New Telegraph

LG autonomy vital for development –Uche Ekwunife

The battle for the Anambra Central Senatorial District has become one of the toughest in recent times. The Senator currently representing the area and candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 election, Iyom Uche Ekwunife, in this interview with OKEY MADUFORO Speaks on the coming election and insists that her scorecard stands her out in the race

 

You have been accused of achieving nothing since you have been at the National Assembly and that your voice is not being heard on the floor of the parliament. What is your reaction to that?

Primarily the duty of a lawmaker is to make laws and that is what we have been doing but it doesn’t stop at that. There is the need to impact positively on the lives of the people you are representing in many ways, and that forms part of my achievements at the National Assembly.

We also have Zonal Intervention Funds which is the statutory right of a lawmaker and the fund is just N250 million and it is not cash and it is not given to you.

All you do is to mention the projects and their locations. In this case I am representing 59 communities in my district, and if you divide that fund by the number of the communities each would get about N3 million after you have removed the taxes and levies and other charges.

So 99 per cent of my projects are the projects that I got through lobbies. You lobby the President, Vice President and you go to the Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives and of course the Chairman Senate or House Committee.

It is on record that I have built houses for women, about 33 houses for women and orphans and I am currently carrying out the construction of 42 roads in Anambra Central, and about 22 of them have been completed, while other ones are ongoing. I believe that in the next two weeks some of them would have been completed in this first phase. We have also drilled holes in different communities and built schools in different communities.

Most importantly, I have been able to provide jobs for our youths and they are more than 500 people. Within this last week, I have gotten four employments. As I woke up this morning the letter of one employee arrived on my phone. So I see it as a passion to get jobs for the youths.

Now coming to empowerment and training, every month that passes, it is difficult not to see one empowerment or the other, and all in all we have done well for the people of Anambra Central District.

Somebody asked me that he knows that it is good to attract projects but that the primary function of a lawmaker is lacking and that he doesn’t see me talk on the floor of the National Assembly. I told him that whether you speak on the floor of the National Assembly or not it has nothing to do with attracting projects to your constituency or senatorial district.

No matter what you speak or what you say you cannot speak from morning to night and it does not stop you from going the extra mile for your people.

Nigeria is a country where you have our national budget and the national budget is for all Nigerians. So I always make sure that my constituency and senatorial district are covered in the Nigerian budget. It doesn’t end up only talking on the floor of the Assembly.

It behooves me to make sure that my people get a greater chunk of the budget as the national cake and so to that extent we have done well for our people.

Why do you want to return to the Senate after serving two terms?

I want to go back in order to consolidate on the things I have done in terms of bills and motions.

I have some bills that are very important to me such as the Local Government Financial Autonomy Bill. We have three tiers of government which are the Federal Government, state government and the local government. When the Federal Government enjoys its own autonomy the state enjoys its own autonomy, but the local government is encumbered and that is the government that is closest to the people and that is the government that the people can feel their impact.

That is the government that helps us to open up our communities. Today we are having pockets of killings and kidnapping. They do not happen in the urban areas but it happens in the rural areas and villages.

It is the local government that will take charge of the security in the rural areas, but they are not doing that because of these encumbrances which have deprived them of their autonomy. This is one bill that every Nigerian should make sure that the local government gets its own money. It is this local government money that would be used to the affairs of our communities.

They should be allowed to determine what they want to do with their money and what the money is meant for. A situation where a local government chairman cannot have the capacity to enter into the rural communities to take care of their needs such as development, security, reduce poverty and open up the rural areas is regrettable.

What we have here is transition committees that stay for three months, some six months or one year and once somebody knows that it is just three months, he becomes so sycophantic to the governor so that his tenure can be extended. So if the chairman knows that he has four years he would want to satisfy his people in order to get reelected.

Today I work to satisfy my people because I am not a product of any government, not the state government and not the Federal Government and that is why I am working hard so that I will win the trust of my senatorial district.

Go round Anambra Central, go round Awka you will see a lot of projects going on. In the same Awka I have given out a lot of employment and empowerment. So what we are doing are things that are there for everyone to see and confirm. I am not exaggerating because the facts are there for everyone to see.

Are you aware that your opponents have been boasting that they would match you in everything that you have in this election?

Yes, they said they will match me Naira for Naira and Dollar for Dollar, but what I want them to match me with is projects for projects, motions for motions, bills for bills that I sponsored.

If I built 20 houses, show me two that you built. If I brought 100 employments show me two that you brought. If I have 100 empowerments show me two that you did. I am talking about healthy competition and not name calling or name dropping and not money for money.

And because I am a woman, you must work harder and put more effort to achieve these things. I am doing this to encourage other women so that when they go into politics they would have it at the back of their minds that a woman had done this so she can also do the same.

I am the first woman to go to the Senate in Anambra Central District and what I am doing is to leave footprints for the women that are coming up.

Are you not worried that the people are blaming insecurity in the South-East on politicians to discourage people from voting in the election?

Insecurity is actually the bane of this country. You remember when we were debating on the issues that were raised on the Senate agenda and I was the senator that raised the issue of insecurity.

You know that no matter how you try to develop a country, without security it will not work. So insecurity is the bane of our country and it’s not just in the South-East alone. This is because it was not there before so what we are seeing today we have not seen it in the past.

For me as a lawmaker we are doing our best. The primary function of a government is to provide welfare and security for the people but ours is to make laws for the country and the executive implement the laws while the judiciary interprets the laws.

Now that you want to regionalize it like Anambra State or the South-East you believe that the South-East governors are working hard to ensure that they bring back sanity to the region.

But as citizens we have one civil responsibility and that is providing information. If you see something, say something. We have less than 500.000 conventional policemen in this country and they cannot be everywhere so it behooves us as citizens to report the happenings around us to the security operatives.

That goes back to what I was talking about on the issue of local government autonomy. The local government will be able to partner with the President Generals and Traditional Rulers in different locations to secure the community. We have what we call solar cameras everywhere now. We have solar cameras in different locations in our towns and that will make the armed robbers and kidnappers know that they cannot have their way.

We should not continue to be reactive every time. We need to be proactive when it comes to security and let the people know that the government has measures to catch them and avert any situation that may warrant security challenges.

As a lawmaker I am also partnering with the Anambra State Governor, Prof Charles Soludo, and I have had discussions with him especially about what is happening at Ifite -Awka and I know that he is on the tow of the matter.

When gunmen burnt down some police stations in my senatorial district, I visited there and made statements and tried to see how we could rebuild those stations and accommodate them in the budget.

The security men also need us to protect them. Usually when I pass through some places I stop to encourage them and pat them on the back for the good works that they are doing. This is done in some countries like America and the United Kingdom where they have special welfare schemes just to encourage them and boost their morale .

There was this bill called the South-East Development Agency at the National Assembly, what has happened to it?

When I was in my first Senate it was the first bill that I initiated and when I left, I dropped it and someone took it up and it has passed through the Senate and House of Representatives and it is waiting for Mr. President to ascent to it .

The bill will assuage a lot of things and not just insecurity. You remember the old Biafran soldiers and all of them were covered by the bill and it is not only erosion issues. You know that we have man made erosion and natural erosion and the bill covers the national erosion.

Also in the bill we have to bring back the good old Igbo apprenticeship programme of the trader and his boys who are learning from him on how to do trading. The absence of the programme has reduced the number of billionaires in the South-East.

That was what made Igbos unique from others. One man would train 30 boys who would in turn train others and that would boost the individual economy and the economy of the South-East in general.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), announced that elections will not take place in some areas in Anambra such as Nnewichi, Obasi and Otolo. What is your view?

Well, the answer is simple because those areas had no voters that registered there. So why would you conduct an election in such places where people didn’t register as voters?

You have been at the center of attacks by you opponents with all manner of allegations. How do you see this?

You can see what I am passing through in Anambra Central. Today they will fabricate and forge my letterheads and my signature to write all manner of things with blackmails everywhere.

There is nothing that they have not used my name for. Nothing under the sun that they have not done and all these are to demoralize me but God knows that they are lying against me and because they are lying against me God will never allow them to see the light of the day.

I defeated them in 2015; defeated them in 2019 and in 2023 I will still defeat them. If you are innocent nothing will happen to you. They go about forging my letterhead and use it to blackmail me because they don’t have shame at all.

They said that I said something about the people of Agulu town and I wonder how someone that is looking for votes from a community would go about abusing the people that need their votes.

This is a town that I have brought development to. You need to know how many roads that I have built in Agulu and how many people that I have empowered in Agulu. The University of Technology Innovation was sited in Agulu, the Umuowelle road is nearing completion.

I have given two people from Agulu jobs at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and even last week I gave Odera another job . So we have to play politics with maturity.

The blackmail is too much and if you go round Anambra Central you will discover that they have been destroying my bill boards and posters and pulling them down. But I tell them that my posters and billboards are in the hearts of the people of Anambra Central and what you see there are pictures not the physical me.

If you are destroying my posters and billboards you are destroying your future, your empowerment and your employment. So all these things you hear are mere fabrications because they know that I will defeat them again and again.

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