2023: APGA charges Abia elite to rise against alleged misgovernance

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The Abia chapter of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) says the general underdevelopment of the state will continue until the elite resolve to speak against misgovernance.

The state Chairman of the party, Rev. Augustine Ehiemere, said this on Thursday in Umuahia, while briefing newsmen on the “poor state of affairs in Abia”.Ehiemere said that Abia’s backwardness and underdevelopment could be blamed on “faulty foundation, which was laid in 1999”.

He regretted that successive governments had “consistently followed the established faulty foundation”, thus enslaving the people and inflicting serious economic hardship on them.He said: “It is instructive to say that Abia has been very unlucky in terms of governance since 1999 to date, when compared to its sister-states in the South-East.

“The people have suffered serious economic hardship, strangulation and subjugation in the hands of political jobbers and opportunists, who have continued to impose themselves on the business of governance.“And until a genuine and people-oriented leader is elected to lead the state, the masses would continue to grumble and cry.”Ehiemere therefore admonished the people to take a cue from the positive outcomes of the just-concluded Anambra governorship poll.He urged them to resist any attempt to foist bad governance on the state in 2023 by rejecting financial inducement to vote for the wrong candidates.

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“My regret is that our people, both the educated and uneducated, are docile and not ready to challenge the status quo as is the case  in other southeast states,” he said.According to him, the report of the Anambra electorate rejecting financial inducement to vote against their conscience and APGA candidate, Prof. Charles Soludo, should be a lessson for us in Abia in 2023.

The APGA chairman accused the Peoples  Democratic Party-led government in the state of being insentitive to the people’s wellbeing and infrastrucutre development of the state.He said that a government that had become synonymous with non-payment of workers’ salaries, pensions and gratuities could not be said to be people-oriented.He further said that the government had yet to account for the N27 billion World Bank facility, tied to the construction of major roads in Aba.He listed the roads to include Port Harcourt Road, Ngwa Road, Obohia Road and Ohanku Road.According to him, the roads had further deteriorated and are now impassable, forcing the industrial clusters and other viable businesses, especially on Port Harcourt Road, to wind up.

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“We call on the appropriate agencies of government to do a thorough investigation into the World Bank facility to ascertain how it was utilised and whether APGA’s allegation is true or false,” Ehiemere said.The party decried the alleged attempt to use the judiciary to hound and intimidate its lawmaker, Mr Obinna Ichita, representing Aba South in the state assembly, for courageously asking the government to account for how it spent the loan.It expressed the hope that the “responsible and respected Abia judiciary would not allow itself to be messed up”.

The party further expressed concern over the complete dilapidation of roads across the entire lenght and breath of the state.He described Ukwa West, the only oil-bearing Local Government Area of the state, as the worse hit, in terms of road infrastructure. (NAN)

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