Ohakim lays out blue print

Question: Can you tell us some contents of your blue print for the development of Imo state?

Answer We are going to create what we call a mega-magic. We are designing what we call the Imo Wonder Lake project in Oguta. It is an Edu-tainment centre and conferencing resort targeted at employing at least 15,000 people within the first one year of operation. As at today, the chief executive of the Wonder Lake, Joe Nzepuome, an America-based specialist, has assumed duties. We are approaching the Stock Exchange for a tourism bond of thirty billion naira. And we are raising another fifty billion naira from foreign and local private investors. So, a total of eighty billion naira is being penciled down for that project, which will take off in the next couple of months.

Question: Are you looking at something on the scale of Tinapa?

Answer: Tinapa is purely commercial - buying and selling. Our own is on a bigger scale, but it is a place you can bring your children, there is an 18-hole golf course there already. It will be able to handle five international conferences simultaneously. International football clubs can come there for training.

It will have a movie village, for those who are into movie production. It will have a water park, floating restaurants and so on. It will be dovetailed into the international calendar of tourism, a major destination for those on summer holidays.

The water park will make for easy access to people from the entire
South East and South-South. We are doing an airstrip there and trying to dualise the road from the Sam Mbakwe International Airport to the town in Owerri so that accessibility will not be a hindrance when the project kicks off.

Question: The River Niger is yet to be developed or dredged. How can you have such a facility in Oguta when the River Niger is still as nature wishes? Without that, the value of the Oguta Lake will never be appreciated?

Answer: Apparently, whether the River Niger is dredged or not, it will have nothing to do with Oguta Wonder Lake. But the Federal Government has continued to award contracts upon contracts for the dredging of the River Niger. And we do hope that the present administration will be able to take the bull by the horn and dredge the River Niger, and also dredge the waterway and put the inland port designed by the Federal Government to be at Oguta Lake. Be that as it may, we are going ahead with this project and it has nothing to do with the River Niger. Oguta Lake is still very accessible.

Question: You have oil and gas background. And your state is an oil producing state.

Answer: I don’t know if it also produces gas. But it has been treated as inconsequential, along with Abia State as an oil producing state, which helps to give the nation its sustenance. What are you going to do to put Imo State in its proper place as an oil producing state to be taken seriously by all stakeholders, and also as a frontline state between the Niger-Delta and the Nigerian hinterland?

I am very pleased to tell you that the present administration led by President Umar Musa Yar’Adua, has recognised Imo and Abia States as among the coastal states of Nigeria and a frontline state of the Niger Delta region. We are now back as a coastal state. We are participating in the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) projects and programmes. I don’t think anybody in this administration will treat us as if we are inconsequential.

It is not possible. We shall not agree. And nobody is doing that now, for the information of the general public. We are satisfied with our lot and status as an oil producing, coastal state of Nigeria.
Question:

What about the oil companies? What are you doing to wake them up to the fact that they are operating on an easy and peaceful and secure land and they have a responsibility to the people among whom they operate?

Most of the oil companies in our midst are beginning to realise that they are operating in a very good environment. They also do their surveys. The critical thing is that we are marketing Imo State to the oil companies, and they are marketing themselves to us. We are building a partnership with them. Our oil producing status is increasing, with the discovery of more petroleum reserves in the North western areas of the state.

Question: I have heard about this one hundred naira per adult Igbo levy for the dualisation of the Onitsha-Owerri-Aba federal highway. Is it feasible? And what do you really want to achieve by it?

If every Igbo man pays that money, we shall have a lot of money left over. There are 85 million Igbos in the world. Even though 30 million are in the South East, the rest are outside the zone and in the diaspora. I have been reading a lot of comments on this call, which is a result of my interaction with traditional rulers. I have read a lot of articles on the internet saying why should Governor Ohakim ask people to pay money when the Federal Government can pay for it. We have waited for the Federal Government since 1999.

The Igbo built the Owerri Airport without Federal Government intervention. Today, the Federal Government is collecting revenue on that airport without giving us anything out of it. It has become the biggest fallback position of the aviation industry since the closure of the Port Harcourt International Airport.

Can you imagine the situation Nigerians would have found themselves in, if the Sam Mbakwe International Airport had not been built by the Igbo with their hard earned money? How would we continue to access the oil producing zones and business interests there?

We thank the Federal Government for awarding the Owerri-Onitsha road contract, but shall we die on the road before it is completed? Is it our great grand children that will drive on the road? Is it not better for us to complete the road, start using the road and then collect our money back from the Federal Government which has agreed to pay back? I am not saying that Igbo should complete Federal Government jobs. But who are using the roads? Is it not our people and brothers and friends from other parts of Nigeria? If we pay one hundred naira each – I am saying one hundred naira minimum because some people will pay one thousand naira while some will contribute millions.

We have in place now, cooperation between the eastern governors to build a major industrial park for our entrepreneurs. We cannot continue to wait for the Federal Government to finance such a programme, which will cost about a billion dollars. We have to bring in the Federal Government, Bank of Industry, foreign investors. The Igbo are an endangered species.

http://www.vanguardngr.com/articles/2002/viewpoints/vp112082007.html