By Fred Itua, Abuja
Athan Achonu is the governorship candidate of Labour Party (LP) in the November gubernatorial elections in Imo State.
In this interview with Sunday Sun, the former Senator revealed how he will address insecurity, unemployment and dilapidated infrastructure if elected governor of Imo State.
There are fears that Senator Hope Uzodimma is a tactical politician and being an incumbent governor, do you stand a chance of defeating him in the election?
It is not strange to see incumbent governors being defeated in an election. Remember Hope Uzodimma came from the PDP to snatch the ticket from an incumbent governor who wanted to put in his in-law. So Imo is a peculiar place. Look at Owerri municipal council where the candidate of Labor Party went to collect his result from INEC. He was arrested or kidnapped, bundled by the police and taken to the dreaded place they keep political prisoners. For example, you have 12,000 accredited voters for that election on that day, but the APC candidate had 79,000. So you can see that Imo is Labour Party. I do not have any challenge in taking part in that election. The people who are referred to as brutal politically are tagged so because of the number of deaths in the state. We have over a thousand uncollected bodies in the mortuary and then over 900 dead the last time the civil society made that press conference. Look at the latest one In Agwa. They burnt houses, killed people. I agree that there is a lot of brutality going on in Imo State. That is why I am running to check all these so it doesn’t continue. I want to bring in security to my state because that is where I live. That is where I earn a living. My people don’t go home any longer. Even the senatorial zone of the incumbent governor, his people don’t go home for fear of the unknown. We have to stop it. His party, the APC doesn’t condone violence. Tinubu doesn’t condone violence. Tinubu who has ruled Lagos doesn’t condone violence. Lagos is not a violent place. There are no terrorists in Lagos . He has overseen the Southwest and you see relative peace there, except for a few riverine areas around Ondo. Tinubu likes development and you can’t have development without security. So, the APC will have nothing to do with anything that will happen in Imo State. It is also a stand alone election. The whole of Igbo land will be watching the election.
Beside the issue of security, what other thing is the incumbent governor not doing right that you want to correct?
I want to do everything. There is nothing happening in Imo State. I don’t know the arrangement he has with the Federal Ministry Works and Finance because the only roads he is building are the federal roads. He has abandoned the entire state roads in Imo. We are looking into the details because the cost is almost double the cost of building such roads and he’s doing this because he will get a refund. The press needs to go and investigate and look at the cost of building those roads. You can’t move from one local government to another in the state. The whole infrastructure has collapsed. It is now that election is coming, he’s busy trying to please the people by paying attention to some key places so he can win votes. The Imo people are not stupid. So, we welcome it. Let him continue to grade those roads. How can a governor say he’s going to build a port or dredge a port? As a contractor, you are given a contract to dredge Calabar port. Up till now, since the time of Obasanjo, that job is still hanging. It has not been done. Then suddenly you now want to dredge it? All these things are gimmicks. He hasn’t done anything in the state. The rate of unemployment has tripled. People are running away from the state. The IGR has dropped. The pensioners are crying all the time. The state is a mess. All the hotels are folding up because Imo is a tourist destination and people can’t go there anymore. These hotels scan’t make money to stay afloat because there are no clients. Hence there are many job losses in the tourism industry.
The state Is highly indebted. I will like to know the strategies you will employ to manage the debt incurred by previous administrations and what you will do to generate internal revenue to run the state?
I have been reluctant in talking about my programme until I launch my manifesto. I don’t want to give advance information so my opponent don’t copy it and run with it. I am very well known for supporting development. As a person, what I have been able to do for my state are there. During Rochas Okorocha, I tried to build a hotel which he put a stop to. I have an uncompleted 10-storey building standing in Owerri. He stopped it. I reasoned that the state is a tourist destination so people will do a lot of shopping activity like what they do in Dubai. So, I acquired the property next to where I was building the hotel so that I could partner with government to build the biggest mall in Africa in that location . I had a license to build a refinery which has expired now. Rochas put a stop to it and went and built a road expanding further to block me. The idea was to build a refinery and build industrial park beside. You can imagine how I think as a private individual. I have a farm in my village that has the capacity to produce enough fish for the area as I am currently the biggest producer in the area. The farm has about 250 green houses. We have snail farm we have capacity to stock 5,000 cattle. This will create thousands of jobs. If I have achieved all these as a private individual, then I have the capacity to create things that will boost the state IGR.
Labor Party has been dissatisfied with the conduct of INEC in the just concluded presidential election. As they are currently in court, do you as a party man running on the platform of LP have confidence in INEC?
INEC is being manned by Nigerians. From what happened in the last elections held in Imo State, it is obvious that I can have a level of confidence in them. Thugs were used to prevent them from carrying out their legitimate jobs during the last election. They also used police to suppress INEC . Nobody faces that sort of thuggery that wouldn’t try to protect themselves. I believe that we are going to have to protect our voters so that nobody can tamper with them or move collation from its legitimate place to another in this coming gubernatorial elections in November.
Is it not going to be a balance of terror?
Tinubu is not a terrorist. It also depends on who is going to be in charge by November because we are waiting for the tribunal and we know what it is going to do. As long as I know, I don’t think the Federal Government through the police who are Nigerians can disrupt the elections because they have children also. Most young people in Nigeria today are Obi-dients. So, the men in the Force have families and they listen to their kids . They are going to do the right thing because some of the people in government don’t have any business in governance . Nigeria is not a banana republic.