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The candidate of the Action Peoples Party (APP) for the Abia State governorship election, Chief Mascot Uzor Kalu, has asserted that he was coming to reposition the state and put it on the path of development.
Kalu who was the Chief of Staff to former Governor Theodore Orji, made this known over the weekend while speaking during an interview with a group of journalists and editors in Umuahia.
According to him, Abia people have been shortchanged by past administrations through bad governance, which has engendered hope for the citizenry, who he said had expected great dividend of democracy. He noted that in spite of her enormous human and material resources, the state has been plagued by infrastructural decay, poverty stemming from huge outstanding wage bills, joblessness, and restiveness, particularly, amongst the youths.
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‘We want to change things for the better and we’re coming with passion to work. Therefore, we will roll up our sleeves from day one to rebuild the state,’ Kalu stated, adding that the mantra of his team is ‘Let’s make Abia Great Again.’
According to him, as a former chief of staff to a governor, he had garnered enough experience to take the state to an enviable level.
He said: ‘I’ m not coming to learn on the job, but would get down to the real business of governance from day one by bringing my wealth of experience in both the public and private sectors to bear on the governance of the state. I will deploy all my energy, intellect, sagacity and emotional capacity to rebuild the state and rekindle hope in our people.
‘We will pay premium to education by giving equal opportunities to the children of both the rich and the poor. We will provide free and compulsory education to primary and secondary school levels. We also intend to create 10,000 jobs each year and by so doing, address the restiveness amongst the youths. We will dedicate funding to build roads in both urban and rural areas, revamp moribund industries.
We intend to enter into public-private partnership (PPP) with multilateral agencies to create jobs particularly for our discontent youths who have been abandoned to their fate. We believe that when there are jobs are, it would have multiplier effect of income generation, which would further boost tax, enhance revenue for the government and ultimately accelerate growth and development.
