Politics Wednesday, August 3, 2011

By Emma Amaize

Mr. Chike Ogeah is the Delta State Commissioner for Information. In this interview with Vanguard's Emma Amazie he articulates the political challenges facing the Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan administration which in the main he ascribes to blind hatred, enunciates how the government is changing the face of the State and postulates a worthy legacy for the Uduaghan administration.



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Excerpts:

How did you fall in love with the Uduaghan administration?

I had my own preconceived ideas, then I thought that everything coming out of here (Delta) like I was reading, was negative, in fact, the report was like there was a problem in Delta state, I live in Lagos.

I came down to Asaba, I am from Asaba and I saw a few things, the first thing that struck me, I must tell you was the Airport, I went to the airport and I saw the gigantic project, yes, it had not been finished then, but we all know that Rome was not built in a day, you cannot just say ah and airport will appear from nowhere but I could see, my mind could conceive the vision of what someone was trying to do in my small Asaba town and that alone melted my mind and I said any governor that is doing this, you might say this is a little bit selfish, yes, but I am an Asaba person. I know that there had governments in the state before and nothing like that had happened, I vowed there and then that I would support the government, I did not know about Uduaghan and from then, I started finding out more about the state and this government.

So why do some people speak bad about him?

I realized what basically was happening was that this governor, like every other government in this world is an offshoot of another government, but we all know governance is a continuum and a lot of the flaks he had to handle are what I will call overhang from the previous government and I got involved in the campaign and I started seeing more and more.

Shaky foundation

I realized that a lot of this anger against him; the reasons that he was being demonized really had nothing to do with him as a person, it had to with a structure, which maybe he came out from; it had to do with maybe the way an election that he was not an umpire was conducted that brought him out and some people feel that process was not free and fair and you know it is like a house, no matter how edifying the second and third floor are, if the foundation is shaky, you know you will always have problem in that house. And there was this unfortunate thing that we have elder statesmen, who should the one calming the waters, but they were the ones spearheading the fight against this government and I thought it was very unfair because I felt I had met a man who really meant well for the state.

How do you intend to carry out your job as government spokesperson?

I think what is needed by me to do the job of Commissioner for Information in the state is very simple. It is not complicated at all and I have always said the very simple solutions are always the best solution in life. It is that you need someone who is passionate about this state, someone who is ready to project the goodness of this state, someone who is ready to highlight the areas we are doing well and also to address the areas we are not doing so well.

All I have to do is to let the media know the basic truth, I don't need to prepare for any interview with you at any time if you like wake me up at 2.00 am. If I am going to talk to you from my heart, it means I am going to tell you the truth and when I am telling you these things, I don't need to rehearse them, at least the way I see it. If tomorrow, it changes and I think my conscience cannot work with it, I will step aside because like I said earlier, governance is a continuum, we all come, act our part for that period and the whole idea is that we should move the state forward in a positive direction.

Talking about my job as Information Commissioner, it is like I have two brands to deal with: the governor as a human being, who is the chief executive of the state and the state. I am very passionate about my state not being labeled a pariah state, not being labeled a failed state, not being labeled a state for armed robbers, we want a situation where we will be the first and equal, we don't need propaganda at all in Delta state, all we need is to espouse on the positives we have here.

Already, this same governor I am talking about had gone ahead to be thinking about a Delta state without oil- that is why we are opening up all those areas you are seeing in the spheres of culture, tourism, human capital development, infrastructure and obviously, the foundation for everything, which is peace and security.

So basically, I think my work is very easy, that man does not give me falsehood to go and propagate for him, I participate in the State Executing Council meetings on a weekly basis and my duty to Deltans is to tell them exactly what we are doing right, where we have challenges, I will come and tell you about those challenges because if I sit down here and tell you that everything is 100 per cent, then, you have to take it from me that I have already started propaganda. No way, we must have our challenges and we will talk about it.

What do you think is the greatest challenge facing you?

The greatest challenge we have in Delta state right now is this anti-PDP emotion in the state, you know PDP has been the party in power in the state since the new democratic arrangement. So, we, in PDP, have to look at it and find out why is it so, where did it go wrong and like we all know, these are all internal struggles.

Even everything that is happening, you know that 85 per cent of the strength of the opposition in Delta is driven by splinter groups of the PDP. So, we in the PDP have to , sit down, look ourselves in the face, tell ourselves the truth and chart a path of fruitfulness on how we can help our state to develop because the truth is that our people are poor. I say this because I know that the wave of total reconciliation is already going through the party because that is the only forward and it is not a personal thing, it is just a pity that Dr. Uduaghan happened to be the chief executive of the state at this time.

How are you tackling the problem of unemployment?

Government is to provide the enabling environment for jobs as it cannot absolve all the university, polytechnic graduates and everybody out there. What government can do and which is what we are doing, for instance the Asaba airport has just started working, the multiplier effect of that airport in the whole economic sector of Delta North and maybe the entire state is enormous because new businesses are going to spring up. You can see his (Uduaghan's) plan for the Warri Industrial Business Park that has been conceived, the Independent Power Plant, IPP project for Oghara, it is a great idea but it takes time to materialize.

It is not a thing you just go and buy, they have to manufacture the turbines to specification and it is on course. You also know that a team of investors from Saudi Arabia and India visited the state recently in connection with the construction of a $16 billion petrochemical and fertilizer plants at Koko in which 500,000 jobs are in the offing – that is the kind of thing we are talking about, not fickle-minded things to distract the governor from his agenda. I am sure you are aware that the governor recently set up a Ministry of Poverty Alleviation and is restructuring a lot of things in the state to really see how government can provide employment for the people.

What is your comment on the activities of the opposition in Delta State?

The opposition in Delta if you must understand is so blind with hate, it is not even opposition based on any factual or objective thinking. It is just that this government is there, PDP is there, they have been demonized right from the preceding government and that is where this whole anger comes from. And you know, a group of people decided to more or less ethnicise it as far as I am concerned, which is very unfortunate.

And maybe because they used one of their own as the arrowhead of the opposition and I am not an Itsekiri man, but I feel the governor is doing good things, I will say it, it doesn't have to be an Igbo man like me before I will acknowledge what he is doing, if an Urhobo man is doing a beautiful job, I will say it and if an Asaba man or Anioma man comes and starts messing up, I will be the first person to tell him to get out.

That is the truth and I think that that should be where we should be getting to in Nigeria if we are talking about this country being a nation, as opposed to just being an aggregation of people just living together, which is the same thing as what we are seeing in Delta state.