The Governor of Enugu State, Barrister Sullivan Chime, is not a state chief executive who likes to blow his own trumpet; rather, he prefers his achievements to speak for him. But in this interview with James Ume, the govenor says his administration is committed to linking both urban and rural areas with roads as well as providing quality education and health care to the people. He also prides himself as having consistently held free and fair local government polls, a feat not many of his fellow governors can boast of.
Can you please tell us the underlining philosophy of your administration’s massive road construction in the state?
Well, we were confronted with various challenges when we came on board, one of them being the terrible state of our urban and rural roads. Of course, we knew that we had to tackle the urban roads as quickly as possible; and that we did. Today, we thank God that we have been able to give our people decent roads. In some instances, we did not just rehabilitate the dilapidated roads; we reconstructed them to meet the current challenges. For instance, we dualised Zik Avenue, Agbani Road, and Presidential Road from Agric Bank extension to Port Harcourt expressway. Akwata Road, if you’re familiar with Enugu, seemed to have defied solutions before now. It was a nightmare for commuters. But the total reconstruction it received also meant that we had to dualize it.
I can’t begin to name all the roads we did, both in the urban and rural areas, or the streetlights we did to ensure that Enugu is well lit at night, or the traffic lights we put in place to ensure that traffic flows in an orderly manner. For us, we were elected by our people to deliver service and that’s what we’re doing. We’re happy that movement in our two major cities of Enugu and Nsukka has been greatly enhanced.
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Are you also replicating same in the rural areas, in terms of opening feeder roads?
?Like I said earlier, our focus from the onset was to develop the entire state, whether urban or rural. So, government has been able to tackle a lot of rural roads. Some have been completed while others are ongoing. As a matter of fact, there is none of the 17 Local Government Areas where we are not intervening because our goal is to link all the council headquarters to Enugu within a reasonable time. There is this Ugwuogo-Ekwegbe-Opi road that we are doing and where substantial work has been done with over 20 kilometres already asphalted. It has been opened up to Opi junction. Today, it takes you on the average 25 minutes from Nike Lake Hotel to Opi junction. What that means is that when we’re through with it, it will take you about 30 minutes or less from Enugu to Nsukka, a journey that normally takes over an hour on the highway. This is just one of the many rural roads the state government is doing, some of them in partnership with the affected local government councils.
We made a pledge to connect all our communities to the national grid before we leave the stage. Today, we have made a remarkable leap in that direction and we will achieve that goal. We cannot compromise anything that will improve the well-being of our people, wherever they live.
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We are interested in the provision of decent and low cost housing by governments at all levels; can you tell us the policy your administration has in this sector?
To underscore the seriousness we attach to housing, immediately I took over for the second term and in forming my cabinet, we established a full-fledged Ministry of Housing. The Maryland Estate is a low-cost project and we have been working round the clock to make sure that it is fully developed. From one uncompleted building we met in 2007, about five have been completed and each has about 36 flats. In no time, we should be able to complete the remaining four; so we are working in that direction.
Government is also discussing with other private developers in a Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement, even as it recently facilitated the building of 481 homes for the Enugu State civil servants at the Enugu Workers Estate via direct funding by the Federal Mortgage Bank.”
The Housing Corporation is acquiring land while the Ministry of Lands and Urban Development is making land available to the Ministry of Housing. So, we’re taking the issue of housing for both the middle and low income earners very seriously.
Enugu State is, perhaps, the only one to have conducted three local government elections from 2007 to date. Some states have been unable to conduct even one. What’s the magic?
Well, all we did was to do ensure that, in accordance with law, we always conducted council elections when they were due. There’s no magic except that we were always determined to keep to the timetable. We consulted widely with our people, from the grassroots to other levels.
The process that produced our councillorship and chairmanship candidates was so transparent to the extent that we didn’t shut out anybody. It was not a question of me or anybody sitting somewhere to handpick the candidates. We had consultations. Our people met according to their different local government areas. In the process, some of the aspirants, on their own, withdrew for others; others fought till the end until they lost. That was why, during the elections proper, other parties could not field candidates because they were up against strong candidates chosen by their own people.
The current ward councillors and council chairmen will be going for another round of election next year. It will be up to the people to determine those who did well and those who did not meet their expectations and decide their fate.
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As a civil service state you will also have a problem of generating reasonable revenue; what are the efforts of your government at improving the state’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR)?
Well, as you rightly pointed out, ours is not yet a rich state though we work assiduously and hope that we shall in the near future become a very rich and prosperous state. Over the past five years, Enugu has begun to transform from a civil service state to a new centre of commerce and industry. We thank our friends who have established new businesses in response to our commitment to create an enabling environment for their businesses to thrive and optimise their potentialities. So, I also call on other investors to make use of the business friendly environment in our state to come in and set up new ventures. That way, there will be jobs for our people, too.
We have been able to achieve what we’ve achieved so far in different sectors because we have managed and deployed our scarce resources prudently. There is no other magic wand. As I said when I first took office and have continued to say, it can no longer be business as usual. We must all work hard and make sacrifices to develop our state.
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Education and health are two central sectors to you; can you tell us how far your government has gone at improving these two important sectors?
The only way we can secure the future of our state is to equip our children to be able to compete in the knowledge economy. So, we must provide them with the best education that our resources can afford. In addition to the free education that government offers from primary to Junior Secondary School 3 (JSS III), we shall continue to make informed investments in education. We’ve employed over 4,000 teachers for our secondary schools; we recently engaged 3,000 volunteer teachers for our primary and post-primary schools while also retraining those already in the system. We have continued to provide the schools with the needed facilities while also calling on them to reciprocate by going to school regularly to teach our children.
We have continued to build on the gains of the Free Maternal and Childcare programme which we began in the early days of this administration. I am happy to hear it has drastically reduced the maternal and infant mortality in our state. The Enugu State Medical Emergency Response Team (ESMERT) which handles accidents and other emergencies had since begun, and is, today, running well. We have paid a lot of attention to our district hospitals in terms of rehabilitating them and equipping them with the appropriate personnel. Apart from doctors, nurses and health extension workers already employed, the State Executive Council only last week gave approval for the employment of 28 consultants for the seven district hospitals in the state. We are also working to deliver our ultra-modern diagnostic centre so that our doctors can know exactly what ailments afflict our people.
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How would you want to be remembered when you leave in 2015?
That is not a question for me. As I have always said, we are working to lay a solid foundation for the next administration to build on.??
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