Youthful Local Government Chairman Of Edda local government speaks to Eze Sampson on the challenges he faced at resumption as the LG boss, his plans and the future of Edda together.
How has sit been piloting the affairs of Edda local government?
First of all is to thank God and equally thank the governor for the privilege. I can’t say it’s been easy giving the situation of things I met on ground. It happened that violence was the order of the day, issues here and there and the handlers in the past mismanaged the affairs of our people.
First thing we did was to tackle the issue of insecurity, the issue of communal clashes, and the issue of individual fights here and there. What we did at resumption was to galvanize by bringing all our people together partner with elders, you understand and constitute what I call Edda Elders council (EEC), and I have been working with them closely and we’ve been tackling a lot of issues. So far so good it’s been good having them on board. Like I said before it’s been quite challenging but we thank God for the grace.
Can we say reconciling Edda and settling internal crisis were part of your initial goals?
Yes, I’ve been around I know where some of our leaders were getting it right and where they were getting it wrong.
First when you want to serve the people and seriously want to serve you must take away your personal interest. To at large extent, I told myself if I must stop at council chairman so be it, I try not to create my own structure as a person the structure I needed to put in place was the structure of Edda, Edda structure first and that was why the interest of people were paramount. I didn’t start considering self and that’s the reason why we were able to do what we did, like I said earlier, cultism was actually the order of the day they people who were managing the affairs were busy giving our young ones doctrine, creating the impression that that is the way to go without them knowing that that will lead them to destruction, and not pushing them to the next level. We try to disabuse the minds of the younger ones towards getting into cult activities rather think of what they can do for themselves and what they can do for the clan.
And that has actually helped us a great deal, so we try not to segregate, I work with everybody no matter where you think you belong and to a large extent there’s this mutual understanding and to a large extent everybody has decided to drop their arms for us to embrace peace and oneness.
That’s impressive, now looking at your age and your emergence at the same time, can we say you’re the lucky one?
I count myself lucky because I am a young man giving such opportunity to serve at this moment.
Also looking at the fact that Federal government just signed into law the local government bill pertaining to council autonomy?
For your information, before now we’ve been telling others to come to Ebonyi state let’s teach them what autonomy is all about, we’ve been enjoying autonomy. We have a governor who understands what autonomy is all about and he has been guiding us to do things the right way.
What has been your government social responsibility to the people?
Making sure that every aspect of the society is carried along, because when you ignore the elders you don’t take care of them they will pose a challenge to you, when you ignore the youth they will pose a challenge to you, when you create an atmosphere where everyone is carried along they will give you peace.
Ok, the smile on your face implies that you don’t have challenges, can you tell us what has been your greatest challenge in all?
My greatest challenge has always been certain individuals that the devil is still using to see if they can be bringing up issues crisis here and there, an my earnest prayer and desire is to help us bring them down completely so that we can have peace in Edda clan.
In the area of infrastructure can you mention one, two projects on going as we speak?
There are too many ooo but I cannot mention one or two, before now if you’re entering Edda at night from Amasisi you will not see any street lights, when we came we decided to embark on massive installation of solar street lights, right from this close before my house almost to the junction we installed street lights. The council headquarters was a no go area, it was a dungeon, in fact I couldn’t even operate from there I needed to be operating from my house until I got the place fixed and above all I felt pained while I am riding and cruising on my car I am seeing my mothers jumping bikes only for them to get to Amasiri or Afikpo for them to board transport for them to get to Abakaliki or any other part of the state. It was paining me so much, sometimes you see them helpless, before you know it they’ve had an accident, got their selves injured while some of them even lose their lives and said I no, there’s need we got back to something like what the likes of Ogbuoji introduced which some other persons that came on board couldn’t manage I said we must bring back Edda Mass Transit and that mass transit is helping us to cushion the sufferings of our people in the area of transportation, its helping us project the image of Edda, it’s helping us ameliorate the sufferings in terms of the cost of transportation because we decided to subsidize it that even the common man can afford the transport.
On the area of subsidy, why did you take the subsidy route knowing the present cost of fuel nationwide?
The reason is we didn’t establish the mass transit for it to be a profit making venture, we introduced it for it ameliorate, is all about giving back to the society so whatever peanut we are collecting is for us to possibly fuel the vehicle and if possible run maintenance and not for it to generate funds for the council as God will have it we are still receiving allocation that is enough for us to do other projects and not for us to be expecting that from the mass transit we will generate funds to do other projects, but let the mass transit sustain itself and by the special grace of God before I will leave office we will procure more and have it almost every state of the federation.
So far, how many buses do you have in stock?
Ahhh! we already have eight , the tenth one will come in before December.
Finally, what is your administration doing about this road Okpumini – Owutu – Okpuma road, it has been posing very serious challenge to our people?
There’s this popular saying in Edda that “Adi efuru sudua Ewu ka ezi ekwe ya”that one is even the least of the road I intend to embark on but you know sometimes resources at our disposal is not enough for us to do certain things, but we are believing God in moving forward that we will have resources to do more projects including the road you just mentioned.
We are glad to have you sir.
Always a pleasure!
