How We Saved Abia From Godfathers —Gov Orji

But there was none when we came in. Our civil servants were scattered all around the state, even in rented apartments. The consequence of such anomaly was lack of effective coordination. But that has become a thing of the past. We have built a new secretariat, where the various ministries are housed and, now, there is proper organisation and coordination for efficient, effective and seamless service delivery.

Equally, before our administration, the civil servants were disenchanted with the system because their allowances were neither paid as and when due neither was their capacity enhanced. We have corrected that and given them a new lease of life and that is why the civil servants are at peace with the government, which has brought about industrial harmony. Would you believe that until we came into government, there was no centre where renal diseases could be diagnosed in the state?

But this government has built a state- of-the art diagnostic centre, which has given us a comparative advantage in the South-east and above other regions where there is none.

We acquired the property and installed the equipment. Today, Abia can also boast of state-of-the-art dialysis and eye centres fully equipped.

We have also built as many hospitals as could tend to the health challenges of our people. Since we didn’t meet primary health centres on ground, particularly in the rural areas, we decided to face that squarely and currently, our administration has built 710 health centres across the state.

Although, those were the initial challenges our government faced, the worst of all was insecurity. We inherited insecurity, particularly armed robbery and kidnapping for ransom, and that hampered progress and development of the state in a big way. One of such ways was that contractors couldn’t work and people were unhappy and lived in fear. It gave us sleepless nights, but we faced and overcame it.
By overcoming insecurity, we overcame other knotty challenges and what we are doing now is to build on the progresses we have recorded.

In the address you gave while you were being sworn in for second term, you described your re-election as a call to finish the “truncated” assignments of your first term. We know that there are challenges implicit in that statement. Please explain?

They were the same challenges I said we faced earlier on. Aside that, I equally faced the problem of political godfatherism of the worst order. It is nice if one has a godfather, who can guide one very well. But if you have a godfather, who intimidates and wants to strangulate you, you will to have run away before you are strangulated. We needed to overcome that in order to move the state forward and that was the truncation I spoke about.