The Ebonyi State Labour Party (LP) gubernatorial candidate, Chief Splendour Oko-Eze Thursday vowed to focus on industrializing the state and not building of hotels and filling stations that can barely give jobs to the teeming unemployed youths if elected as governor in 2027 general election.

The gubernatorial hopeful also promised to prioritize community policing adding that he will introduce electronic equipment to monitor the movement of people in the state, while giving his backing to state policing.

“I will also make sure that I bring equipment, electronic equipment that can at least monitor the coming in and going out of people into the state, because not everybody enters the state with good intention” he added.

“I told someone, I said, I must make sure that community policing is returned in Ebonyi, because those people who are in communities, they know the people who come in and the people who go out. With this, the issue of insecurity, community clashes, will be reduced”, he stated

Addressing journalists in Abakalki, he lamented the sufferings and hardship the people of Ebonyi State are experiencing, vowing that if he is elected governor in 2027, he will turnaround the economic or the state and make it economic hub of Southeast.

Comrade Chief Splendour Okwu-Eze, has faulted the Vanco Flyover and Tunnel initiated by the administration of Nwifuru Francis, arguing if the government is given additional three years, it will not complete the project.

He attributed the lack of performance by the Nwifuru’s administration to persons he termed “wicked politicians” surrounding the governor, recalling that he refused to challenge the Nwifuru’s election in 2023 when the labour party substituted his name with that of Architect Edward Okereke, because he thought the governor is a youth who would have fixed the state.

“I can proudly tell you that we are yet to see any completed project commissioned in the state for more than three years now. We are running closer to four years, which means one full-blown calendar of governance has winded up”

“If you can tell yourself the truth, you will see that the cost of livelihood in Abakliki is very high. Talk about house rent. You see, for you to get a comfortable three-bedroom flat in Abakliki now, you should be budgeting one million or thereabout”, he said.

He opined that if elected the governor, he will step down development to the hinterland to discourage rural-urban migration adding that those of them who live very close can be applying from their rural area to urban,

Chief Splendour Okwu-Eze also assured the people of Ebonyi State that he would look into the crazy bills by the Enugu Electricity Distribution Compay, saying that the company has made life so unbearable to residents of the state.

His words: “Like I told some journalists last week that if I become a governor, the first thing I would look at, too, is to look into the high billing of this EDDC . In a poor state, if you go to other areas, you will see prepared metre. People are charged according to what they consume.

“You can’t come here and be giving us estimated billing. A family of four living in a two-bedroom flat, you’ll be giving that family 60,000, 50,000. How much do they earn? Take, for instance, a civil servant whose salary is 30,000, and you are giving the person only NEPA bill, you are giving the person 15,000.What about the school, the school fees of the children? What about other needs?

“If you come to Abakaliki now, a bag of pure water is sold for 700 Naira, 600 Naira. How will family cope? So, this issue of scarcity of water in Abakliki, to be precise, must come to an end during my governance. I will make sure that I do everything humanly possible to reticulate water in the state so that whoever that is in Abakaliki will have water at his or her doorstep at a reduced cost.

“This is what is making the people of Ebonyi State to be very impoverished. Because you can’t tell me that a civil servant will come and pay house rent, a two-bedroom flat here, he will pay 600,000 for a year, then he will be buying water, 700,00 a bag. By the time you multiply a bag, because some families will finish this one bag just in a day, then multiply 700 Naira into seven days, that make up one week.

“Multiply it by four weeks, you know that a whole lot is going out. So for me, there are so many areas I will make sure that my government covers when I come to government or if I am elected to govern the state. This is just a little tip of the iceberg that I’ve given to you”, he said.