Abia State governor, Okezie Ikpeazu, in this interview with select journalists said state police is no longer an option but a must in view of current security challenges in the country. He also spoke on some other issues.
Let’s kick-start with your promise on what you intend to achieve in your first 100 days in office, about building of infrastructures in Abia State.
We are starting on a good note. For starters, I will just want to underscore the fact that our steps in Abia are deliberate and they are designed to ventilate the major economic centres in Aba and Umuahia, great access to those economic centres, the market places, the production centres for shoes and leather works, as well as to inter-connect first, our major cities, then connect one state to another. Abia is at the confluence of South East and South South states.
And our economy is largly dependent on the influx of people. We have a catchment business population of about 25 million people that come to do business within the state. Sixty percent of them come from the Port Harcourt axis, then about 30 percent also come from the Calabar, Akwa Ibom axis, 10 percent come from everywhere including Cameroun and other parts of the South East, across Nigeria.
Therefore, it is necessary to give attention to road infrastructure as an enabler of driving our economic agenda. In 2015, I recalled with nostalgia that it would take you five hours to get to Ikot Ekpene, but today, from any part of Abia, now in 25 minutes you are in Ikot Ekpene courtesy of the road we did through Ekwereazu. In fact, we are doing two roads, we have completed one and part of what we intend to do quickly is to complete the second one. We are on about 167 to 170 roads, out of which we have completed between 75 to 80 roads. So, within the first 100 days, we want to add to that road stock by completing 70 percent of the outstanding roads because some of them are at various stages of completion; some 65 percent while others are 80 percent.
Hence, we have mobilized contractors to return to site, and people may ask why we do that during rainy season. My answer to them is straight forward; one, we want to work during the rain because it helps us do our drainages and watch flow pattern of storm water, the other one is that we pioneered rigid pavement cement roads in the South East in 2015, so we are continuing and if you are doing cement road, you can work during the rains.
I am happy also to say that most of the roads we did, we commissioned within the 100 days of our first term and they are still standing and that is what gives me joy. The only way you can improve on infrastructural stock is to do so instrumentally and that is to speak to the quality of the work you are doing, because if you borrow money to do roads and borrow money again to repair roads, you have started a vicious circle which will not stand.
Therefore, the roads we do are desired to outlive my administrations and we are hoping that some of them will do 20 to 30 years still standing so that even when my successor comes, if we had done 20 roads, he will now do 20 plus one as the case maybe and not going back to the road that I did which was the advent of infrastructural stock in Abia. So, I am quite confident that we are on track, within the next 100 days, quite a lot would have happened in terms of road infrastructure and we deliberately as a strategy work in 100 days circles so that it would help us monitor ourselves and evaluate us, so after that we will kick on with the next 100 days and it helps us live one day at a time.
There is this serious problem of flooding in Aba, what are you going to do within these 100 days?
In 2015, when we came, we started with dredging the Aba River, knowing that body of water is going to be the receiving body of water for all storm water, and incidentally, all the roads we have done in Aba came with full complements of two sided drainage, but the attitude of the average Aba person leaves much to be desired.
If you block the drainage in front of your house with refuse, then tie up things in leather bags and put inside the drainage, what you are doing is to invite storm water into your living room and I think time is about now for people to know that the citizens have a responsibility to the environment and to government, and government has its responsibilities, the citizens must also understand that if you talk about waste management, nobody can manage the waste of another unless he co-operates, at times they tie it up and dump it near the church.
So, I want to say that we are continuing with drainages for all our roads, but we are going to make deliberate efforts now to do the same thing. But I want to sound a note of warning to my people in Aba particularly, that if we finish this next round, we would hold landlords, tenants and householders responsible for the refuse in front of their house, because the polluter must be held responsible for waste that are not properly disposed.
We have seen the volume of what you have done in your infrastructure drive. Going forward, I am particularly interested in your economic city, what’s the status of that project and what do you hope to achieve with it?
That is a flagship project and I want to say this to all of us, by 2030, the population of Nigeria will double, so the ticking time bomb is not the decay in infrastructure, but education and unemployment and it leads to everything including crime. So, in Abia, we are planning to create 700, 000 jobs in 10 years.
Certainly, I will not be governor in the next 10 years, but I am planning ahead for my children and grandchildren and the good people of Abia that will come tomorrow or after us, and until we continue to plan or begin to plan ahead and not for the next election but for the next generation. So, the Eyimba economic city is doing very well and we are happy that enthusiasm of investors outside Nigeria is overwhelming and I am sure that Volkswagen, Demlabels, Simens and other top names, even Samsung, will come to Eyimba Economic City very soon. We are looking for 11 anchor investors to begin construction at the site between September and October this year and we are sure we will hit our target, if not exactly, we will be able to do 82 to 90 percent of that number and that will be huge, because we have somebody that is willing to do textile industry on 200 hectares of land and it’s going to be huge.
So, our target is to create a centre from where people can manufacture and export without paying anything and then a centre that will not only create employment but also such that will rob off on our skill sets as to pull a whole lot to do things with our hands. And I will want our shoemakers to begin to compete with the best shoe makers around the world and it will happen.
In view of the insecurity challenge confronting the country, do you support the calls for State Police?
We cannot run away from the fact. Some of us understand the innuances and sentiments of those who say it could be abused, power could be abused, power without control is madness. It is not recommended anywhere, and then for us in Nigeria, I think we should get away from the cloak of developing phobia for things we can’t see, if you remain comfortably at the back of your mother, you will never come down and you won’t go to school, you are safe sitting at the back of your mother but as a man, time comes when you must venture and take a bold step.
But here now, you are confronted with taking the right decision. Two things confront us, one, is that there is no other option, if we keep concentrating the power of the Nigeria Police at the centre, what you will see is that criminals will always be one step ahead of us, and people would ask the questions. Some states are grappling with issues of salaries, how are they going to pay the policemen? And then you have armed men that are probably unpaid, the answer is straight forward, all of that will lead to recalibrations of revenue formula, from wherever we get the money we use to pay them now, all that money should go to where the Police Force is now recruited and catered for, what you will see that in some states, they will embrace Science and Technology quickly because if you don’t embrace it, then, you can’t be a step ahead of the criminals, I think the time has come when we must tell ourselves the truth. State Police is the way to go.
When you get to the states, if you talk about, Local Government Police Commands, and then you look at the communities, every person knows themselves in the village and they know what you are capable of doing, that is why even for us in Abia today, part of what we are thinking about is to use community development committees to supervise projects.
If I want to do a borehole, a water project in the community, the president general and the leadership of that community and the women leaders, will set up the community development committee that will work with public utilities and will come in the open to give the contractor the check, so that anybody, whose eyes will be on the contractor, can check. So, we can check ourselves going forward, so for us, despite the disadvantages you will record against the police, the points in favour are still stronger.
Relating to the issue of security, is the ongoing call by this Miyatti Allah Fulani groups calling on the South East Governors to allow them, what is your position and what is your philosophy behind that revival of Bakassi Boys?
With the Police as it is today, the Police/citizen ratio is poor, we are under policed compared to what you see elsewhere, and they need help and support.
We want to see if it is proper to catch the criminals before they strike, and if we have to do that we need to have enough legs on ground, looking at the ball, that is the philosophy and the reason why we did that. Coming back to your question, we have a peculiar strategy of handling farmers/herders crisis and that is why Abia State is not a flash point today, we have conflict resolution Committees at the local government, and the bigger conflict resolution committee at the state level where the Commissioner of Police is the Chairman, the Governor’s Special Adviser on Security and other service chiefs are members.
I gleaned the idea from my experience in the North where I spent seven years in Maidugiri and I understand the mentality and the psychology of the average Fulani man. If for instance, he rode out with his Mercedes Benz and someone on a wheelbarrow hits that car and there is a big scratch and the man who owns the wheelbarrow will beg in God’s name, the big man with the Benz will go away, that means if God did not know about it, it wouldn’t have happened, if God is upon us, he is sufficient for us, but in Igbo land, if you scratch your bicycle with my Benz and you say sorry sir, you have to wait till I say yes to show I have accepted your sorry or I say pay me for what you have damaged, especially when I look at the sorry you are saying whether you have pride in it, then I will say pay me. So, in between, the cow does not know the difference between cassava leaf and the ordinary leaf, and the cow does not know that the leaf belongs to somebody and it does not understand anything, it will just go and begin to feed and there is trouble, it is somebody’s farm and the person spent lot of money on labour.
If the farmer is aggrieved, let him report to the conflict resolution committee of the local government and I will pay as government. So, I now serve as the bridge because I understand that perhaps the Hausa herder is remorseful, he may have said sorry, but the man who owns the farm is also entitled to placating him a little bit, so the difference these social cultural gaps I try to fill if it escalate for the cow is killed, I will pay for the cow then we can stop the matter at that point.
Then the herder and farmer are happy, but if it gets to the point where is beyond where the local government committee cannot conclude, then it comes to the state, then the Commissioner of Police having this philosophy at the back of his mind, will look at it and make recommendations, in one place I had to pay up to four million Naira but the idea is that let us talk before we fight because if you fight before you talk, whether you fight before you talk, you will talk, so I prefer to talk before I fight, is only when dialogue breaks down, because sentiments can come between our people who reads all kinds of meaning, unfortunately, we are in a country where the strings that tie us together is becoming thinner every day, is quite unfortunate.
At 16, I was in Maidugiri as an undergraduate and I did not see a country that is on its loose end as it is now. So, we placed this kind of country resolution as strategy and it has helped us so far. So, I am not prepared for inclusion of Miyetti Allah in the vigilante agenda, it may work for some people, I think is a step in the right direction because people want to be part of whatever but it goes beyond what you see in the surface. Village vigilante does much more than waiting for herders, so that is our take, as much as what you have said comes as highly recommended I will want us to see our own strategy and see if it will work.
By JONATHAN NDA-ISAIAH for LEADERSHIP