Erosion menace: Anambra needs International, FG assistance, Okwuosa laments

A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Anambra State, Chief Azuka Okwuosa, has lamented that all the challenges that propelled him to take his first shot at politics 11 years ago have remained unattended to.

He told journalists in Awka, that the state, especially the southern zone, lacks people with zeal and affinity with the masses to know their challenges, expectations and heartbeat; hence his decision to once again throw his hat in the ring.

He said the issue of erosion menace was beyond what communities, councils and state governments could tackle and called on the federal government to address the matter through the Ecological Fund.

Okwuosa, a former chairman of Nnewi Council and one-time commissioner, blamed representatives in the National Assembly for the current situation, especially roads in the rural communities.

“So, these, amongst other issues, have propelled me to come out again. They have remained a big burden to me. One would then wonder what those who had been representing us have been doing. Perhaps absolutely nothing!

“We must be represented by people who we generated and sent to Abuja and not the other way round, because such leaders represent their people well, knowing full well that they have people to report back to.

“But if you are foisted on the people, then you won’t be answerable to them and it will surely manifest in the ways and manner you treat them; with ignominy.

“If we solidify the system, such that there would be no room for imposition of candidates, that would be the beginning of our recovery as a nation.”

He said no genuinely elected representative of the people would not know the needs and challenges of his constituents, especially erosion menace, which he feared has assumed a frightening life-threatening proportion.

To those castigating the ruling party and asking when they would experience the real “change,” he said: “I believe those who have eyes to see are seeing them. The changes are already there. We inherited a monumental disaster. President Muhammadu Buhari has been stoically tackling the huge decay.

“Before now, no one would be able to travel safely to any part of the nation, especially in Southeast, because all the roads were virtually gullies. But today, the changes are there for all to see.

“Consider the Enugu-Onitsha federal highway, which was virtually turned to one lane, but has been almost completed within APC’s first three years in power.

“Go and see the Enugu-Port Harcourt highway, a massive reconstruction work is also going on there right now. Same at the Oba-Nnewi-Okigwe highway and other sectors of the economy.”

Describing the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as an assemblage of strange bedfellows, people with no ideological harmony and direction, who bequeathed the nation with the present economic challenges, Okwuosa noted that APC, at its formation, was a new party that came on a rescue operation from the locust of the PDP administration.

“But naturally, in every system, you will have both good and bad eggs. Some of the bad eggs from PDP found their way into the new party. You can see a recent mass exodus of some of them. They have left the way they came. They came thinking it was going to be business as usual, but they saw in Buhari’s administration, a very high sense of accountability and probity, as against what it was under the past administrations.

“They tried to coarse and overheat the system, but couldn’t, so they left. Come easy, go easy. It is indeed a good riddance to bad rubbish. They are people who do not believe in ideological conviction.”