ABIA STATE
OKEZIE IKPEAZU: FINDING HIS FEET AFTER COURT DEBACLES
Buffeted by several legal tussles, Abia State Governor, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu, is just settling into his job with the affirmation of his mandate by the Supreme Court a few weeks ago. He ascended to power, promising to renew the commercial city of Aba by rehabilitating its collapsed infrastructure for its huge concentration of small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
Getting it right in Aba, for Ikpeazu, translates to getting it right in the state as he hopes to use the internally generated revenue from it to build the rest of the state. He has been focused on that with his massive rehabilitation of roads in the commercial city. He has added to that, the promotion of madein-Aba products, including investors from China on a proposed investment of $1.5 billion in shoes.
The governor also made some in-roads in agriculture as the state has focused on laying the foundation of becoming a major source of palm produce in a few years time by planting more than two million oil palm seedlings.
Despite Ikpeazu’s best efforts to diversify his state’s economy, Abia State’s internally generated revenue dropped by almost N700 million between 2015 and 2016, reflecting a state who’s human and natural resources remained largely untapped.
The governor is also yet to fulfil his promise to pay workers’ salary on the 24th of every month because of revenue constraints. It is also hamstrung by pension liabilities running into billions of naira, as such, the state has an unpaid wage bill running into several months.
Like several states in the country, Ikpeazu also had to contend with rising crime in the form of kidnappings and armed robberies, especially in the southern part of the state. This was not helped by mounting protests by proBiafra agitators in Abia, being the home state of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra. Most of these protests, sometimes violent, resulted in clashes with security forces and the death, arrest and detention of scores of people in Abia.