. He said that there was no health center, and that I didn’t build anything. Because she can’t come without clearing from them, she didn’t come for that commissioning. But but the Centre is there behind my hotel in Owerri Municipal Council, fully equipped, with doctors’ quarters, some domestic staff quarters. All of them are the same, same design across Nigeria, 774 LGAs.
And about the embezzlement, like I said earlier, if I had embezzled, they will be using microscope to search gor it. The EFCC has investigated me three times. Infact, they have seen the colour of my underpants. if I had taken one Kobo, I’m sure I would not be here talking today. That also shows that the government of day is scared of my emergence because immediately I emerged as candidate, all manners of rumours started flying around. I sympathize with my good friend, the Executive Governor of Imo State, a very handsome man, he has lost half of his weight. Honestly, he needs to start sleeping far more than he is doing now so that he can enjoy his retirement.
