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Aloysius Attah, Onitsha
Over 500 people from the six local government areas in Enugu North District were recently empowered when the Senator representing the area in the National Assembly, Chukwuka Utazi distributed various empowerment items.
The items, including 51 tricycles, 238 motorcycles and 212 grinding machines were shared mostly among the indigent and unemployed from Igbo-Eze North, Udenu, Igbo-Etiti, Igbo-Eze South, Uzouwani and Nsukka Local Government Area.
The exercise, which lasted one week at the Senator’s country home, Nkpologu, Uzouwani Local Government Area of Enugu State, also featured distribution of electricity transformers to four communities of Enugu Ezike, Ogbos Umulokpa community, Ejuona Nkpologu community and Amono Uvuru Ani.
The lawmaker also donated a newly branded Hilux SUV to the Principal of JoeRose Secondary School Nkpologu. He said he decided to go outside the politics to reach out to non-politicians and the less privileged persons in his constituency.
“I’m not sharing the materials under any compulsion. I have plans to share them before now but we decided to do this after the elections.
“This is the third one we are doing in four years, and we are doing it for our people. I felt that it is not enough to build boreholes, repair schools and all that. But it is also important to give them something they can use to hold on and make life more meaningful. Some of them that are farmers, the motorcycles can help their mobility. The tricycle operators can earn a living from that. The women in the villages can use the grinding machines to generate income for their families and support their husbands. We teach them the spirit of enterprise.
“This is part of the federal government’s poverty alleviation programme and we are soliciting that when budgets are released in full, it would help us to implement our constituency projects in full. We drive these things home and ensure that they reach our people. We painstakingly work with the clergy in selecting the beneficiaries so that the disadvantaged and the vulnerable can as well benefit.
Dismissing insinuations in the social media that his house was put under seal by the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC), Utazi clarified that the ICPC moves around to track constituency projects to ensure there is no form of diversion.
He acknowledged the fact that without tracking, some lawmakers might actually divert such empowerment items but noted that the agency visited his house and found everything intact and ready for distribution
“I planned to distribute them during the National Assembly annual recess which is now to enable me supervise the distributions to ensure that the right people benefit,” he stated.
Utazi, who is chairman of the Senate Committee on Primary Healthcare and Communicable Diseases, said he was empowering his people to ensure that the vulnerable among them benefit from government.
He urged the beneficiaries not to sell the items but use them for their daily earnings, even as he warned that he would monitor them closely to ensure they are used for the purpose for which they are meant.
He pointed out that the choice of clerics to select the beneficiaries was to make sure that it reached the indigent person in the constituency .
“I did my first and second empowerment, and I used my fellow politicians to mobilize indigent people. This time, I am using the clergy to get to the indigent because they are also electorate that voted for us during elections. ICPC is doing their normal routine checks on project empowerment materials which are for all federal lawmakers, not for me alone,” he said.
Speaking earlier, a cleric, Rev. Fr. Ikechukwu Eze who helped to handpick the beneficiaries, commended Senator Utazi for his contributions to the development of Enugu North Senatorial Zone.
he urged beneficiaries to manage the items well for their good.
Speaking on behalf of the beneficiaries, Mr Henry Eze who got a tricycle, expressed overwhelming gratitude for the gift while praying that God would continue to lift the Senator.
Eze, who informed that he was jobless before now, charged his fellow beneficiaries from all the wards to make use of the material given to them to better their lives.
A physically challenged woman, Eunice Mamah who was taken to the venue of the empowerment on a wheel chair, was full of tears while expressing gratitude to the lawmaker.
She said the grinding machine given to her by the senator would help improve her living condition and those within her neighbourhood.
“Before now, I could not do anything on my own without assistance. In our neighbourhood too, only few people have the manual grinder. With this grinding machine, we can grind for people on a larger scale and also make additional income from it. I’m so happy this came my way through the senator and I pray that God will bless him for us,” she said.
