The problem Abia state is facing today started from inception because there was no proper foundation laid . When we were there at the early stage , nothing was planned, and due to lack of foundation, it became difficult for people coming after that tenure of government to follow with a plan because there was nothing on the ground for them to follow. This has plunged Abia citizenry into untold hardship and suffering. If there was foundation, subsequent governments would have followed and continued to build from what they saw. The first Government failed in laying foundation. If the government had come in, build to an extent, another government would follow their footsteps, but lack of foundation truncated the steps subsequent governments would have followed in order to resemble our neighbors.

The only thing we can do is to work hard, Abians outside Abia should come home and develop Abia, it is not for the Government alone. If you go to Imo, you will see development there, what the Government does is to create enabling environment. The first elected administration of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in the state in 1999, led by the then Governor, Orji Uzor Kalu refused to lay any foundation that his successors would have start from to make Abia an envious state in the South East. If you go to Owerri, in Imo state you see a lot of Abians who built modern Hotels and big businesses. What is happening at Owerri can happen in Abia, if we decide to do it here, it will thrive. Abians should come home and invest, when they come home and invest, Abia will look better than most of the adjoining states. Most of them keep talking about Government, it is not like that. Development is not left for government alone.

That is exactly what Governor Okezie Ikpeazu is doing. I don’t like saying much about Ikpeazu, though he is my friend, but he is now trying to lay foundation in the state, create road map and develop that road map, but my fear is that the period left for him to do this is too short. If you go to Aba, which used to be the bane of the whole Country’s commerce, it is now a changed place on the basis of infrastructure and economy, he has improved Aba a lot.

He took over governance in 2017, and when I got in contact with him, he took me round Aba and showed me what he had planned to do and what he had already done on infrastructure. I appreciated the spirit with which he worked but surprisingly, those roads got bad between 2018 and 2019, because the dilapidation of Federal roads that ran across the state, because instead of people using Federal roads when they were going into other states, they started using the Local roads, to find their ways to other states and as a result of heavy vehicular movements, the state internal roads got destroyed by these articulated heavy vehicles, coming in to find their ways to Rivers and Akwa Ibom states. Whatever happened then did not deter him because, if you enter Aba today, he has transformed it into a different city . He has done about 85 % of all the roads in Aba and business is booming. He laid the foundation of the new roads, and linked Obingwa and Ugwunagbo to Aba .

The new areas am thinking that he should do which he was supposed to have done is the expansion of the cities, which he remembered about 18 months ago. He came up with development plans of building Obuaku City in Abia South, an Agro based city in Abia North, and Enyimba City in Aba among others . He said that these projects must be completed before the expiration of his tenure in 2023. By so doing, he would have laid a stronger foundation which his predecessor would stand upon to bring in more development into the state. It would not be like the beginning when nothing was on the ground at all.

PDP is a political party that tried to thrive, but because there was no foundation laid from inception, they could not, but now the party is having a new shape under the leadership of Governor Ikpeazu, he is doing everything possible to carry everybody along, and what interests me the more is what he is doing in infrastructure. If he can continue with that, he has a future and the party also will have a future. One major thing the people are complaining about in the party is imposition of candidate during elections , how can this be taken care of ? There is no election that goes without problems, when you contest an election, there will be a winner and loser, they will always be there. So loser will never be happy, at times they pretend by congratulating their opponents, but they will never be happy. Some of those who lose election and leave the party are not really party people, they are either people who are looking for jobs or something like that and when they lose, they feel that they have failed in their endeavor and leave, but a real party man will always stay back with the party hoping that tomorrow may offer better opportunities. So real party people will still remain with the party, if there is disagreement, he stays inside the party to make sure that the disagreement is resolved. There is no way you go and people will not talk of imposition, one person must be the candidate, and once that person emerges, it is a problem to the person who failed and he goes about grumbling.

Presently PDP is still maintaining the issue of zoning, but there is dialogue going on among the stakeholders on whether the zoning arrangement should continue or done away with. A lot of politicians will not understand what is happening now, there are so many school of thoughts, while some are saying that Abia North has finished, Central has also done there turn and South is now doing its own, that at the completion of Abia South tenure, that the Governorship can start from Anywhere. And there are some other people who believe in Abia Charter of Equity that it should be followed rotationally once the South completes their tenure , so there are complications as the party is yet to know the one to follow. Whether we are following Abia chatter of equity or the zoning arrangement, the party is yet to decide. This issue is now left with the stakeholders of the party to decide on what to do .

Other People think so , but to me it is quite different. Abia Charter of Equity is saying that after one zone, it will be the other zone, but politically, party changed to follow the arrangement, they have now been working on senatorial zoning system, Abia Charter of Equity says if one side finishes the other side will go and the two sides are Old Bende and Aba zone. In that chatter, there is nothing like Abia North South and Central. When people say that the present Governor is the product of Abia charter of equity, I look at them and say, what do they really mean? The thing came out from Abia North, came to central, and in the central, a part of the central is Old Bende and another part of the central is in Aba zone. So it is confusion. For me as I was proposing before, what we need to do is for some stake holders to sit down again, and look at it. For me, Abia Charter of Equity is out of fashion, because what those people had in mind then was between old Bende and Aba zone, but now that we are having senatorial zones, they refer it to be Abia Chatter of Equity, but it is not.

What it is giving us now depends on who is interpreting Abia Chatter of Equity . This is politics, the party is made up of opinion leaders, who are the stakeholders, it is what they decide, there are a lot of arguments going on. While some are saying that Abia south has finished and so the zoning arrangement has been completed, that it can now start from anywhere, and where ever it starts now will be the beginning of it, and it can also go round, while other people are insisting that the arrangement should go round.

I have been saying that we need to harmonize Abia Chatter of Equity and the present senatorial system of zoning arrangement. Without doing that we will continue to have confusion, it is either we drop Abia Chatter of Equity and go on with what we have now, and what we have now is senatorial district arrangement . When we complete it as I said earlier, depend on the interpretation of the stakeholders , they can say, we should start again from the South, central or the North .