Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye
Governor of Imo State, Hope Uzodinma, was at the weekend presented to President Muhammadu Buhari by the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) after which he spoke on January 14th 2020, Supreme Court judgement that declared him as the governor on grounds that the gubernatorial election which was held in Imo State was void.
He spoke on why the ousted governor of Imo, Emeka Iheidioha’s move to seek reversal of the judgement will be fruitless.
He also spoke on how he intends to leave a legacy like the late Sam Mbakwe, the first civilian governor of the state among other issues.
What should Imo people expect from you as their governor?
First of all, I want to thank God that at the end of the day, the mandate fully given to me by my people has been restored by the Supreme Court.
Secondly, I understand very clearly the challenges in Imo State. Even before now, only a few days ago when I got to Imo, I discovered that salaries were not being paid in full. The reason being that the money coming from Abuja, the federation account is not sufficient. What I did was to cut down the running cost and forfeited the security vote donated to the governor. I made up the money and we were able to pay salaries 100 percent to all the civil servants. I also directed that the local government funds be sent straight to the local government until such a time the state is ready to release 10 percent of their IGR (Internally Generated Revenue) to the local government; then we can begin to do the business of JAC – Joint Allocation Committee.
For 12 years, no governor visited the civil service secretariat; I was there two days ago (Wednesday) and water has not been available to the secretariat for the past nine years. Two days after my visit, water is running there now, they have been connected back to electricity and the generators are being worked on now.
So, my mandate is about the people and my government will just be about the people and by the grace of God, I will not disappoint their expectations. I am sure they will see good governance from a man with experience, working in consultations with political stakeholders in the state. I think we can do it differently and the narrative will be acceptable to the people.
After the elections, there has been political acrimony here and there. How are you going to reconcile the aggrieved so that you will have peace during your tenure?
On arrival in Imo State, I have been able to achieve peace after reasonable consultations. I have visited leaders from political class; like you must have heard and seen, the party is properly reconciling and leaders are coming back together even across board. Out of the 27 members of the House of Assembly, 25 are now APC members, they have defected to APC. The state chairman of the PDP in Imo State, seven members of his cabinet have defected to APC. So APC is building and the momentum is growing by the day. So, the issue of reconciliation is being given serious attention. What really happened in Imo State is not really about the political party, it is about the way the election was conducted. Because, the case I took to court was the exclusion of 388 polling units which INEC did not cancel and which INEC did not also collect. So, I asked INEC why did you not include result that you had announced at the polling unit and this question was not answered. So, I went to court. I was not quarreling with the conduct of the election, I was not quarreling with my votes that were canceled by INEC but with these ones that were not cancelled and were not collected, which INEC had the originals and refused to bring. And we presented the original duplicate given to our party agent to court. And when they dragged and insisted that the one given to the securities should be brought for comparison, the police were issued subpoena; they brought theirs and it tallied with what we have and then the court took this decision.
At the level of the Appeal Court, it agreed with us and later changed; God knows why they changed. How some senior officers from INEC from the South East… all we were asking was that members of INEC remain neutral and specially in the South East. Some senior members of INEC in the South East are obviously PDP card carrying members. To the extent that once a result is not in favour of the PDP, they will go all out to upturn the result.
We had elections a few days ago, Saturday, you must have heard what happened there but that is going to be a business for another day. But I urge all of you to join hands and let us build a very strong democracy where equity, justice and fair play will be the order of the day.
Many believe that the best governor Imo ever had was chief Sam Mbakwe. They are clamouring for a governor with the same compassion in terms of development. What exactly are you going to do to have a solid tenure that will impact the people?
On the legacies of late Sam Mbakwe, of course, if you know Sam Mbakwe during his days, during campaigns, he came out with a manifesto, he made promises and that document he followed to the letter until that democracy was truncated. Campaigning as a candidate of APC, I had my manifesto built on three Rs – Rehabilitation, Reconstruction and Recovery. You will agree with me that what I have just said happened two days ago, is part of the recovery. We are also trying to design an implementation plan for all those promises we made. In less than three, four days, I will bring out my implementation plan with timelines, God willing, with appropriate funding we will follow that implementation plan judiciously and I am sure the Imo people will be better for it and I will bring prosperity to the state.
What are your key priorities for the state?
The first thing to address now is the problem of insecurity. You must have heard how the nonsense called kidnapping, armed robbery and all that have been on the increase and there is the apprehension that people are no longer safe staying in their various homes. So, the thing has become so rampant that government must stand up now and take courageous and bold decision to ensure that every citizen must have that sense of security. If that is addressed, then we will now begin to address the infrastructural gaps. The roads are not accessible, so many roads are in bad shape. So, from one point of Owerri town to another, people spend four, five hours. So, these are some of the things and we will start with immediate short term and medium term plan. It is part of what will be contained in that our document. But when you are talking about priority areas – education, agriculture, these are priority areas. Then government has no business in business, we will try to introduce PPP – Public Private Partnership, bring private sector investors to also help in growing our economy.
We are interested in reviving our industries that have gone moribund because of lack of electricity, potable water, access road. As I am leaving here now, I am going to talk with Department of Petroleum Resources, we already have a gas pipeline that terminates at Owerrinta Navy Barracks; so, if we get such approval, we want to bring private people that will take gas to our industrial layout so that all the industries will have that gas pipeline as their source of power supply; that way, the cost of doing business will come down and businessmen will be encouraged. We are going to promote the economy and bring life back to our people.
The Supreme Court computation of your votes revealed where your result outnumbered the number of those who voted. Many believe this judgement must have been given in error because of this, the ousted governor, Emeka Ihedioha has approached the Supreme Court to review and seek possible reversal of the verdict. Are you concerned that the Supreme Court might act accordingly?
Well, I am not concerned, reasons being that going back to the Supreme Court is based on falsehood. Because, the number of accredited votes outside the excluded votes is what we are talking about. But if you are going to court, you must go to court to discuss or talk about number of accredited voters including the excluded polling units. If you compute the number of accredited voters inclusive of the accredited voters, the figures are correct. We went to court with the issue of exclusion, we didn’t go to court with the business of election malpractices, violence and all of that. So, it is a peculiar case. My case is likened to that of Jim Nwobodo and Onoh, and Omoboriwo and Ajasin. The position of the Supreme Court is that where an election has been announced in a polling unit, INEC is bound to collect the result and enter the result into the form EC8B. We went there with two documents, the form EC8A that was excluded and Form EC8B where result was supposed to have been entered and they saw clearly that it was left blank. So, let INEC tell us what happened. Because, if going back to Supreme Court and of course like you know I am a lawmaker, I participated in the amendment of the Electoral Act. Election petitions are timed, as far as I am concerned, the 60 days left for Supreme Court to look into that matter has already expired. So, going back to the Supreme Court I don’t know what that…I am not a lawyer anyway but with my little knowledge of lawmaking, I understand what is in the Electoral act. So, Supreme Court is not a market square that anytime you want, you begin to go there.
What do you think of the national agricultural programme and how do you intend to key in?
Well, we are only coming with agriculture programme because the issue of food security is very important. Only two days ago, I directed the permanent secretary in the ministry of agriculture to come up with something because before I got into Imo State, they have already passed the budget which has their own priorities and programmes. Of course, most of them are not consistent with the programmes of my own political party on what I think would be better for our state. So, we are now identifying for instance the areas we can grow rice, areas we can farm other produce.
Don’t forget I represented a constituency that comprises Muslim and Christians; so the Muslims in Imo State are my friends and we have been working with them for the past eight years in the Senate. When I announce my cabinet, you will find that some Muslims will make my cabinet, so the issue of national unity and national integration is uppermost in my mind. Because, that is another way of ensuring that we are all safe.
Then the national policies on agriculture are being collated; there is already a technical committee on that respect. You know my deputy governor was former Vice chancellor, university of agriculture, Umudike. So, he is also an agriculturist. He is chairing a committee to come up with a full programme for agriculture to ensure food security for our people.
You said your priority areas will be agriculture, industries, health, education. We know the industry in Imo is education, are you going to give them qualitative or quantitative education?
Well, if you give a quantitative education, then is not education. When I said I am coming to give education, I mean I am giving education as in education, which is education. So, our people will be qualitatively educated; that is the target.