I read with great amusement, Senator Nkechi Nwaogu’s interview published in an online version of the Vanguard Newspapers of February 1, 2017.
In the interview titled GIVE BUHARI TIME TO REVERSE 16 YEARS OF PDP MISRULE, the Senator made very telling comments which are eminently deserving of a well worded response.
After saying all the usual things politicians say when they want to jump from one party to another, the Senator made what I consider a sacrilegious statement when she launched an unprovoked attack on the present PDP government of Abia State.
According to her, Abia is a failed state under the PDP and that the APC is a government in waiting in Abia because most prominent politicians in Abia are moving to the APC and that from feelers from Abians, they are tired of the PDP government in Abia State.
First, let me say that I will approach this issue with a lot of trepidation because Senator Nwaogu is not only known to me personally but is a respected politician from my home local government of Osisioma Ngwa. As such, I shall choose my words carefully. But the facts must be laid bare.
Secondly, let me state very clearly that I have nothing against the Senator’s choice of political association. It is her constitutional right which she has activated throughout her political career.
If she had kept her comments within the bounds of truth and civility about Abia State and the government of Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu, then this response would not have been necessary.
Senator Nkechi Nwaogu joined the APC in November 2015, a few months after the party won the Presidential elections in Nigeria. Before then, she had been at the National Assembly for 12 straight years.
She won elections into the House of Representatives in 2003 under the platform of the defunct All People’s Party (APP) to represent the Obingwa/Osisioma/Ugwunagbo Federal Constituency. Before her tenure ended, she abandoned the party and jumped to the PDP.
In 2007, she contested for the Senate under the platform of the PDP and was elected Senator for Abia Central. Between 2007 and 2011, she was Chair of Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions.
In 2011, she was reelected under the platform of the PDP to return to the Senate and from 2011 and 2015, she was Chair of the Senate Committee on Gas.
In 2015, she wanted to run for office as Governor of Abia State under the PDP but the party in its wisdom zoned the ticket to the Abia South Senatorial District in line with the
Abia Charter of Equity. It was just impossible to allow Abia Central Zone to produce another Governor after the eight years of now Senator T A Orji. Senator Nkechi Nwaogu is from Abia Central too.
When she couldn’t secure the ticket, she didn’t leave the party immediately but waited till after the PDP lost the Presidential elections before she jumped again to the APC. Rumors were rife then that she was already pencilled down for a ministerial or ambassadorial appointment if Dr. Goodluck Jonathan had won. So she waited. After the elections, off she went to the new bazaar site- the APC.
So, the Senator has an illustrious history of consistent political “jumpology”. Once a party is not ready to play the game her own way, she abandons the party and moves to another one. This is not her first and most assuredly, not her last. Jumpologists keep jumping. The records are there.
So, Daa Nkechi, when exactly did the PDP’s misrule which you so eloquently stated, start? Did the misrule start in the almost one decade that you spent in the party and enjoyed all the perks and paraphernalia of the office of a Distinguished Senator of the Federal Republic?
Daa lei, if you now claim that the 16 years of the PDP was a misrule, how do you come in, having been a key part of that period? What role did you play in the misrule you gleefully talk about?
Having enjoyed so much from the PDP, why didn’t you stay put in the party to help reposition it?
Since the Senator claims that the present PDP government in Abia State under the very able leadership of Governor Okezie Ikpeazu is a failed government, let us take just a few instances of her 12 year stewardship as a member of the National Assembly and how her stewardship impacted on our people, in contradistinction with Ikpeazu’s less than two years.
First , the Senator lives on Kamalu Street off the Aba Owerri Road Aba. She has lived there for a very long time. Throughout her time at the National Assembly, that road was a comprehensive death trap filled with massive gullies and crevices. My church, the St. Paul’s Anglican Church Umuocham is on that street and it was a tough experience attending church service on sundays. The state of that road then spoke volumes about the Senator. At a point, she couldn’t drive on the road herself. She just couldn’t. She resorted to using the adjoining Okpu Umuobo road done by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and connect her palatial residence through a short by pass which the church fixed many years ago.
That time, people who trooped to her house for political reasons saw hell passing through that road and while that road kept decaying, she was busy expanding her eye popping residence.
There were strong rumors then that the NDDC had awarded a contract for the rehabilitation of that road. Not for one day was anything done on the road.
Her response was to buy big SUVs with which she navigated the very bad state of the road.
That road remained that like that until May 29, 2015 when Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu was inaugurated as Governor of Abia State. Two days later on June 1st, 2015, Governor flagged off the reconstruction of eight roads in Aba metropolis. Kamalu Street, was one of them.
By December 2015, less than six months after, former President Olusegun Obasanjo was in Aba to commission three roads completed by Ikpeazu. Kamalu Street was one of them.
It beats me how Senator Nwaogu will lampoon a government that fixed the road to her house after just six months in office when she failed to do anything about it after spending 12 straights years as a key member of the National Assembly. It is very curious indeed.
Hewu, Daa Nkechi lei! Okuko ojikwa echefu onye mforo ya odu la udu miri eh?
Between 2007 and 2011, the Senator was the Senate Committee Chair on Banking, Insurance and other Financial Institutions. It was also within this period that the Bank Of Industry closed shop in Aba and left the state, robbing the people of Abia State of access to finance for their businesses. Throughout her headship of that committee, we never heard of any intervention by the Senator to bring the Bank back.
Today, owing to the economic diplomatic shuttles of Governor Okezie Ikpeazu, the BOI is back to Abia State. Yet the Senator describes Abia as a failed PDP state. Odikwa egwu.
The BOI is an agency of the Federal Government and Senator Nwaogu’s Committee had direct oversight powers over it, yet, right under her nose, the Bank left her state.
Osisioma Ngwa LGA, Senator Nwaogu’s home Council is home to the only NNPC depot in the entire South East. Located in the Osisioma Industrial Area that houses several Industrial and manufacturing concerns, the area is a huge industrial powerhouse. But while the Senator was in the National Assembly, the only road leading to the depot, the old Aba Owerri Road from Osisioma Junction became an eye sore and decayed to the point that the depot had to shut down operations as tankers could no longer access the road, a federal road. She did nothing. By the way, it’s a federal road.
This same road leads to her husband’s country home at Umugaa, Osisioma Ngwa. Like her residence at Kamalu Street, the road to her country home is in a terrible state, even till date.
Today, we have seen real representation for the people of our federal constituency. Our current representative,Hon Solomon Adaelu has shown what it takes to be a solid representative. Last December, and less than two years in office, Governor Ikpeazu was at Ngwa High School to launch the all year round rural grading of roads, an initiative of Hon. Adaelu. He procured brand new earth moving equipment for that purpose. We never saw any such thing throughout the 12 years the Senator spent at the National Assembly.
Between 2011 and 2015, Senator Nwaogu was the Chair of the Senate Committee on Gas, yet the people of Owaza continue to suffer for several decades from the dangerous effects of gas flaring and oil prospecting activities. Under her watch, the Nigerian Gas Company operates in Owaza, yet no indigene of the community works there and the company has not done any single community service project.
As we speak, Ikpeazu has visited the community and plans are afoot to bring these issues to the front burner.
Where was Senator Nwaogu for twelve whole years as a key member of the National Assembly when federal roads in her zone decayed beyond recognition?
Where was she when the Geometric Power Project, a project located at her backyard got caught up in murky politico-contractual controversial waters? Today, Ikpeazu is working round the clock on that issue.
Where was she when Guinness Breweries closed their massive brewery at Osisioma and left, taking away hundreds of jobs for our people and the attendant macroeconomic benefits enjoyed by our people?
Senator Nwaogu should enjoy her constitutional right of freedom of association by joining any party that catches her fancy but she should not use that as a platform to spread falsehood about her own home state. If I were her, I will quietly be singing praises of the Buhari government in Abuja and see if she could be asked to “come and chop”. Making Ikpeazu the subject of her fight will be very counter productive. She has no moral pedestal to do that at all. None whatsoever.
Governor Ikpeazu’s developmental strides in Abia are there all to see. Even with the challenges of low cash flow, Ikpeazu has practically turned Aba into a massive construction site.
The Distinguished Senator need not bother about the 2019 elections which she appears to be so obsessed about. Governor Ikpeazu is not thinking about that one now. He is more focused on delivering on the current mandate Abians gave him.
When 2019 comes, it will take care of itself.
Finally, I wish Daa Nkechi well in the APC and I am hoping that she will launch her 2019 campaign on Kamalu Street. It’s such a lovely road now, with solid drainages.
Daa Nkechi, harakwanu uka la whe mpiekata wo.
Onyebuchi EMEMANKA, Esq.
Special Adviser to the Governor on Public Communications.
02/02/2017.
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