Governorship aspirant, Kyrian Uchenna Ibe, on the platform of the NPC in Imo State, has expressed his desire to return the state to the people.
Dickson Okafor
A governorship aspirant, Kyrian Uchenna Ibe on the platform of the Nigeria Peoples Congress (NPC) in Imo State, has expressed his desire to return the state to the people.
What led you into Community Service and philanthropy?
While I was tending to my self and fend- ing for my family, I established a football academy because of my passion for sports especially football. I thought it wise to en- gage young people positively through sports. So, through Concord Football Academy I was able to send players abroad. Some of whom are Alexander Oluwatayo Akande playing presently for Hong Kong national team and he is married to a Hong Kong citi- zen. There is another one called Elijah Piers, a Liberian and I took him from Liberia and he now plays in Germany, but currently he is in the United States of America. In Oshodi we see a lot of young people playing football on the street and nobody to help them direct their energy towards the sport they love and possibly make a career of it. Also, today I have a football FIFA licensed agent registered in Faro Island in Denmark. There is another agent I just got; his name is Kingsley in Canada. So, I have players from all over Africa that I helped get clubs and they can be traced. I impacted their lives and they are willing and ready to support my governorship ambition. I thank God that I was and I’m still taking young people out of the streets and using sports to direct the energy of youths to useful purpose in the society. I’m also involved in charity work with a Christian organisation in the Voice of the Last Days Ministry where I’m retained as their Law adviser.
What informed your decision to run for the governorship of Imo State?
All my life I have been involved in the academics, religious and sports and I never meddled in politics but at a point in time I had a rethink because of certain experiences I had. Those experiences created passion in me and reawaken my philosophy about politics. The word they have been putting out that seems to scare decent people like me away, is that politics is a dirty game. It is a negative cliché they have used for a very long time to scare good people away from participating in politics. And this is why people with questionable character go into politics and within a short time they have amass so much money? Most of them don’t have what it takes to govern people because you can’t give what you don’t have.
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What are you bringing to the table?
First, having realised that Imo State is highly indebted up to the tune of N1.2trillion, I will ensure that a part of the state allocation is mapped out for debt servicing. That means that we won’t rely on federal allocation rather we will improve on internally generated revenue and also drive development through foreign direct investment. Investor will look at the state debt profile to know if the state is credit worthy. The first thing foreign investors look at to know if Imo is credit worthy is who the leader of the state is. If you want borrow money from a bank the first thing they will look at is your management team because the team will manage the resources. If the bank has no confidence in your management team, they won’t lend you money. In the same hand, if investors have no confidence in the governor of a state, they won’t invest in that state. Therefore, I have assembled a team of technocrats and experts in various fields who are going to drive development in Imo through foreign investment. So, when our foreign partners see the caliber of people that constitute the government, they will be forced to come with their money to Imo State. Or how can a country loan you money or an investor come to invest in your state, when they know that the governor have over 30 billion dollars stashed away in some banks in Europe? This is some of the things they would put into consideration before they can invest in the state. So, we will engage investors in Private, Public Partnership (PPP) to deliver infrastructure development in Imo State.
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We will introduce an Economic Blue Print which I call, ‘Imo 50 years Development Plan’. This plan will be presented to the state House of Assembly to be passed into law and it will be in phase, short, long and medium term plan. This policy is what we will present to foreign investors which will give them confidence because it is backed by law. I’m in politics to serve and not to be served as it is the case with the past and present leadership in the state. We will tell the people how we are going to provide them housing, education, employment, health, and transportation.
How are you going to swim against the tide knowing that money play key role in Nigerian politics?
I’m out to make a difference because I did a course on Electoral Campaign and Strategy and one of the things in campaign and strategy is research not on what the newspapers are writing. That is why Donald Trump won in America. The media never gave him a chance and Trump had a team of master strategists who discovered that Americans want to take back their country while those in the establishment kept living in denial and when the chips were down Trump won even though the opinion poll never gave Trump a chance. So, after my unbiased research to know the mind of Imolites for 2019, I discovered that the people are fed up with old class of politicians. They would have preferred Uche Nwosu if he is not to be Governor Okorocha’s son in-law and also from Orlu zone. If he were to come from Owerri or Okigwe zone, Nwosu will fly because the people want a young governor.
Also, I discovered that the pattern of voting won’t be the same because the people will vote for individuals not party. So, money will not play much role in 2019. This was the three discoveries from my research. With what happened recently in Imo during the APC state congresses, the people could be happy with the coalition for taking over the structure of the ruling party in the state from Okorocha, but the people won’t vote for anybody who is a member of the coalition as governor. The people want a vibrant young person with unquestionable pedigree to be their governor in 2019 and that is why I’m in the race. If they allow free and fair election in 2019, no member of the coalition will be elected governor. The only candidate that would contended with me is Uche Nwosu, but he won’t come up because the people have rejected him because of Okorocha.
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