Atiku Is My Presidential Candidate —Ikpeazu

Abia State governor, Okezie Ikpeazu, in this interview with selected journalists, speaks on contending issues within the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and his achievements as well as challenges in the last seven and a half years.

What have been your greatest challenges as a governor in the past seven and a half years?

I want to start by thanking God first, for giving me the opportunity to serve, and also thank Abia people for finding me worthy in a state of five million people to be their leader between 2015 and now. If I summarise the seven years in a few words, I would say it has been most eventful with its ups and downs. The greatest challenge was communicating my vision first to my team and secondly to the people. I always tell a story of a locomotive engine that is running at high speed without the coaches. It might arrive its destination in good time but with no passengers or goods.

Leadership in the 21st century requires that one must communicate his/her vision in a way that your team will be able to replicate and drive it and also speak to the people so that they can be receptive to your vision and support you in any way they can. On the first flank, there is a choice as a governor to choose your team: commissioners, aides, and structure of the political components, but you have little or no choice about civil service, which is the bulwark of public service in general. At times, a governor might have a civil service that is stereotyped or focused on old ways, not receptive to change, not willing to run at one’s speed, and not willing to embrace 21st century paradigms of development like digitalisation and computerisation. It impacts on everything negatively from revenue collection systems and there are problems inherent in the system orchestrated by [organised] Labour’s stance and unionisation.

One is really handicapped if one is a democrat. Apart from the checks and balances that the judiciary and legislatures would provide, it is also a big bottleneck with bureaucracy and protocol, driving the vision, and we don’t have all the time. So, I experienced a lot of frustration in that regard and we had to devise a way to go round that. What we did was to create Abia Economic Advancement Team, which is my backroom and they have the mandate to turn my vision into a work plan and to adapt it to local dynamics to make sure it functions and to also support me in the implementation, monitoring and evaluation if there is a lagging and unwilling arm of the system. So, that was how we got around but it can be quite frustrating.Again, politicians misread or deliberately misread one’s intention and politicise everything; they even politicise the misfortune of the citizens. When one begins to show empathy, there are people who hype it, and others are condemning it.

The third major one is that we came at a time when finances weren’t steady. We have gone through three recessions in this country. We are just surviving the third one in which we came out technically broke. The global economy is getting worse and it was negatively impacted by COVID-19 and more recently, the Russia-Ukraine war. Also, the problem of Crude Oil theft puts us in a place where we can’t take full advantage of scarcity occasioned by the Russia-Ukraine conflict. So, we are in a place where many problems, conflicts, and diseases from Ebola to COVID-19 to Monkeypox in a milieu that one cannot guarantee allocations, in which they fluctuate at times, with wide degrees of reduction. At times, one can receive N2billion less than what was received the previous month. So, it doesn’t make for proper planning, makes it difficult for budgeting and projection, but we thank God that we are in a place where we can at least, have one or two things to point out and to say we didn’t completely waste our time these past seven years.

 

You and a few PDP governors were not at the launch of Atiku Campaign. What happened? Is it an extension of the ongoing battle between you and your presidential candidate?

There is no battle between the presidential candidate and me.  He is my presidential candidate. I don’t have any other candidate, but at times, when one gets to a certain point in life, and a vehicle is put down for a journey, every kid will jump at that offer. But as a matured man, questions will be asked about the destination of the vehicle. That is the question I am asking. I am a South-easterner. I am an Igbo man. We have been faithful apologists of the PDP since 1999 and needed to ask a question. The greatest need of Nigerians today is inclusiveness. Can we be sensitive to the feelings of other people? Can I be guaranteed a country where a criminal in Sokoto is a criminal in Abia and a criminal Abia is a criminal in Zamfara? Can I be guaranteed a country where my son will not be brutalized, because his name is Okolie? Can I be allowed into a meeting out of respect for my capacity to make contributions in that meeting and not necessarily because I am here but because of where I come from?

There was a time in this country when the quota system was the order of the day; even in admission, because if we take candidates on merit, some sections of this country may not have candidates and everybody agreed to it so that our brothers and sisters can catch up with us. When did we jettison that consideration? The other name for hypocrisy is double-standard and these questions were being asked quietly and politely before some characters escalated it to the national platform. I was not in Abuja, because I went overseas for a United Nations meeting held in New York and I just came back, which is why I couldn’t attend the launch. But going forward, if those questions are not answered, we will limp into the bus and see how it goes, but I thank God for the courage to ask those questions for and on behalf of Nnamdi and I will end this particular question with a proverb about a chicken that found itself in the claws of a kite and the chicken continued to shout and it said ‘I am shouting not because the kite will leave me but let heaven and earth hear my voice.”


It is said that a group of governors like you, Seyi Makinde, Ortom, Wike, and Ugwuanyi are opposed to the candidacy either because of Wike’s loss or the quest for southern president. Was that the reason all the five governors boycotted the launch? Was it planned that the five of you were not there?

It will be very childish for me not to attend our party’s activities because Wike lost. I granted an interview on the floor of the convention that night and I have told Wike before the convention that we should be hopeful and prayerful so that we can win, but if we don’t win, are we still going to remain in PDP and his answer was positive that we will remain in PDP; that if another person wins, we will go with the person. However, in trying to make our party strong and give us a narrative with which to market the party from this part of the country, people would always ask me questions as a leader in the party what is the way forward and what’s in it for us? If that question is posed, I don’t know what I will say or have we gotten to the point where nobody says anything again?

This is why I needed to satisfy my conscience that I have these questions. It is not about Wike and we are not against his Excellency, Waziri Adamawa. The problem is beyond Waziri. It is about dredging up the courage to speak the right words and this is also part of what is bedeviling Nigeria. I have said that if I were in the shoe of President Buhari, I will engage Citizen Nnamdi Kanu. Engaging him does not belittle our president. He is our citizen, and there may be things that Nnamdi Kanu is not seeing because he is not sitting on the presidential chair. Then, you enlighten him, there could also be things that he is hearing because he is closer to the grassroots which the president doesn’t know and he would educate him. This is what leadership is all about but if you say I would not sit and listen to anything, democracy gives opportunities to be heard.

 How would you situate the kind of governance we have had at the federal level since 2015 when you assumed office? Could we have done better if we had a different approach to governance?

Everybody is miffed and shocked at the kind of leadership we have experienced at the hands of the APC since 2015. The main reason why many people are shocked is that government is judged based on promises and manifestos they made and President Buhari is not particularly new to presidential orchestration. Perhaps, he is the most prepared at the time having tried several times and experienced leadership at that level as a military ruler. So, we thought he has the levers of power at his fingertips and he could pull them but it is shocking that the value of the dollar to naira is N730 as at present, which has never happened before and it is on a free fall and the resolution of issues like ASUU strike appears as if we are implementing Boko Haram by default, which is we don’t want western education. The rate of inflation is uncontrollable, and then people are being paid N30,000 and they don’t want to see criminals. Graduates won’t get jobs and now they won’t also graduate. Even the simplest of things, the only thing I see happening is sharing of loots. Is that government? They would collect money from London and share it. How does that represent sophisticated thinking? The answers are clear to this particular question and the greatest disservice to our nation is the disunity and the rate of mutual suspicion brought in by the government that today one could be stoned in one part of the country for posting your views on social media and nothing will happen. Some cities are cut off from other cities and in all of these, they still post statistics on agriculture. Where are the farmers? On which farm are the farmers?

 

Having said all these, why do you think the APC should be confident about winning the 2023 elections?

What gives a party or candidate hope about what he or she will do in an election is a combination of two things. The first one is what he is able to do and his opponent is unable to do it. So, if those that are contending with APC become indolent, they say justice does not favour indolence.
The South-East is not speaking about Peter Obi.  Is it about party politics or about the brightest chance the Igbo have to make an impact and possibly win the presidency?

I don’t know what you mean by the South-East…

I mean leaders…

Leaders of a geopolitical zone cannot be synonymous with the geopolitical zone. Most politicians speak from a selfish reason and it is about how it satisfies what they perceive. But if any leader in the South-East wants, to be frank, he will say Peter Obi is a narrative that is resonating and I believe strongly that God still interferes in the affairs of men. Secondly, I also believe strongly that a mango will fall when it is ripe and it is time. Nobody knows whether it is time and season now or not but whosoever will emerge as the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria should know there is a Goliath confronting that David. If the person is unable to dredge up the courage to kill that Goliath, then you are not the David. There is no way we can run away from it.

 


Can you explain that?

What I mean is that today for the candidate of PDP, his Goliath is to dredge up the courage to demonstrate your capacity for inclusiveness and nation-building. It is a big-time Goliath. For Peter Obi, dredge up the courage to speak Nigerianness into the seeming South-East Agenda. For Bola Tinubu, the Goliath is to create a 360 Degree departure from what has brought us to this path in the past seven years.

 

One of your projects, the Osisioma flyover, which you inaugurated recently, is a beautiful initiative that you started and completed.  Looking back into the past seven years, what are the other things you did that when you look back, you can say you have done well?

Incidentally, Osisioma flyover ranks sixth among the things I would want to be remembered for. When I speak about legacy, I speak about the peace and stability that we enjoy in Abia State. Abia is today like the oasis in a desert that is the middle of conflict. Abia has remained relatively politically stable. It has also remained comparatively safer than other states security-wise. I give God the glory for that and I want to say that this is one state that in the past seven years, we have not had a case of bank robbery.

 

I wonder about the stability of Abia State when it comes to security in the South-East and all over the country.

First, I want to give God the glory because as a Christian, security is of the Lord. I also want to thank my people. Abia people are very vigilant because we connected with them, and we receive benefits of actionable intelligence. We are also blessed with proactive security agencies and we created a synergy. In most cases, there is always interagency rivalry. As a leader, at a time like this, the first one must tackle is make sure that there is no interagency rivalry. Once  interagency rivalry can be nipped in the bud and let all the agencies know that they have roles to play in the structure that makes up the security architecture, then one would have done more 40 to 50 per cent of what needs to done. Beyond that, we track in a very serious manner all the miscreants that come to our knowledge and we have a digital platform in the government house that gives us satellite images of every inch of the state. We have a robust military specification communication system that links all the DPOs to the Commissioner of Police and those on patrol. We have powerful radio wavelength that gives us the real-time information. We also deployed a group of people we called ‘Gatekeepers’ into the various communities.

At some point, I introduced a Crime Prevention and Record-Keeping Programme, which I called CPARP. What  it means is that we change the crime diary from writing on boards to providing computers in the various Police Stations, so that we can share the bio-data, photograph, age, pictures, colour of the eye, facial marks, address and telephone numbers of criminals. We also take the parents’ bio-data and village, so that by the time we put it on the platform, all the DPOs within the police formation are linked together and then linked to the CP. What this means is that if there is a criminal in Obioma Ngwa Local Government Area, the DPO in Osisioma recognizes the criminal and if the criminal is on the run, something happens and the criminal is within the vicinity, the DPO puts the criminal’s name. If he goes with a fake name, he puts either the height, colour of the eye or facial mark. Criminals on that record that have similar features will appear and face recognition can be done. Criminals move from one location to the other bearing different names. They can even change their identities but this time around, we decided to put all of this information into the computer. Our police officers were trained.


 

https://tribuneonlineng.com/atiku-is-my-presidential-candidate-ikpeazu/

I said it last month that Wike the clueless empty chest beater will be left in pains. Power is transient. Atiku the incoming President of Nigeria will win the February 25th, 2023 presidential election. Wike the clueless loser will lose woefully.

So u fortunate.
After several trips with Emperor Woke , Ikpeazu is now articulated.
But unfortunately, Abia State hast been under developed beyond the citizens imagination.
The state has all it takes to be a great commercial city.
With all the markets and talents in the town, development is below average.

Only a fool thinks that those governors wil work against Atiku working against Atiku means working against ur self because they are all going for Senator except that one from Rivers even rivers senatorial candidates in Rivers wil dump wike for their own sake

Chai
Atiku don win am

Birds of a feather flock together.

Na thief dey sabi his fellow thief.
After watching NNPC pipeline tapping, I have concluded that any ordinary Nigerian campaigning for APC/PDP is a Useless animal.
No apology for that.

Below is two pictures where this tapping has been going on for years. And the money sent to Europe. Our money is used in developing Europe but our people die daily in the sea trying to travel to Europe.

May the gods of our ancestors strike any useless animal still campaigning for these criminal gangs in APC/PDP.

One by one

Emilokan is a nonentity
Election is between Obi and Atiku

Ikpeazu has only one vote.

MasterJayJay:
Ikpeazu has only one vote.

That is the mistake you always make in Politics

It is not how many votes he has but how many he Controls

He is a Governor

Ikpeazu is inconsequential

So let him go and park one side

Christistruth00:



That is the mistake you always make in Politics

It is not how many votes he has but how many he Controls

He is a Governor

You are talking to one that lives in Aba. Peter Obi is getting the majority of votes in Abia. No time for argument

MasterJayJay:
Ikpeazu has only one vote.

same way Peter Obi the leader of the structureless party Labour Party has one vote.

MasterJayJay:


You are talking to one that lives in Aba. Peter Obi is getting the majority of votes in Abia. No time for argument

The Governor said no and all his Officials and House Of Assembly must deliver their Poling units and districts

Christistruth00:



That is the mistake you always make in Politics

It is not how many votes he has but how many he Controls

He is a Governor

only few understand dis

Most of dis politicians are playing local politics

Christistruth00:


The Governor said no and all his Officials and House Of Assembly must deliver their Poling units and districts

Because they will force everyone to vote for Atiku? You guys and your ridiculous circus.

MasterJayJay:
Because they will force everyone to vote for Atiku? You guys and your ridiculous circus.

How do you expect them to retain their Positions if their Party Loses ?

Christistruth00:

How do you expect them to retain their Positions if their Party Loses ?

Na their inheritance?

MasterJayJay:

Na their inheritance?

As long as their Political Godfather wins