Ikpeazu’s Commitment To Improve Lives Of Citizens Endeared Him To FG – Nwaogu

By Chuks Isaiah

The special adviser to the Governor of Abia state on Social Investment and Inter-Governmental Affairs, Hon. Chinenye Nwaogu has said that Governor Okezie Ikpeazus’ commitment to improve the livelihood of citizens from the lower rung of socio-economic ladder, was what endeared him to the heart of the federal government as a partner in progress in terms of implementation of social investment programms.

In an interview with Nwaogu in his office at Government House, Umuahia, he said that the governor engages with different layers of government, especially the Federal to ensure that everything that is supposed to come to Abians and Abia state is sent to them.

He explained that Government has created a linkage of robust relationship to constructively reengage the federal government, and based on the philosophy of the Governor, every effort has been going on smoothly.

In this interview with Nwaogu, the Special Adviser, said that he feel proud and excited each time he looks back at the governors achievements to be part and parcel of the team that has been driving his vision for the past 6 years, which in the words of the current commissioner of information, is tagged the ‘kinetic vision’.

Hear him;

Before the emergence of the Governor, what was the position of Abia in terms of improving the livelihood of those at the lower rung of Socio-Economic ladder?

Before his emergence as a governor, Abia state government was not a priority state in terms of national policies and national decisions. The state was never reckoned with in terms of decisions taken in Abuja; policy, projects, and all that. When the federal government came on board in 2015 and launched several initiatives, one of which was  the social investments, because of the structures and the templates the governor has set up, Abia became the priority state for social investment in the south east. Today, there are two APC states in the south east. Before now there was just one APC state in the south east, but even at that, because some of these social investment programme are purely APC led, federal government led initiatives, but because of the way the governor has constructively engaged the state government, because of the way he had shown commitment to improve the livelihood of those members of society who operate from the lower rung of socio-economic ladder, the federal government has seen him more as a partner in progress in terms of implementation of social investment program.

Can you cite an instance of one of these programs you are talking of?

One example is the school feeding program; the federal government had intended to launch a nationwide large scale school feeding program to feed pupils in public primary schools, from primaries 1-3. But before they even did that, the wife of the governor had initiated what she called “Abia state primary school lunch initiative” with some private sector partners and because we had that program, we had created the template, we had set up the system to run that program across the entire state. It was easy for us to plug in the federal government’s home grown school feeding program into the template we already had, and today, as I speak to you, Abia is the only state in the whole Nigeria that is feeding primaries 1-6. While the federal government is providing meals for primaries 1-3, Abia state government is feeding primaries 4-6.The school feeding program also created opportunities for rural women who hitherto had no means of livelihood. Today we have employed through that scheme, over 4000 cooks across the state who receive regular income through their participation in the school feeding programme. This means that the rural woman who before had no means of livelihood , had no income, had no economic contribution to the welfare of her family, is now a major contributor economically, financially to the livelihood of her family. It also improved her ego, psychology, her personality and her ability to participate in the governance of the family at that level.

Is this program still on in Abia public schools today?

Yes it is still on. And I will like to say something about the philosophy. When you want to x-ray the governance style of governor Okezie Ikpeazu, as a teacher, my father used to say something; how you understand the quality of a teacher is not in the ‘what’, it is in the ‘why’ and ‘how’. The what’ “approach to governance and life issues is very easy but its in the ‘why and ‘how’ that task the capacity both the intellectual and psychological capacity of the leader.

What did you do to achieve the success you are talking about when the Governor came on board?

When we came in 2015, we took a deep study of the past governments in the state, and understood that even from 1999, a lot of funds were expended in places like Aba to build roads, yet, we couldn’t find any of those roads. Not that efforts were not made , but the efforts were focused on  the ‘what’ approach, but the ‘why and how’ approach, were not considered, so when the governor came, he did a deep study on the topography of Aba as a major commercial center in the state. Today you can agree with me that 90% of the roads that were flagged off on the first day of resumption as the governor of Abia state, constructed within the first 100 days of his administration are still standing  because he approached governance from the ‘why and how’ approach. We understood that Aba required a different kind of construction approach and that’s why we introduced a rigid cement technology where you of course compact the whole thing. You first do a 9inch concrete with iron before you put asphalt, and coal to tar the road, and that’s why the road has survived 6 raining seasons cycles unlike the experience we had before now.

Were there other reasons why you introduced the school feeding system?

We also observed that the proliferation of private schools across the state had almost practically crippled public primary schools in the state and so we had many teachers, many schools, no pupils to teach. So we introduced school feeding. First reason was to reverse enrolment from private schools, to public primary schools, and we achieved that. So when we started the school feeding we started with about 150,000 pupils across the state. Today, there are close to 500,000 pupils in our public primary schools system in the state especially those in the rural communities where we had had all kinds of mushroom private schools springing up in town, village council halls, churches, uncompleted buildings, a whole lot of those parents and guardians, some of them had their pupils in public schools.

The governor has this belief that one of the biggest challenges of our country is that we’ve not been able to manage the energy of our young people. These young people have energy, these energy must be exerted in one form or the other. If you do not create a positive outlet for that energy, that energy will be expressed in a negative format, either we call it cybercrime or all kinds of crime. But its young people who are so energetic, eager to express themselves to earn a living. To be a member of the productive sector of the society and contribute effectively. Once that valve is not available, they express that energy in another way and we term it criminality.

So his philosophy around that is to ensure that we create platforms and opportunities for our young people first to be equipped, to retrieve them psychologically, to retrieve them with skills so they can be able to have opportunities to be on their own because he is one person that believes that the opportunities we think the white collar job space is shrinking because the economy, due to certain factors, is actually not expanding , but we need to create more private space opportunities for our youths to play in that circle, so that’s why we embraced the N-Power program and we expanded it in the states.

We setup a multi skills acquisition center somewhere in umuobiakwa, of course you heard recently that the state Executive Council, after their meeting, renamed the technical schools in Abia state with the view to investing heavily in those technical schools setting them up as centres of excellence, centers of skills acquisition, so that a whole lot of our young people , not even just those within the secondary school age bracket, but a lot of young people will have opportunity to acquire one form of skill or the other so that they can become self reliant.

What are the other programs the governor introduced to assist the citizens?

The other program of the social investment is the National Cash Transfer Program. So we understand that there are vulnerable persons in rural communities who month in, month out, cannot have income and since they can’t have income, its negatively affecting their lives. So the federal government thought it wise to enumerate them through a very transparent system set up by the world bank which is called “Community Based Targeting Process”, where you go to a community and inquire from the community what their understanding of poverty is and they will explain what they understand by poverty and you explain what world bank has set up as poverty and marry both ideas.

And in that community, you now ask in their separate groupings; the aged, the youths, the women, who from the community they think fall within those groups and they on their own, will select those who will now move to the social register who will now tend as the vulnerable in that community. At the end of every month, they receive a token of 5000 to support livelihood.

And now, in the state, that initiative was expanded by the wife of the governor as I speak to you today, over 200 buildings have been erected by the office of the wife of the governor, through partnership with several private sector partners for widows and low income, and vulnerable people in rural communities and other initiatives of transferring cash to them have also been engaged by the state government.