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The Ebonyi State Labour Party (LP) gubernatorial candidate, Chief Splendour Oko-Eze, yesterday, vowed to focus on industrialising the state, rather than “building of hotels and filling stations that can barely give jobs to the teeming unemployed youths”, if elected as governor in next year’s general election.
The gubernatorial hopeful also promised to back state policing and prioritise community policing, adding that he will introduce electronic equipment to monitor the movement of people in the state.
“I will also make sure that I bring equipment, electronic equipment that can at least monitor the coming in and going out of people into the state, because not everybody enters the state with good intention” he added.
“I told someone that I must make sure that community policing is returned in Ebonyi, because those people who are in communities, they know the people who come in and the people who go out. With this, the issue of insecurity, community clashes, will be reduced”, he stated
Addressing journalists in Abakaliki, he lamented the sufferings and hardship the people are passing through, vowing that if elected as governor in 2027, he will turnaround the state and make it the economic hub of Southeast.
Oko-Eze faulted the Vanco Flyover and Tunnel initiated by the administration of Nwifuru Francis, arguing that if the government is given additional three years, it will not complete the project.
He attributed the alleged lack of performance by the Nwifuru’s administration to persons he termed “wicked politicians” surrounding the governor, recalling that he refused to challenge the Nwifuru’s election in 2023 when the Labour Party substituted his name with that of Architect Edward Okereke, because he thought that since the governor is a youth, he would have fixed the state.
“I can proudly tell you that we are yet to see any completed project commissioned in the state for more than three years now. We are running closer to four years, which means one full-blown calendar of governance has wound up”
“If you can tell yourself the truth, you will see that the cost of livelihood in Abakaliki is very high. Talk about house rent. For you to get a comfortable three-bedroom flat in Abakaliki now, you should be budgeting N1 million or thereabout”, he said.
He opined that if elected the governor, he will step down development to the hinterland to discourage rural-urban migration, adding that those of them who live very close can be plying from their rural area to the city.
Chief Oko-Eze also assured the people of Ebonyi State that he would look into the crazy bills by the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company, saying that the company has made life so unbearable to residents of the state.
He said: “I become a governor, the first thing I would look into is the high billing of this EDDC. In a poor state, if you go to other areas, you will see prepaid metre. People are charged according to what they consume.
“You can’t come here and give us estimated billing. A family of four living in a two-bedroom flat, you’ll be giving that family N60,000, N50,000. How much do they earn? Take, for instance, a civil servant whose salary is N30,000, and you are giving the person a NEPA bill alone of N15,000. What about the school fees of the children? What about other needs?
“If you come to Abakaliki now, a bag of pure water is sold for N700. How will a family cope? So, this issue of scarcity of water in Abakaliki, to be precise, must come to an end during my governance. I will make sure that I do everything humanly possible to reticulate water in the state, so that whoever is in Abakaliki will have water at his or her doorstep at a reduced cost.
“This is what is making the people of Ebonyi State to be very impoverished. Because you can’t tell me that a civil servant will come and pay N600,000 house rent for a two-bedroom flat for a year, then he will be buying water, N700 a bag. Some families will finish one bag just in a day; then multiply N700 by seven which makes one week”.
