Why SEDC excites House of Reps Deputy Speaker –Nwabughiogu

By Chidiebere Onyemaizu

Livinus Okechukwu Nwabughiogu, is the Chief Press Secretary to the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Benjamin Okezie Kalu. In this interview with Daily Sun, he shared the Deputy Speaker’s perceptive on the birthing of the South East Development Commission, SEDC and other issues of interest.

Excerpts:

President Bola Tinubu recently signed the various regional development Commission bills, including the South East Development Commission, (SEDC) into law. The Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt Hon. Benjamin Kalu has been exceedingly excited about the development. What informed the excitement?

Every Igbo man at this point in time should be excited, should be happy and should applaud the present government under His Excellency, President Bola Tinubu for graciously signing the SEDC bill into law, thus making it an act. Why are we excited? Why are we happy? We are because in the last 55 years no Nigerian leader has been able to pursue or actualise the 3Rs- Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Reconciliation-promise made by the General Yakubu Gowon regime after the civil war. The 3Rs policy was meant to reconstruct infrastructures in the region battered by the war. So, if a Development Commission is now birthed to reconstruct the region, to give it the necessary infrastructural needs, why won’t the average Igbo person be happy? So, to directly answer your question, the Deputy Speaker is excited, happy like every other Nigerian because other Nigerians are equally happy for the South-East.

But other regions, in fact all the six geo-political regions now have Development Commissions, what makes the SEDC different from others or unique to warrant the exceeding excitement or does he see the SEDC as a special favour from President Tinubu to the South -East?

Happiness is relative. This analogy will succinctly explain it: Family A has been having baby boys and family B has not had the opportunity to have a baby boy for a longtime and now family A has just got a baby girl and family B baby boy and they threw a party because they are excited. The question is, why wouldn’t they be happy? And someone will start wondering why the unprecedented excitement. There are baby boys and girls everywhere but they just got theirs now having yearned for them for a very long time; they have every reason to be excited, to celebrate. So, for a longtime the South-East has yearned for a body like the SEDC but it was not forthcoming until President Bola Tinubu made it happen. That’s why I said happiness is relative. The family that has an even mixture of boys and girls may say oh! It’s no big deal staging a special celebration for birthing a boy or girl but the family that hasn’t been blessed with the two sexes respectively will see the celebration differently, so the Deputy Speaker and of course I and a broad spectrum of South-Easterners are excited over SEDC because we haven’t seen such before.

For the first time, we are having a body solely dedicated to the development of the South-East and now, N140 billion has been allocated to the SEDC in the 2025 budget. It is possible that the present government has prioritised regional development, to help develop the regions speedily. So, the government may have initiated the Development Commissions to drive development in the regions, in the grassroots. Acceleration of development, I believe, is the intention of the Tinubu administration in setting up the development Commissions.

With the SEDC in place now, where does the Deputy Speaker see the region in terms of economic and infrastructural development, 10 years from now?

I had the opportunity to attend the reception of one of the Board members, Dr. Clifford Ogbede who is the Executive Director Agric and Rural Development and I was also privileged to hear members of the Board and management of the SEDC, including the Managing Director, Mark Okoye and Chairman, Dr.  Emeka Wogu and others speak. Everyone was held spell bound. These are not people who are coming to learn on the job, these are people who know what to do. They spoke like people who want to take the South-East to the next level, who want to give the region a new lease of life. And that is the desire of the Deputy Speaker, the desire of every Igboman and woman; that in the next 10 years you mentioned, even before the next 10 years, you will see impressive results, you will see end to dearth of well-equipped schools, end to dearth of well-equipped hospitals, dearth of good and memorable roads; all these challenges will be tackled and massive infrastructures realised.

The Deputy Speaker is very much optimistic that people who have been appointed by Mr. President to drive the SEDC are not only people of high intellectual disposition but also people who have made their marks in their various endeavours before now, people who are passionate about the development of the South-East. For example, the Board Chairman, Dr Emeka Wogu was a Local Government Chairman, Minister of Labour and Productivity; he is a lawyer, and a PhD holder.