By Ejeh Josh
Ahead of the 2023 general elections in the country, the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Enugu State, Dr. Peter Mbah, has given a resounding assurance to the people of Nsukka zone that his administration, if elected next year, will make them major beneficiaries of the government.
Mbah gave this assurance on Friday while speaking at town hall meetings with the people of Nsukka West and Nsukka Central Development Centres held at Ovogovo and Nru respectively in Nsukka local government area.
At the interactive sessions designed by the PDP gubernatorial flagbearer to reach out to all the development centres in the state in order to ascertain their peculiar needs and expectations from his administration, the residents of the university community, while baring their minds, urged Mbah to look into the state of their roads, create more employments for their teeming youths, tackle growing insecurity in the area, and provide the environment that will boost their agricultural yields.
Raising concern over the state of their agriculture, a professor of international relations from Edem community, Prof Felix Asogwa, said the people of Nsukka West Development Centre were mostly farmers blessed with fertile soil. He, however, noted that the huge potential in the agricultural sector was being underutilized, calling on Mbah to consider establishing agro-allied processing industry in the zone.
Asogwa further commended the slogan of the governorship hopeful, saying “Your slogan, Tomorrow Is Here, is beautiful because you have manifested it in the private sector, and we believe you’re bringing in that knowledge to our state”.
Sam Ugwu, a farmer and former special adviser to the Governor from the area, urged Mbah to tackle the insecurity which is becoming a disturbing menace, in order to enable them to continue with their farming. He added that most of their feeder roads which were in a bad shape needed to be upgraded to help in moving their farming produce to the market.
Commending his recently presented manifesto, Ugwu said he had gone through the programme designed for agriculture, saying if the policies are executed to the letter, Nsukka alone will feed the entire state.
Speaking for the women who attended the interactive sessions in their numbèrs, a former chairman of the council area, Mrs. Nkechi Omeje, complained that erosion had destroyed half of their community and should be given urgent attention to salvage the situation.
According to her, women inclusiveness in the politics of the area was beginning to decline due to undue domination. Promising that the women will mobilize their huge voting strength to vote for the party, Nkechi appealed for more appointments of the female gender into government.
In a related development, the Administrator of Nsukka Central Development Centre, Hon. Chidiebere Attah, called for a permanent solution to the accommodation issue bedeviling the centre’s administrative building.
He further promised that with Mbah’s uncommon roadmap for the zone, they were only waiting for election date for them to deliver their huge voting population for his election.
In the separate addresses to the governorship hopeful, Hon. Walter Ozioko, Nsukka Local Government Chairman, Hon. Vita Abba, PDP House of Representatives candidate for Nsukka/Igboeze South federal constituency, Hon. Emmanuel Ugwuere, House of Assembly candidate for Nsukka West constituency, Hon. Amos Amadi, member representing the constituency in the House of Assembly, Hon. Peter Okonkwo, Hon. Ngozi Ozioko, Mr. Pally Eze who is the coordinating president general of the 476 autonomous communities in the state, among others, commended Mbah for his modern approach and uncommon model of governance, promising that Nsukka votes belong to him.
While assessing their infrastructure, they appealed for the decongestion of their markets, provisions of security lights, standard abattoir, and industries that will provide their youths with employments.
Reacting to the issues raised by communities in the development centres, Mbah promised to integrate their needs into his programmes, assuring that he would give utmost priority to their needs.
Underscoring the strategic place of the zone in his administration, the renowned industrialist maintained that Nsukka will constitute the major beneficiary of his government.
He also reassured the people of his deliberate strategies to establish industries that will create employments and engage the youths, a theme park as a tourists attraction, and run his administration on the values and principles of justice, equity and fairness.
“We have promised to exceed your expectations in Nsukka zone when we get to office. I want to assure you that our programmes and the needs you outlined are consistent with our goal. They’ll form the major plan of our execution strategy.
“We have our plan for security. Peace and security is one of the first items we have prioritized in our agenda.
“We will not abandon the Nsukka zone. Our programmes for you are unprecedented in the annals of our history of development. We are going to build a world class theme park which will attract over three million tourists yearly. This will have ripple effects in the economy. It will generate employments for our youths; it means more revenues for the private sector because more hotels that will serve them will spring up.
“We are going to construct multi-modal light rail transportation system, and this will make your journey from Enugu to this place easier and shorter.
“You said you need more roads here. I have good news for you; our social contract with you which we are here to seal today means we’re committing 10,000 kilometers of roads. Our design captures the access roads to your farmlands.
“In order to grow our economy from $4.4 billion dollars to $30 billion dollars, we must scale up our production. It means we have to invest in agriculture. We are going to grow agriculture from $2 billion dollars to $10 billion dollars. Our administration will support our farmers by building a special agro-allied processing zone in each of the three senatorial zones. Access, storage facilities and processing will be constructed. The road leading to Idah will be given attention. We have plan to assist market men and women by creating enabling environment for them to establish their businesses by derisking investment flow. We will support and encourage investors so that our youths can be gainfully employed. We are going to create an ecosystem for diffusion of know-how,” he further assured.
