Abia Unlucky With Leadership, Governance Since 1999, Says APGA

Emmanuel Ugwu-Nwogo
in Umuahia

The Abia State chapter of the All Progressives Grand Alliance(APGA) yesterday lamented the inability of the state to reap the gains of democratic governance since 1999 when the present democratic dispensation commenced.

The state chairman of APGA, Rev. Augustine Ehiemere, stated the position of the party at a press conference held at the party office in Umuahia, saying that Abia has been “very unlucky in terms of good leadership/governance”.

According to him, the structure for democratic governance was in 1999 laid on a faulty foundation in Abia and ever since nothing has been done to correct the fault as the ruling Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) has “successively foisted bad leaders on the people of Abia”.

“We cannot beat our chest and say that Abia State has achieved any meaningful development, economically and otherwise for the past 22 years,” he said.

The Abia APGA chairman said that the party’s damning verdict on Abia was based on comparison with other Southeast states, namely Imo, Anambra, Ebonyi and Enugu, that, according to him, have recorded far better development indices.

He said that the sordid state of affairs in Abia has plunged the people into “serious economic hardships, strangulation and subjugation in the hands of political jobbers/opportunists who forced themselves on the people as leaders”.

“There is no gainsaying the fact that whatever underdevelopment and malfunctioning of the entire Abia State system which we face today is a product of faulty foundation which was laid in 1999.

“And successive governments in Abia State have consistently and notoriously followed the installed/established faulty foundation, thereby emasculating and enslaving the entire Abians,” Ehiemere said.

He said that the PDP led administration in Abia “is not and cannot be a peope-oriented government (since) it is insensitive to the plight of the people they claimed voted them into power”.

The APGA chairman stated that unless “a genuine, people-oriented leader is elected to lead the state, the masses of Abia would continue to grumble and cry as it were in the days of the children of Israel in Egypt”.

He insisted that it was difficult to award a pass mark to the Okezie Ikpeazu administration in any sector, noting that “it is disheartening and worrisome that the masses of Abia who

are mostly rural farmers cannot boast of good road network”.

After lamenting the poor state of affairs in Abia under the PDP administration since 1999, Ehiemere stated that APGA was convinced that the people of Abia do not need a prophet to tell them that change has become inevitable.

He said that the needed change would become a reality “through genuine commitment and consistency by all progressive minded Abians who are encouraged and enjoined to join APGA for the purpose of enthroning a people oriented government come 2023”.