From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
Member representing Nsukka/Igboeze South Federal Constituency, Enugu State in the House of Representatives, Hon Chidi Obetta, is among the legislators that rode on the crest of Labour Party (LP) in the South East to electoral victory in the February 25 National Assembly election.
In this interview, he spoke on a wide range of issues, including the insecurity situation ravaging the South East, the deplorable state of the roads in the zone, how bad governance by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) aided his emergence, and more importantly, how the House of Representatives members of South East extraction were short-changed in the distribution of Reps committee chairmanship positions.
Do you think the Labour Party (LP) has satisfied the expectations of Nigerians in the 10th Assembly?
We are 35 members of the Labour Party in the House of Representatives out of 360 members. We have just spent two months and some few days after inauguration, and we have been on a long recess. We plan to resume on September 26. Committees have just been constituted and from there, a lot of work will start. What I want to promise Nigerians is that we will try our possible best to deliver on all our promises to them.
For me as a member representing Nsukka and Igboeze South federal constituency, I will focus on three cardinal areas. One of such areas is infrastructure development. As you are aware, we are legislators, not the executive. But, we can attract developmental infrastructure to our place, and to Enugu State at large, through our constituency projects, or what they call zonal intervention projects. I am also talking to the Ministry, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) that carry out the functions of development to ensure that whatever they are doing for Nigerians, cuts across every constituency and every state.
The second area we are going to be looking at is the area of agriculture. Our people are primarily agrarian in nature. I am already designing a structure where we are going to put them in cooperative societies because for you to access some of the Federal Government’s agricultural schemes, programmes and grants, you will need to be in a group or in a corporate society, which is most times a condition precedent to accessing the grants and schemes.
So, we have already put the template on ground. From next month, we will begin to form these corporate societies, and we are also taking it down to the grassroots, to the ward level. At the grassroots, we shall have cooperative societies that position themselves for anything that is going to come, any scheme, grants, programmes that will be championed by this new administration.
In the area of youth and women empowerment, we are also going to look at building different skills acquisition centres, civic centres, and also empowering our women, in the small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs).
You know our people are also traders. By the time they come out from their farms, they go to different markets trying to sell their wares and their farm produce. So, we are also going to see how we are going to encourage and empower them.
Enugu is fast losing its status as the economic capital of the South East. What will you and other members in the National Assembly do to reverse the trend?
The first thing we need to ensure that we achieve in Enugu is security because without security, you will not get investors coming into Enugu. We are working on that and the current administration, the governor of Enugu State, Dr Peter Mba, is already doing a lot and engaging with the security agencies to see how they can restore peace and end insecurity in Enugu State.
Another area is road infrastructure; without good roads people will not come to Enugu. People will come to Enugu for different programmes or investments because even if you come as an investor, you will need to move your goods. You need to move raw materials, you need to move finished goods, and you need to move your goods to the market.
So, we must ensure that the three key roads that connect the South East with the South-South, the North and the entire South East, which is Enugu-Onitsha through Awka are fixed. The express roads that are impassable now are the Enugu-Port Harcourt expressway, and the Enugu-Makurdi expressway. These are very important roads that connect us and moving agricultural produce from the South East to the north, you have to pass through those routes. From the north to the South East, you have to come through the Makurdi axis or come through Ajaokuta-Lokoja and connect to Otukpa-Obollo-Afor. This is the major road that connects the north to the South East. So, this is the second area we must work on.
Then, we also have to create an enabling environment. We must work with the executive to ensure that we create that enabling environment for investors to come. Once investors come in, I tell you that Enugu will open up again.
We also need to decongest the Enugu metropolis because it is already congested. We will begin to look towards the expressway where you have Nkanu East and West, as well as the Enugu-Abakaliki expressway. We will also look at Ugwogo Nike axis, where they have started building a lot of estates. These areas will decongest the Enugu town and open up the state.
What specific plans do you and your colleagues have about the issue of insecurity in Enugu State?
There was a motion moved in the House on the issue of insecurity in the South East and our colleague, Hon. Obi Aguocha from Abia State was made the ad-hoc Chairman on the issue of insecurity in the South East.
The South East used to be known as the bedrock of peace in Nigeria. If you are looking for any zone in this country that had the most peaceful atmosphere, it was the South East but today, all that is changing and we are not happy about that because it has affected a lot of activities in the South East.
We cannot go back home to bury our loved ones without being scared of kidnappers, the threats of insecurity and all that. That committee is working now and we are also expecting the report of that committee to be out in the first week of September.
When the report comes out, we are sure that we will comply to whatever recommendations the committee comes out with and they are doing it jointly with all the security agencies – the army, the police, the Navy, Air Force, the Civil Defence, and other paramilitary agencies, to see how we can stop this insecurity that is going on in the South East.
Power distribution has remained a challenge in the South East despite the Act that allows states and individuals to generate power. Enugu DisCo has the highest tariff in Nigeria. What are you doing about this?
The issue of power is one of those areas that affect industrialisation in Nigeria. In Enugu, power should be stable and affordable. We have brought the issue before the House and this House is going to be very robust and very interesting because we have a lot of young people and about 270 new members.
That tells you that a lot of fresh minds and a lot of energy have come in and a lot of young members below 40 years of age, more than 50. The people who really understand the problems of this country are in the House today. They need to open the Act to allow more independent people to generate, distribute power and make it more accessible to everybody just like what is happening in the petroleum industry sector.
So, the same thing is going to happen in the area of power. The issue of overbilling is also a very critical area. A lot of villages and communities in Enugu State today don’t have metres, they are not metered. It is an aberration and something has to be done about it. We have to fight it to make sure that if you must bill people, you must metre them as well so that they know what they are paying for.
How did you weather the PDP storm in Enugu State to emerge from the Labour Party?
A lot of mistakes were made in the past but that does not mean that it is a general thing. There are some members that did very well from the South East. In Enugu State, we have eight House of Representatives members, seven are LP and one is PDP. Before the campaign, the only one that returned to the House, Hon. Nnoli Nnaji brought out the scorecard of what he was able to achieve in the four years of his first tenure as a Rep member.
I think he was sleeping on the day of election and his people voted for him because he worked for them. For him to come back, I am sure it was because of what he did. I saw his scorecard and it was a big challenge to me. I said if this guy can do this, then as first timers, we should be able to do more than that.
The bar in Enugu State actually is so low that if you just put little effort, you will be able to set a new limit, a new bar. You also know that our people were tired of bad governance; we should be able to say these things as they are. We will pray for God’s grace, wisdom and understanding to be able to navigate the terrain.
Some of these things, you lobby to get them to your people. So, we will try our best. We will try as much as we can to achieve whatever goals the people have set for us. Governance is not for one person. Sometimes, we don’t even know where to start from and you have to guide us. So, the challenge is enormous, but it takes a dogged fighter to be able to overcome these challenges. I will definitely do it.
How will you assess the allocation of position in the just constituted leadership committees of the House of Representatives with regards to the South East?
The South East has not been treated fairly in terms of committees. Out of the 133 committees in the House, the South East got only 12 chairmanship positions and Enugu State got only one. This is very unfair. I think the leadership of the House should look into it and do justice to the South East.
We cannot say that we are one Nigeria, when one section is not carried along. We are preaching for one Nigeria, one nation, and the South East is not being carried along in the activities of the House. So, I call on them to use their good offices to do the right thing, and make sure that the South East is fully and adequately represented.