Anambra Assembly minority leader loses husband, son in accident, hospitalized

(Daily Times, 29 September 2003)

THE minority leader in the Anambra State House of Assembly, Mrs Njideka Ezeigwe, is now lying in the intensive care unit of the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH), Enugu, where doctors are battling to save her life after a fatal road accident in which her husband, five-month-old son and aide died.

Mrs. Ezeigwe, who is the only All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) member in the House, had her car in which they were travelling smashed in the accident on the Enugu-Onitsha dual carriageway at Ugwuoba in the Oji River Local Government Area of Enugu State.  She represents Ogbaru State Constituency I in the House.

The DAILY TIMES learnt that the politician with her husband, Ezeigwe, a medical practitioner, baby and aide were returning to Awka from Enugu, venue of the election appeal tribunal, when their car collided with a lorry which fell on the car and smashed it.

It was gathered further that immediately the state governor, Chris Ngige, learnt of the incident, he rushed to Regina Caeli Hospital, Awka, where the accident victims were initially taken for treatment, but by then, the Ezeigwes had been transferred to UNTH, where Mr. Ezeigwe reportedly died later.

Though the Speaker of the House, Mike Balonwu, confirmed the accident, he refused further comment, but a source confirmed the number of deaths.  The Enugu-Onitsha dual carriageway had in recent time become a death spot which has claimed several lives.

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I will rebuild Anambra –Ngige

(Daily Times, 29 September 2003)

The story of Anambra State Governor, Chris Nwabueze Ngige since the July 10 abduction now dubbed “Liberation Day” in the state is no longer new. A fortnight ago, his former friend and lieutenant, Okey Udeh was impeached by an overwhelming resolution of the Speaker, Mike Beloawu-led State House of Assembly. For now, Ngige seems like a lone ranger in the arduous task of governance. The pressure not withstanding, Ngige is consoled that the people of Anambra State are behind him. So far, Ngige has received well over 100 applications to fill the position of deputy governor. But he says he is guided by recent history and treading cautiously. A“born again” Ngige fielded questions from some political correspondents. Our man, PAUL MUMEH was there. Excerpt:

As the governor of Anambra State at these trying times, somehow you seem to have weathered the storm, what are the challenges ahead?

Well, I inherited a lot of challenges and I have solved some of them, some of the problems are no longer there. When I first came, the initial challenge was getting the people to accept the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) government in the state. You all know that the immediate past government (Governor Chinwoke Mbadinuju) was a PDP governor but apparently for some reasons, the government did not perform to the expectations of the people. Salaries were owed to civil servants, teachers, judiciary, hospital workers with the result that schools were closed for one calendar year. Hospitals and courts were also closed. So, government business ground to a halt and because it was a PDP government, a large chunk of the citizenry were disillusioned. They did not even want to vote on election day. When I campaigned and made promises and came on saddled, so, the challenge was there to rekindle the people’s confidence in government business, and rekindle their interest in PDP government that is capable of delivering the goods. Then, for me as a governor directly, the challenges were also enormous.

I had to offset backlog of salaries and pensions. I had to pay salaries when due as I promised the electorate during my electioneering campaign. How to revive some of the ailing public utilities in the state, water supply to the cities; I had to revive our hospitals and focus on getting our environment clean; environmental sanitation. I had to face the daunting issue of providing befitting road infrastructure, which is totally lacking here. So, when I came on board, all these problems were staring me in the face. First and foremost, I came on, talked to the people, visited them in their churches and hamlets and their official abodes, and told them that I meant well and would fulfill all the promises I made before them during the campaign. Therefore, I tried to sell my programmes brand new.

But one person or area of distrust which kept on rearing its face was the issue that they believed that one of my political allies at a time, Chris Uba, was one of the factors that militated against good governance in Anambra State under Mbadinuju, so they found it difficult to believe me. But I told them that even with the kind of alliance, which is a normal thing in politics, that I will still deliver the goods and more importantly, is that I am my own man; I am myself.

So, in a bid to give good governance, I decided to put up a good cabinet, good working team, good government machinery. But unfortunately, my friend, Chris Uba, former deputy governor, Okey Udeh, some National Assembly members like Ikechukwu Abana, Chuma Nzeribe and some other people had other agenda for the people.

So, they became uncontrollable and they decided to change the government, which I headed on July 10. And that resulted in the famous July 10, saga which some people in the state referred to as a black Thursday and some others call it a liberation day. Because when the attempt failed, it done on the people that I was with them, and that I was not with the cabal.

So, from then on, they believed me, and just as it was sign of good tidings to come, they noticed also that I was paying them salaries and other entitlements to civil servants for May and June. I received my allocation late in June and so, I combined everything and paid for May and June. So, by the July 10 episode, we were still paying salaries, so the people now knew that I had a different agenda, which was for the people, genuinely for the people.

So, I cleared that aspect of doubts, and making our government look real, for people to believe in government business once more, for them to rekindle their confidence in government and governance again.

The other one still lingers, because the salary was one aspect of it but I have started paying pensions as well.

I confronted the pensions and I am paying the new rate of 142 per cent increase, which actually translates to 60 per cent of pension; it means that if you were earning N10, 000 stipend as pension, then you get multiply by two and half of it, which is N25, 000. So, I moved people from a zero allocation of pension to 60 per cent allocation. So the pensioners are happy for it.

I moved to revive the hospitals, I paid my counterpart funding for rehabilitation of 42 health centres, two each per local government; we have 21 local government councils. These are under health system fund II. The counterpart fund, having been paid, we expect them to come in with the materials so that we can start rehabilitating the health centres.

I also embarked on clearing the cities of Onitsha, Awka, and Nnewi. I have set up an environmental sanitation committee, the committee is working, it is not an easy thing, because the place was like a pit file, especially Onitsha, we have established dumping pits, to bring down the mountains of refuse. We are really engaging in the process, and methods of environment clearing.

The Federal Government recently banned states from further issuing irrevocable payment order, are you comfortable with it?

I am very comfortable with it. I had on my own started stopping irrevocable standing payment orders made by the previous government in my state because I had to review them when I came in and even doubted a few review. I discovered that it was fraught with a lot of corruption and irregularities. People were collecting money for jobs not done. And sadly, they were collecting the money at source. Irrevocable payment standing orders were meant for just urgent and critical jobs for the government of a place.

But, I think from the military administration down to civilian governors, they have bastardised it; it was being used as something they could use to feather the nest of their friends. And here in Anambra State, the issue was terrible. It was used to pay back bank loans which were phoney. It was used to pay contractors for jobs not executed because there were no matching certificates. No certificates to back up, the money being paid from source at Abuja. It was used to get money for people to share.

I discovered in one of the LPOs made in the name of government hotels here in Anambra, but the money never got to the hotel, it was diverted from the bank and shared. So, I have stopped all.

We have sued them, we got an injunction asking them not to take the money anymore, asking the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), ministry of finance not to pay them again. So, the money is put into an account because of the litigation and disputes.

The money varies, we stopped somebody taking N50 million a month, we stopped another person taking N20 million a month, two others N10 million respectively per month, and we tried to stop two banks, collecting N150 million each every month from government account, but we don’t know how they managed to take away the money and so, we are suing the banks to recover the money from them. We are also going to encumber the accounts where we allocate the money. So, in effect, I plugged all these holes and some of them have voluntarily withdrawn from taking; in essence, my revenue profile increased a little bit, so over all, I have stopped them from taking in neighbourhood of N150 million every month, and that is a lot for us, that can help me pay teachers in the secondary schools, or primary schools. That is something.

The deplorable state of roads in the South-East zone is more than ever before worrisome. Even the works minister while expressing worries blame the Igbo engineers and contractors but in the circumstances, what are you doing to ameliorate the situation before the federal government comes in?

Well, it’s a pity, the situation of roads in the South-East, especially Anambra State is a pathetic one. We complained generally of South-East roads, but Anambra is worst hit. Most of the roads are federal roads, we are transvered by federal roads; Onitsha-Owerri, Onitsha-Enugu; link through the Niger bridge , then Nkpor-Nnobi, Obba-Nnewi-Uya-Okigwe, Nnobi-Nnewi-Ekwulobia-Umunze; Nnewi-Okija, Ogbaru-Atani-Ndoni in Rivers State, among others.

All these federal roads are in total state of disrepair and need to be re-constructed. The past government in Anambra State tried, I don’t know how hard they tried. But the truth of the matter is that I have decided that we cannot just fold our hands and continue weeping and crying, waiting endlessly and hoping against hope; because the truth of the matter is that the federal government is not ready to come and re-construct most of these roads. No good government can just fold its hands and watch like that.

So, within the lean resources that we would get in the next few months, I plan to take up few of the roads for reconstruction and rehabilitation with quality contractors and later ask the federal government for re-imbursement.

The Otuocha-Abagana-Nnobi road is also a federal government owned, it moves through Kogi State into Abuja. That road is vital for us to get into Abuja easily if re-constructed, without going into Enugu State through 9th mile, that road is not done so what do we do?

So, we as a government are going to take on some of the roads. We have put advertisement for bids in that respect. We are adverting for qualified contractors to come and tender; immediately after the rains, we would start the process of re-constructing the roads.

Are governors in the South-East contemplating a coalition to force federal government to intervene on the bad state of roads in the area?

I don’t know whether one can really arm-twist the federal government. The truth of the matter is that a federal government team just left Anambra State. And they said that they have given anticipatory approval for the road through Aba-Owerri-Orlu to Uga down to Nnewi to Obba for it to be built and another one for the re-construction of Enugu-Onitsha bad areas, we are waiting, but you can see that it would be three months next month for the year to end. And there is no advertisement for the roads in question. No mobilisation for them. And before they can mobilise or even do anything, you are talking about December/January.