— Barr. Obunike Ohaegbu, Fmr. Federal Commissioner Public Complaints Commission

The Ezesinachi N’ Ukpor and former Federal Commissioner, Public Complaints Commission Dara (Barr.) Obunike Ohaegbu has taken the Government of Anambra State to task in the areas of health, education, agriculture, roads and other critical sectors. He did not only criticize, he also proffered solutions to these nagging challenges. Vintage Times Editor Don Peter Okoro was among the select Journalists he interacted with.

Introduction

My name is Dara Obunike Ohaegbu (Ezesinachi Na Ukpor). Former Federal Commissioner Public Complaints Commission. I am a Lawyer by profession and a P.D.P Chieftain.

Sir What Is Your Take On The State of Affairs In Anambra State?

At all times, wherever you find yourself or whatever position you find yourself, there will always be room for improvement, but in Anambra, we have a bigger challenge because it is like nothing is happening in critical areas. A lot of investments have been made but nothing is visible. For instance, let me draw your attention to the health sector. The secondary health care in Anambra State is almost non-existent. It will not be wrong to say that the Anambra State Government is not involved in the health sector in Anambra State. That is why if you come to Anambra State, you see a lot of Private Hospitals. We have over 500 Primary Health Centres in Anambra State. Primary Health Centres as properly defined, non of those Health centres can be classified as a Health centre. General Hospitals that are supposed to be the secondary Health institutions are not better either; we have about 32 General Hospitals, you will be shocked to know that out of those 32, none of them is functioning. What we have is that we have those Medical Doctors appointed as CMDs who run those Hospitals as sole Administrators. And once they are appointed as sole Administrators, they only go to those Hospitals on the days they have their clinical. The implication is that once the Head is not there, nothing happens. I have done my investigations and research; you will be surprised that the Doctors in Anambra State are the least paid in the whole Federation. So, those who are not well paid are not expected to do any better. In most hospitals, they don’t have supporting staff. So, a Medical Doctor who is in charge of the hospital probably does not have a cleaner. That is why most General Hospitals, including Ukpor General Hospital is over grown with weeds. Of course, almost 70% of the General Hospitals in Anambra State were built by the rural communities and handed over to the State, but that is not an excuse. The Abuja Declaration made it mandatory that we shall have 15% allocation to the Health Sector. Yes, what they have been appropriated in the last 10 years is about 3% and actual release should be about 1.5%. It is possible that all they have to do is just to pay salaries. What we should do in Anambra State is to declare a State of Emergency in the Health Sector of Anambra State, and every available fund should be channeled towards revitalizing the Health Sector. It is so shocking that in some Local Government in Anambra State, they don’t have Secondary Health Institutions. We have 21 Local Government Areas, out of that, 5 of them do not have any General Hospital. You can’t be surprised because you know Nnewi for one does not have a General Hospital. And Nnewi town is the most populous community in Anambra South. I am sure the Government make a sizeable percentage of the I.G.R. from Nnewi. And you play no role whatsoever in the health of the people who live in Nnewi and you run a Government. You may not believe it, Onitsha South does not have a General Hospital. Where you have is in Onitsha North, so you can imagine the kind of pressure in Onitsha General Hospital. Anambra West does not have a General Hospital. Ayamelum does not have a General Hospital; Oyi does not have a General Hospital. What will it cost for the State Government to say in the next 6 months, all investments should be in the Health Sector. That is the only way you can make any meaningful impact there, rejig the management.

In education, you have something almost similar, but the good thing in the education sector is that a lot of investment was made during the government of Mr. Peter Obi. If you check the records, Anambra used to come 1st in WAEC and others for two, three consecutive years, but have stepped down to 2nd In WAEC and 6th In NECO. It is not an improvement, Governance is not about road construction, that is important, but, there are things that are more important. Initially I was thinking of how National Health Insurance should be implemented in Anambra State where pensioners, civil servants, businessmen, everybody should have access to free Medicare, but I discovered that you cannot have access to something that is not even in existence. You take a trip to the Federal Medical Institution in Nnewi, you see people who are there with Malaria Typhoid and other minor sicknesses that should have been taken care of by the over 500 primary medical centres in the State.

I am really concerned that we are not getting so many things right. When I think about what our people pass through, I became more concerned when people were humiliated because they are Igbos in Lagos. These are people who have no challenges paying their taxes, levies and bills. They go to slumps invest their millions and develop the place, but when it get to the point of exercising their rights on who is going to govern them, they will be told that they are not from there. So, the Governors of Ndi igbo, especially the Governor of Anambra State should make the State to be conducive for Ndi Igbo to do business. You can’t go to the media and start throwing tantrums. When I was growing up, I could remember people from Cameroon, Gongola and all part from the country and West Africa were coming to Nnewi and Onitsha to buy their products. As a student in UNIZIK, anytime from 12:00 noon, you will see Wagons fully loaded heading to the North. None of that is happening now. We should ask ourselves that basic question.

What Is Responsible For This?

What is responsible is the decay in infrastructure and security. You can’t access Onitsha from Awka, because of the state of the road.

That Is A Federal Road

That is where you start having problems when you say this is for Federal, this is for State. Anything that is in your State and is being enjoyed by your people; you should make effort to see that it is properly taken care of. You can’t sit back in the comfort of your room and expect things to happen. And that is why as a State, we need to get connected to the National Grid Politically, by belonging to a National Political Party. Of course as a PDP Chieftain, I wouldn’t advocate for people to join APC. We need to get connected. And we have only two major Political Parties in Nigeria, one is PDP the other is APC. And my advice is that Anambra should join PDP. Check all the States we have in the Federation, it is only Anambra State that is neither in P.D.P nor APC. What this means is that you can hardly get audience at the National level. The other day I was embarrassed when our Governor visited the President. All the handlers and of aides of the Governor were on the social media to celebrate the Governor as if it is an achievement. Assuming he is a P.D.P Governor, the APC President will be happy to receive him. He will be happy to have audience with him. You should have people you interact with. I think in less than 3 years from now, Anambra should have another opportunity of taking another decision, but before then, we should start thinking of things we are expected to do. We should understand ourselves. A lot of things should be done in education, if you look at the schools we have, if you divide the students by the number of teachers, you will start clapping for the State. In my investigations I discovered that most of those qualified Teachers are in urban areas. In most areas in the rural areas you have only 2 or 3 teachers in a school. The other ones you see teaching the pupils are employed by the parents or mission. It is an aberration, but everybody knows that is happening in Anambra. In a lot of schools in the rural areas, it is the parents who have to cater and make sure that their kids are in schools, who ordinarily should have access to free education in Anambra State but are now being compelled to make sure that Teachers are paid and when they are paid, thereby bothering parents with what should be the responsibilities of the State Government.

What Do You Think Is The Cause Of All These Is It Lack Of Funds Or Incompetence?

Well incompetence is too strong a word, but I think it has to do with the challenge of putting priorities right. We don’t focus on areas we should look at. If you look at agriculture for instance, there is nothing there. As we speak today the Governor of Anambra State His Excellency Chief Dr. Willie Obiano, Akpokuedike of Aguleri is from Anambra North. What can you say he has done, that can outlive his administration in terms of empowering the people of Anambra North? The last time the Governor addressed the Press at the Governor’s Lodge, he rolled out a number of millions of MOUs that have been signed to be invested in agriculture in Anambra State. Go to the Ministry of Agriculture and ask them this question and you will look stupid. Where are those investments and interventions? Yes you could say one or two mister K you used to know in Aguleri as touts are now a multi billionaires. Those money are not sustainable, because this is the money you probably get from the Government one way or the other. There is no structure on ground to make that money sustainable. And nothing creates job more than agriculture. Can you tell me of any well mechanized agricultural farm anywhere in Anambra State as we speak? None of those things you hear that are being done is on ground. I have visited the Ministry of Agriculture severally and I have not seen any, nobody has given me the location of where these investments are. Let me tell you what is happening, one of my brothers from Amichi here, has a factory where he processes and packages rice and all that. He is a private businessman, he source his rice anywhere and everywhere. I patronize and buy rice from him, but I know that most of those rice are from kebbi and neighboring States. All he does is to source for rice. Where in Anambra do you find the rice that can sustains that factory?

What about the Exportation of Vegetable (Ugu)?

Of course, I know about those ones; they exist only on the pages of Newspaper. I have tried to find out where that is being done. I have been to the Ministry of Agriculture to get information and we have not been able to get that. We will be happy if anybody can assist us.

It was said that Vegetable (Ugu) Worth 2.5 Billion naira Was Exported The Other Day?

Where you got such Ugu, people should know. At least the Ministry of Agriculture should know. I challenge the Ministry of Agriculture of Anambra State to show us where those things are being found. I have hired consultants to find out. I have consulted retired civil servants from those Ministries, but nobody seems to know what is going on probably, except the Governor.

Sir, the Obiano Led APGA Government Said They Have Zoned The Governorship To Anambra South, What Is Your Take?

There could be problem with somebody introducing something and somebody implementing it. I could remember that in the National Conference of 1994/95 the position of Anambra as articulated by the late Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu and projected by Dr. Alex Ekwueme was that for the sake of equity, that the Governorship should rotate among the three senatorial zones. That was the platform on which they wanted to build zoning at the Federal level which I know if it had been implemented at that time, the Igbos would have gotten their turn. In the last election I was the Secretary of Anambra Union, the Convener was Prof. ABC Nwosu, a lot of prominent Ndi-Anambra were involved. The position of the Anambra Union was that it is the turn of Anambra North to complete their term and they should not be interrupted. On that basis, a lot of Ndi-Anambra South people who wanted to show interest were persuaded to allow Anambra North to complete their 4 years. On that basis, we made those from Anambra North who were going to run for the Governorship to make commitment that they were going to run for only four years. A lot of them that ran on the platform of P.D.P accepted that, after the primaries, the candidate of the party adopted that and campaigned on the basis of that and spoke to a lot of Ndi-Anambra that he was going to be there for four years to complete the tenure of Anambra North, after which it will be the turn of Anambra South. It was not by coincidence that APC, P.D.P and APGA had their candidates from Anambra-North. Of course, during that period, there were people, I won’t want to call them renegades who tried to challenge that. And there will always be such people who would be opposed to that, but majority of Ndi-Anambra know or believe that there is zoning in Anambra state and we can’t run away from it at this point. And let me warn that any political party that picks a candidate outside Anambra South has cut off an entire zone and secondly has cut off the people who believe that zoning is good for Ndi-Anambra. Thirdly you have equally cut off people who believe that it should be their turn after this. The only party that has made a categorical Statement that their candidate is coming fron Anambra South is APGA. So any other party that wants to win election should have their candidate from Anambra South. In fact, the denial of zoning in Anambra-State is unfortunate.

One final Question, Do You Have a Guber Ambition? Because it is your turn and you are eminently qualified

From what you said, I have looked at the educational qualification, I am qualified. I have also looked at the age qualification, I am qualified. I have served as the C.E.O of a Federal Agency and worked very closely with the National Assembly. So why not if the time comes and I notice that some key people in Anambra have confidence in me. Why not, I will offer myself as one of the people to be considered for that position.