Hon. John Okiyi Kalu is the Abia State Commissioner for Information. In this interview with EMEKA OKAFOR, he spoke on the challenges being faced by Governor Okezie Ikpeazu with the opposition in the state since 2015 till date and how he has been grappling with them. Excerpt:
In spite of the achievements Governor Okezie Ikpeazu recorded during his first tenure, what were the challenges that confronted the administration at the same time?
We had well mapped out programmes, developed around the five pillars of the administration that we wanted to execute. But, because of paucity of funds, some of them could not be completed. Even with all the attempts to distract him, Governor Ikpeazu was never really dazed by the antics of his opponents. He was firmly focused on doing the work of the people of Abia State. Another challenge was the brand of politics we play in Abia whereby if you are not the governor, you work hard to destroy everything the incumbent wants to do and openly work towards frustrating his programmes, so that you will re-contest again in future and accuse him of incompetence. For instance, the state government, led by Dr Ikpeazu, wanted to access $200m African Development Bank (ADB) facility to help us deliver 500 kilometers of new roads to Ndi Abia, but some desperate political actors made several negative interventions to stop the early realisation simply because they believed that with 500km of new roads in four years the governor will be undefeatable in 2019. These same desperate politicians continued to de-market Abia State and every effort made by the administration to positively promote the state was poopooed by them and their hirelings. Those characters re-invented themselves into clogs in the wheel of progress of the state as they worked hard to sabotage everything we tried to do.
