Chief Reagan Ufomba is the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) governorship candidate in Abia State. In this interview with Sunny Nwankwo, he speaks about his ambition, the APGA crisis and its preparations for next year’s polls.
Why are you in the governorship race?
I have often said that I am in this race for my people. I was also in the race in 2011; I was the APGA governorship candidate in 2011 election. My motivation has not changed. I was and I am still motivated by the sufferings of my people, the mere extinct of what used to be the pride of Abia and Igbo people and that is Aba.
I am motivated by the loss of vision and focus by successive governments. Abia should be one of the fastest growing economies in the world because we have what it takes to be the number one state. We have the human and material resources. The basic motivation is the infrastructural decay, which we intend to improve on. Aba is a disaster and we need to maximize the gains accruable to agriculture through mechanized farming, processing of products and export of such products, these are not there yet.
Youth unemployment. We need to set up small scale agriculture, small scale industries to enable farmers maximize their profits and of course their sufferings. These are the major motivations propelling me to run for the governorship of Abia State.
Why is Aba a disaster area?
The jargon or slogan is not new to me which every other person has turned himself into a copycat. In 2011, I did declare a 12 point agenda for Aba alone. Aba is the commercial hub of not just Abia State, maybe not just for Igbo land, but for Nigeria and it is in such a deplorable situation. People cannot move freely, flooding all over the place, we have gullies in all our roads in Aba and life has become so difficult for the inhabitants. If you have God, if you have vision and conscience it means that you save the people of Aba and the commercial town from going extinct and collapsing. And when you talk about the town, you are talking about one of the most industrious and resilient people in the world. There is no group that would be put under the kind of condition of Aba people; both the traders and civil servants and all that they have gone through that will survive it.
On the other part, Aba should be a revenue earner for the state going by its network of commercial activities and that is not being harnessed. Aba has a chain multi value effect when properly developed. It will help the government to earn more revenue and have more money to run the state and because Aba is a cosmopolitan town, you will be widely acclaimed and acknowledged as a governor that has performed.
Aba is the center of economic activities, not only in Abia, but the country at large and I tell people that as soon as Aba is fixed, Abia is fixed as well.
Apart from Aba, are there other programmes you have for the state?
I am happy you mentioned about my comment at the Aba Recreation Club during my flag off. I did talk about free education at secondary and tertiary education levels. We intentionally excluded the nursery and primary schools because we expect parents to bring up their children at that level. We are going to offer free education. We are going to mechanize agriculture and I did say that Abia is standing on a tripod of Agriculture, commerce and artisanship.
In agriculture, for instance, we intend to mechanise and process. We will generate employment for our people and in addition to that, we will earn more revenue through the exportation of what we produced.I also did say that we are going to reintroduce Marketing Boards that will buy up whatever the farmers in the rural areas produced because we are going to process it and when we process, we market.
We are going to support traders in the state with bonds and guarantees because for you to make profit in business, you need to borrow at single interest digit rate. You need to have collateral that can give you money to engage competitively with people in Lagos, Onitsha, Port Harcourt and other parts of the country. But because of the state of Aba, an edifice of this nature (his house) if valued at N1billion in Lagos, it will be valued at N10million in Aba and government need to come in and breach that gap so that people who are trading in Lagos would compete favourably with those who are in Aba because the more money you have, the more business you do, the more business you do, the more people you engage, the more tax you pay. So the value chain we get when government get involve is enormous and I have also said that I do not believe in this school of thought that government in a whole state like Abia has no business being in business. We are going to drive the economy.
Abia is a poor state. Where would you get money to fund these projects?
One of the things that I have against this government is that they keep misapplying funds. It is a serious issue in Abia State and may be in most other states. You need to prioritize; government needs to do things that are extremely necessary, that we are going to do. We are going to prioritize and by so doing we save funds. We are going to harness the potentiality of the people. Aba on its own is a revenue earner, but you must organize it
What is your unique selling point?
My selling point lies in my vision. My uprightness, commitment to excellence, commitment to service and commitment to whatever he believes in.People say that Ochiagha Reagan Ufomba is a fighter. I fight for whatever I believe in. Some say he is intelligent, I articulate my position all the time. Others say that the man is resilient; for whatever I believe in, I stick to it, I fight for it and if need be, I even die for it. These are the USP (Unique Selling Point) of Ochiagha Reagan Ufomba.
What is your reaction to the crisis rocking the APGA, which resulted into the emergence of two governorship candidates?
Let me start from our national office. I must continue to stand on the path of truth and justice. Umeh’s tenure has elapsed and he must go. He is the architect of the entire problem that we have in APGA, including the exit of a gentleman, Peter Obi from the party. We can no longer allow him to destroy the party.
Is the APGA a credible opposition party?
If a party won the 2011 election but was stopped by the ills of the society, which we are fighting today, it means that is a credible opposition. Even if we didn’t win and we came second, it means that APGA is a credible opposition party. But I can also tell you that in 2015, there is no party in Abia that will defeat APGA and when you talk of APGA, people are talking of Ikemba Nnewi and Ochiagha Reagan Ufomba in Abia and no more, no less.
What is the level of confidence you have in the INEC?
Well, I think we have a clear departure from where we were in 2011. We now talk about card readers, permanent voter’s card that is 21century compliant. We have also listened to Jega talk about linking ones card to the ballot papers and to your vote. That makes it a little difficult for people to snatch ballot boxes to go to somewhere and thumbprint them and, as such, over stuffing the ballot box and in return, get bloated votes.
What is your reaction to zoning?
That is absolute nonsense. When people say things to favour them, I simply pray that God should touch their heart. I have been a player in Abia politics effectively from 1999 till date and I know that the zoning formular has been between Old Aba and Old Bende divides and by so saying, Ukwa Ngwa and Old Bende. When people come and say it is in the interest of fairness that this thing goes to Abia South. What are they talking about? Am I an Umuahia person? I am an Ukwa Ngwa man and that is the struggle that has been on since 1999. Right from the old Imo State, people have laboured and fought that an Ukwa Ngwa man becomes the governor of the state.
If we say that we are going to get the governor based on senatorial divides, are now saying that an Umuahia man, who lives in Aba or a Bende man who is living in Ukwa or Ohanku Street, should become the governor. It is a question for the proponent of this illegality to answer. Can an Umuahia man living in Abia South become the governor? They will say no that is an ngwa man. I am an ngwa man and I am eligible to contest and that has been the position. You also cannot talk about ngwa without the head of the clan.
