Reverend Ifeanyi Nwoye was deputy governor of Enugu State under Governor Sullivan Chime. The former chairman of Nkanu Local Government Area, Commissioner, business administrator and coordinator of a religious body with a network of over 3,000 churches, is one of the leading governorship aspirants in Enugu State.
In this interview, he speaks on his vision for the state and how to sustain the legacy of Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi.
On why he is aspiring to govern Enugu State in 2023 on the platform of the PDP
Those who objectively compare the steady but sure progress of the PDP in Enugu State in the past seven years with the chaos delivered by APC in other states will appreciate why philosophers like Plato rationalised that, to assure economic progress humans came together to form viable community states in order to obtain the security needed for meaningful progress. I aspire to represent the PDP as a governorship candidate as one who is rooted in the foundation that enabled the peace the state enjoys for progress to be possible and as one who can help to sustain it for the citizens of the state to be able to aspire for more prosperity in an enabling ambiance.
Many stakeholders in your party particularly founding members of the PDP in the state appear to be enthusiastic about your aspiration…
I am profoundly humbled by such trust and pledge to ensure that the trust is not in vain. Despite the upheavals around the country and within the South-East, Governor Ugwuanyi has kept a steady, firm and sure hand in steering the state peacefully, taking forward the legacies of his predecessor without rancour, while building on it with his huge contributions. I believe that as someone who has been a witness and participant to such achievements, I can leverage on the benefit of the ability to hit the ground running, knowing how the priority-setting of the prior governments came about and why they need to be sustained, while at the same time, also opening new opportunities.
Some advocates of political change insist that a radical departure may be needed to create disruptive change in the state
Change is good, particularly when it is a sensible, rational and incremental change that works for the benefit of the people and our communities. However, you will recall that in 2015, the APC promised disruptive radical changes, seven years later we are all witnesses to the catastrophic impact such promises have had everywhere.
No one can point to any place where their change has helped, rather, states such as Enugu have risen above the policy chaos that their mis-governance imposed on the national macro-structure and sustained an ambiance that allowed our people to entertain hope that has been lost in many APC states. The people appreciate the distinction between such deception; that is why, whereas Governor Ugwuanyi and his ilk received public endorsements for a second term, the deceptive and disruptive change makers relied on voter suppression and political chicanery to retain offices in places where they were not wholly rejected by Nigerians. They promised to replace the healthy bread that PDP governance assured with butter, only to take away the bread from the people and left them with sawdust, poverty and hunger.
So are you advocating continuity of the Ugwuanyi legacies only?
We will certainly break new grounds to allow the people of the state to realise their aspirations, but more importantly, I am asserting two things; reinforcing the success of the Ugwuanyi legacy and sustaining the peaceful ambiance which we have all seen to be beneficial for any meaningful progress to be achieved. Whatever some aspirants may boast about let me assure you that government and governance require some skills that go beyond mere political sloganeering. Political experience and adeptness in governance are important to understand how to be sensitive to the needs of our people and how to aggregate them, but to be effective in translating them into actionable results for public benefits you need people who can connect the past and the present to make the future fruitful and prosperous for everybody, while ensuring that everyone enjoys their peace of mind.
In the simplest form what is your vision for Enugu State
My vision for Enugu State is to expand the space of public engagement and services and increase the pace Governor Ugwuanyi had managed a commitment to actualize Sustainable Development Goals to benefit Enugu State.
On why he is going about his campaign quietly unlike some other PDP aspirants
Internal party democracy is first about building a cooperative platform that can accommodate and sustain all our common promises to render service to our people, aggression is not a good ingredient for peace-building. If we must sustain and enhance the peace that the state currently enjoys, we need more internal understanding and mutual accommodation than aggression. The time for aggression will be in the skill of policymaking that will translate our issues, problems and opportunities in Enugu state into public benefits for our citizens.
Still on the Gov. Ugwuanyi’s legacy, how will you respond to those who claim there is no legacy to reinforce?
For such persons, I will say let us begin with the self-evident facts, the relative peace the state enjoys can only be quantified with what economists refer to as counter-factual. Assuming for instance that you were a hospitality business owner in Kaduna or Imo states will you rather own such business in those states or in Enugu State? You can extend that to several other spheres and the analytics, if quantified in naira terms will shock you in terms of what is gained by the steady hands that have sustained such ambiance.
We can also remember among many other things the hundreds of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Skill acquisition trainees who received N100,000 instant alerts after attending skill acquisition trainings. Then again, we can turn to the matchless compassionate management of the Ugwuanyi government under the hand of God with justice, rule of Law, equity and a better life for the people in Enugu State, which reaches down to the citizens to address their needs. it is a style of leadership that goes beyond the collective provisions that have been addressed by appropriations and social allocations, to say that he sees the individuals behind the statistics.
It is easy to say we have allocated so much to healthcare whereas it may still not be enough to address the individual needs of some citizens. He was able to see the individual trees that make up the forest of citizens, to acknowledge that some have pressing needs that cannot wait for the collective interventions. It is a system and a leadership style that humanizes governance.
The legacy of Compassionate Management by Governor Ugwuanyi is thus a legacy of respect for the divine command to cater for the pressing needs of citizens and to take the welfare of the people seriously by looking, if possible, beyond the allocative boundaries to meet the needs of our people individually. How can we not sustain that?
Beyond sustaining such legacy what are the new things that your team will bring to the table?
I have vouched that we will sustain the humanization of governance as demonstrated in the Compassionate Management style of the Ugwunayi Government. We will also extend it because some citizens’ needs can fall between the cracks while governance processes are being allowed to follow due processes. It is the review of such lapses for instance, that resulted in the two key reports that revolutionised governance in Western countries to address the key issues that burden citizens, the two Reports – The Beveridge and Black Reports provided intellectual and social substance to solutions for addressing what Lord Beveridge described as the five great evils, namely, want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness, and that to address each of them, society must set standards for responding to want with assistance, disease with suitable preventive and curative healthcare, ignorance with education, life skills with capacity enhancement, squalor with higher standards of living, housing and providing opportunities, and idleness with employment opportunities as well as support for entrepreneurship.
In extending the Compassionate Management style under the Hand of God in Enugu, we will set new evidence based effective standards to address such burdens of society that may affect our citizens in Enugu.
We shall soon have a colloquium, which has already been articulated by the Akachukwu Movement where our actions and their motivations will be clearly set out. When the colloquium has been conducted our people will understand why they should invest their votes to join us in fighting and eradicating from Enugu State the five evils of want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness in a compassionate management approach under the Hand of God.
