Interacting with High Chief Obiora Okonkwo, it’s easy to decipher his push for a paradigm shift in governance, especially in Anambra, his home state. Okonkwo who holds a PhD in Economics from the RUSSIAN Academy of Science is an apostle of transparency in government and a bottom-up approach to development spearheaded by independent LGs. One of the country’s top investors, with fingers in tourism and leisure, insurance, construction, military technology and of recent, aviation, Okonkwo is a frontline aspirant for the governorship ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). In this chat with KEMI YESUFU, he speaks on his chances in the contest for PDP’s ticket, how his party can defeat the ruling APGA and plans for Anambra State should he be given the opportunity to govern the state.
How do you think your experience as former chairman of the Nigeria-Belgium Business Forum and the current chairman Nigeria-RUSSIA Business Forum will rub off on your running Anambra State should you be elected governor?
It surely will. One of our cardinal focuses is attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to Anambra State. To attract FDI to Anambra, you need to put in place a government that has integrity and credibility. Certainly, my background and relationship with RUSSIA and past relationships with countries with credible, long term investors will be a blessing to Anambra State and the South-East as a whole. RUSSIA is desirous of competing for economic opportunities in Nigeria and with someone like me, who they trust; Anambra will be a launch pad for them. RUSSIA is coming with huge investments in infrastructure. They are interested in investing in roads, rail, power, manufacturing, agro-allied chain and technology transfer. We are looking at investments worth about $5 billion which can come into Anambra, not too long after swearing-in. What really matters to RUSSIA is who is governor of Anambra State. Is he someone they (RUSSIANS) can do business with? What foreign investors are looking for is a corruption-free government, a team that knows what takes to make a state peaceful and investor-friendly. What we offer the Anambra people is a team with a leader that has courage, a leader who will be accountable to the people, a leader who comes with strong sense of prudence and the efficiency of the private sector. These qualities have been lacking in government. This explains why you see a person in the private sector start a business with small capital, yet he will grow the business and pay people millions as salaries with perks of office. Why is it that people borrow money from the bank to start a business and they manage these businesses providing employment, while those in government borrow much more along with federal allocation and you have governors negotiating for N17, 500 as minimum wage? Some can’t even pay the minimum wage, while those who pay this figure beat their chests….government should be able to use all its resources to pay its workers and create the right atmosphere for the private sector to create jobs. When you have an individual who has succeeded in the private sector, he will be able to bridge the gap between managing government effectively and making businesses grow, so they can employ people as well as pay tax. For me, this is the best way to create wealth in the state. Today, what we have in Anambra for generating revenue for government is people flogging old women front and back to collect the little they have. They eventually keep a huge percentage of what collected from the women in the market to themselves and give peanuts to government. We can do better than this in Anambra.
Political watchers say you have a good chance of picking the PDP ticket despite the long list of aspirants. How do you intend to defeat APGA which has been in power for a long time in your state?
Yes, APGA has been in power for a long time. You cannot take the party for granted. But for me and other Anambrarians, APGA is that tree that doesn’t produce good fruit anymore. The bible says of such a tree, that you cut it down. I amend it to be that you uproot it. APGA can be uprooted. Where APGA draws its strength from has been cut off because I am in the race, with me in the race APGA is in trouble. The only strategy they are left with is to stop me from me picking the PDP ticket. So, all the hullaballoo about zoning is being championed by APGA. This long list of aspirants in the PDP is being orchestrated by APGA, to create confusion. So I am APGA’s only nightmare. They believe that they are better off with any other candidate from PDP than me.
You recently hosted a church event to unify the PDP. How long will this unity last, in order for the party to have just one primary and whoever emerges is fully supported?
God in his infinite mercy has been kind enough to use me to fight the battle to end disunity in the PDP and keep the party together. For me, there is no winner or loser. But I call on all Anambra PDP members, for us to come together to win for the party. I am also relying on the traditional, age long principle, that you don’t reward good with evil. Inasmuch as there is tendency for betrayal and unreliability in politics, I am counting on the fact a greater percentage of us, the figure we need to win will still remember how far I have gone with them. I am the only aspirant in the race that never left the PDP since 1999. I’ve remained faithful through good and bad times. I have never collected money to work against the party and I’m probably the sole sponsor of the party in the last four years-this was not with the intention of running for the governorship ticket. I have been sponsoring the party, supporting other candidates for a long time. But we have some of our folks who fell from the sky and they want to be governor.
How do you intend to deal with the problem of insecurity in the South-East in order to protect Anambra?
You are aware that southern governors recently came up with their positions on issues affecting the country, insecurity being one of them. I must commend their courage. The solutions to some of our problems are contained in the communiqué issued after their meeting in Asaba. I hope they are bold enough to implement the solutions they listed for the sole purpose of curbing insecurity and not for other political motives. They obviously didn’t look at insecurity as standing alone. They were able to indicate that injustice, nepotism and other things have caused resentment and this has led to agitation in certain places. Beyond this, good governance is very important. Bad governance is a problem seen on all levels of government. The states have enough power as guaranteed in the constitution to manage themselves in a way that they can be insulated from happenings at the federal level. Some of the problems people face at the local level can be dealt with through LG autonomy. I strongly believe in LG autonomy, development and governance should start at the LG level. I believe that a lot can change if we elect capable hands at the LG level. I come from an LG that receives an allocation of about N300 million, it also generates income with an estimated N350 million generated monthly in total. So, when you talk of about N350 million a month, in a year you have about N4.2 billion. In the four-year tenure of a governor, you are talking about N17 billion being received/generated by one LG. Imagine an LG which about N17 billion has been expended on, you will certainly see a difference. But what happens is that this money goes to Akwa and once in a while, my governor comes to do a one or two kilometer road leading to a friend’s home or farm. For me, the money for LGs must get to the LGs. One of the first things we will do when we come-in is to organize LG elections, we will do this as quickly as permitted by law and as soon we can find funds to conduct elections in the budget. I am hoping all of this can be done within six months of coming into government.
How workable is your blueprint for Anambra’s development?
We have an implementable blueprint. We have a ten-point agenda which is practical. We are yet to launch our blueprint. But I can tell you that there is nothing I am promising that we haven’t done as private sector investors. We will only be scaling up what we have done at the level of Anambra State. If we are promising investment in power, we have done this in the private sector. If for nothing I generate my own power here (The Dome, Abuja), in my hometown we’ve generated 95 percent power. If we say we are providing security, we have contributed to security stability in different places. At the federal level I also contributed to security stability. For education, we have contributed to significant change. So we are promising things we have proven capability to do, not political rhetoric.
Ugogbe Igbo we are strongly behind you