Like former Anambra State Governor Peter Obi, he is simply Mr Okey Ezeh. And like Obi, he is a member of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), the vehicle with which he wants to drive into the Government House, Owerri, Imo State. Ezeh, the Chief Executive of a Lagos-based firm and Okechukwu Theodore Ezeh Foundation, speaks on his quest to govern Imo, philanthropy, among other issues, in this interview with OLUKOREDE YISHAU. Excerpts:
Why are you in politics?
It is something that came about because of the little experiment we had done, in what we call “tokenism”. When I left University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 1991, I happened to be a product of the graduate recruitment system, which was in place at that point in time and it used to be that if you can make 1st class or a 2.1, you can go to the Guidance and Counseling department and companies such as Citi Bank, Lever Brothers, UAC and the rest would employ you… If you look at a state like Imo, for instance, it is just a typical state in Nigeria and it is like a microcosm of the whole country if you talk about unemployment trap . Now you see tens of thousands of young people working the streets daily, with no future, no hope, no means of sustenance and at the end of the day, you are telling them that they are the leaders of tomorrow and they begin to wonder what kind of slogan that is and some of them have formal education, degrees, diplomas and they are all roaming all over the place.
So, my mission is simple, we think things can be done differently, we think the time has come for a thorough breed professional who has record of personal achievements, professional pedigree, who has antecedence you can quantify to lay claims to the reign of government. If you look around the world , young people are in charge. We don’t have to go far; if you look at all the states that have made progress in Nigeria under the current dispensation, they are led by young people with professional pedigree. These are people who are conversant with global best practices in governance.
Governor Rochas Okorocha is known to be spending his first term in the office. He has not declared that he will seek second term but there are possibilities he would. What are the things he is doing now that you will do differently?
Let me start by saying that the issue should not even be whether Rochas Okorocha should be talking about a second term. And why do I say this? It is because it is high time we started taking people by their words in Nigeria. Politics shouldn’t just be about experience. All over the world in countries that are serious, leaders should be accountable for what they say and do. When Rochas came into government or before he came into office, one of the first things he said was that he was stooping to become the governor of Imo State. As a matter of fact, he said he ought to be the president of Nigeria, that he came second to the late Yar’Adua during the primaries and that he already thought he was above that level. He said he was on a rescue mission. We all know what a rescue mission is, we know the most famous rescue mission in the world. We know where it was done and it wasn’t in Europe after the World War II. Rescue missions are supposed to be short-lived. In Uganda, it lasted 90 minutes. In Imo, it is three years and counting. So, he shouldn’t be talking about a rescue mission and be talking about a second term. Moreover, we have not seen the Marshal Plan that he has. We just hear about the rescue mission like a slogan. So, the question shouldn’t be if Rochas should run for second term. He has a bond with the people, he wasn’t under any inducement to make that commitment but he looked the people in the face and said ‘I don’t want to be your governor but if things are in such a sorry situation I can just come in and rescue’. So, four years for a rescue is good enough; so, anything longer than that is no longer a rescue but an occupation mission.
So, what is your Marshal Plan for Imo?
If you look at the demography of Imo, you would find that it’s an agrarian state. Nigeria is an agrarian country. Anybody that says he has the magic wand for development and does not include agriculture is just dreaming. If we were to get power in Imo State by the grace of God come May 29, we would go back to our agrarian roots. We have lots of young people who are looking for jobs; we are going to bring back the farm settlements in Imo State like in the east during the Michael Okpara days. Agro-based industrialisation, that is our plan for Imo State. Imo has a young ,vibrant and educated workforce. All we need to do is to harness this workforce and polish it and channel them to that sector. We will provide opportunities for young people. The thing that most people neglect is that it is not rocket science to come about development. Even if you do have some revolutionary ideas, you can actually get you results by doing the basic things. I can tell that if you have accountable people, people who have conscience , such people if you give them governance, we can actually make progress. They may not be rocket scientists, because vast majority of our resources are not used to serve the people. They are used for white elephant projects. Let’s cut out the politics, let’ go down to the art of business like empowering people and also having the resources work for the people using the best talents to re-engineer things. If we start with those basics, we would have gotten to 50 per cent of our destination.
Don’t you think you are talking like this because you are not there?
As a matter of fact, you cannot plant an apple and harvest lemon. The problem with people not delivering on promises is that we have not gotten to the level where we hold our political actors to a very high standard. Remember I talked about credibility when we started; if somebody makes a pronouncement, that person should be held accountable. If people are electing leaders, or considering some people in sensitive offices, we must look at their pedigree, where they have been. How have they fared with their private life, for instance? That is why we are looking for self-made men, people who have succeeded in their private lives as well as other spheres, who have had some level of accomplishment. They are not political jobbers. They are not people who are propelled by political godfathers; they are men of conviction with principles. If imo people understand that there is a young man who fits into this field and he is coming to ask them to give him the opportunity to serve them, to reposition the state, I am sure they will be in a good position to say that scenario is not going to happen.
Have you taken time to know what the state needs?
It is a systematic thin. For instance, if you go to the Ministry of Finance in Owerri tomorrow and say to them that you would like see the allocation, I think there is a Public Information Act but I think that is more or less on the pages of newspapers. We run an opaque system. Most people who mean to do well, who are aspiring to be effective, will just tell themselves that they have to reinvent the state from an economic view point. This is the assumption that we are making, and we are assuming Imo is broke. And we need to build up the revenue base from the scratch, which is why we are saying if we come in, these are the areas we will look into. We are not just looking at allocations. We are looking at how can we bake the cake, not share it?
What’s your view on the government taking funds from the capital market?
Government taking funds from the capital market is not a bad thing because we know that all those capital market instruments are used for long-term development. But long term development, the implementation is always the problem. How viable are these projects? For instance, in Imo, somebody has decided that we are going to have 27 general hospitals, one general hospital in each local government, but then you look around and say before this time how many general hospitals existed and what is the state of these hospitals? Are they centers of excellence? If you make them referral centers or there are certain centres of excellence, then you decide that given the growth in population that we are projecting in another 10 years, the population will have grown to a certain figure and we will need to have feeder outlets to cater for more people; then you can say this is for Phase 2, this can support this, but you have hospitals that are mere consulting clinics, nothing to speak of apart from the designation that they are hospitals and now you are beginning to expend scarce resources on constructing 27 hospitals.
