Q: You were placed first in the evaluation of Nigerian governors conducted by foreign and local agencies last year. How motivated are you to retain the ‘title’?

A: Our commitment to infrastructural development in Enugu State in the last few years has been driven by the need to deliver the dividends of democracy.

A deliberate process of changing our landscape, of giving the people something concrete in exchange for their votes, so that when they want to rise up to defend democracy, they are going to do it because of what they have got from democracy. It is not really in response to any organised competition or awards, but continued concerted efforts to leave legacies on the ground, so that future governments can pay attention to other areas.

Q: Looking at some of your projects, especially the International Conference Centre, there are doubts that you can complete all of them before you leave office...

A: Thank you. The International Conference Centre is a triple-auditoria complex. The idea takes root from our history. Enugu State could be described as the gateway to the East –leading to almost 11 states if you are coming from the North. It is directly positioned to reposition our state and to play major roles in the southern part of this country in the areas of tourism, commerce and business. If you look at the conference centre, the concrete work is almost finished and the roofing is ongoing. It is going to have a glass-cutting wall. We will certainly finish it this year. It is billed to be opened in December. We have preference for storey buildings in our housing projects. It is because in many cases, land is a limiting factor. For example, the Teaching Hospital, the Loma Linda Estate, and of course, the university that is sitting on 600 hectares. Some of the terrain might be hostile in terms of soil texture. We get influenced by architectural concept and land availability.

Q: Your critics say some of those housing projects are elitist, having nothing to do with the masses. What is your response to this?

A: What about the roads, over 300 kilometres of roads, asphalt roads across the state? How about the over 300 rural electrification projects, water projects and cottage hospitals? When you put these things on the ground, you are reducing rural/urban migration. You are encouraging commerce, and building the economy of the rural areas. There could be a tendency to see the projects as elitist, but how would you describe the permanent site of the state university as elitist? Or the teaching hospital? I believe that in the final analysis, people would derive benefits from those projects. Even the conference centre with thousands of construction workers, I believe, it is also contributing to the economy of the state.

Q: Was the urgency to get work at the Enugu state University Teaching Hospital done and the institution accredited influenced by your background as a medical doctor?

Certainly. What we have tried to put together is a world-class teaching hospital. And the medical school meets American standard, I mean the joint Commission for Accreditation of American Hospitals Standard. Each unit is purposely built with three hostel facilities. Each hostel takes about 400 students, all the rooms ensuite – self-contained with bathroom and toilet. We have an auditoria complex, clinical block. The anatomy complex was also designed to meet international standard. I believe that the fact that I’m a medical professional can explain the amount of money that government put into the project. I doubt if a non-medical professional would have gone to that extent. Our state university is about 26 years old and they had been at the temporary site, displacing the Institute of Management and Technology. Many of the students here were living in boys’ quarters, garages and shanties. So, it was considered appropriate by our government to relocate the university to its permanent site. It takes some courage and determination. We took the university to 600 hectares of virgin land where we are putting up four hostel blocks. Each hostel is to take about 4,000 students in the interim. One of them is almost completed. It already has beds and mattresses. Students should be moving in there in the next 30 days. All the hostels should be done in four to six months. Also, there are eight faculty buildings, each designed on purpose. There are also buildings for library, VC’s Lodge, Admin. Building, Professors’ Quarters, Senior Staff Quarters, Middle Level Quarters and Junior Staff Quarters. We are building for posterity. We hope for a better in-coming government. A better government in terms of availability of resources with which they would continue to build on this. We believe private agencies will be involved in managing these infrastructure, including the hostels.

Q: What are you doing about the bad township roads?

A: Thank you. That is one area where we have not done as well as we ought to. We normally have problems with the township roads during the rainy season because of poor drainage. For the past few years, at the end of the rainy season, we always paid attention to resurfacing these roads. Secondly, we have concentrated on these new roads and roads in the state university permanent site – over then kilometers of roads. With the movement of students, we do not want them (students) to start complaining before we finish the road.

Q: What have you done in the area of revenue generation?

A: I must say that due to a lack of determination on my part when we took over, we didn’t commence aggressive revenue generation drive. I was burdened by the fact that government had not met the social contract between the governed and government. Social contract in terms of providing infrastructural facilities, roads, water, electricity, poverty eradication. Social contract in terms of providing the enabling environment even for the private sector. I felt government does not have the moral right to embark on aggressive revenue drive. But I can say that the income has very much improved, from N20 – 30m that we were getting in 1999 to about N300m. We also recently hired consultants. We are getting federal agencies and businesses to discharge their revenue responsibilities in Enugu State. That is also yielding a lot of fruits.

Q: You do not like to travel abroad. How then do your source foreign investment?

A: I don’t travel out of personal philosophy. I prefer to stay here. I do not even like traveling to Abuja because it distorts my schedule. Whenever I come back, I have to start all over again. I do not like air travel especially, all this battle against gravity and challenging God. Having said that, yes, traveling could also lead to foreign investment. However, the most important thing is what you provide on ground, that enabling environment in terms of security, in terms of fiscal policies of government to support private sector investment, to support host community investment, in terms of land acquisition and general holistic government policy. I believe that part of the dividends of the President Obasanjo administration is the removal of Nigeria’s pariah status, the aggressive drive to globalize the country, the deregulation of the energy sector and debt relief. I believe all these have yielded dividends in terms of investment in telecom, energy transportation and in banking. For us in Enugu state, we can lay claim to being part of the largest investment in seven years of Nigeria’s democracy, that is the Amaa Brewery project. Initially, when we took office we had about five banks. Now we have over 50. You can see an aggressive drive for people to find land. All the streets are being converted to business.

Q: How have you coped with a highly critical elite to deliver these democracy dividends?

A: I believe that part of the fallout from a highly critical, aggressive, hostile and antagonistic political power class who are more or less weighed down by power and displacement, who have literally been squeezed out of the political space, is that their continued attack seems to keep us on our toes. Rather than distract us, it helps us to stay focused. It creates awareness that there is somebody looking at you. You just have to keep running. You have to keep working as fast as possible.

Q: Talking about the education sector, a state very close to your state, Imo, does very well in all the examinations – NECO, WASC, and JAMB. What are you doing to improve enrolment and other facets of the sector, so that your state can challenge Imo?

A: At the top level, you know we are building the permanent site of our great university. At the local level we also involve in lot of reform process of education, the World Bank, UBE Scheme. We have used the school district system. We have school district centres. These centres are supposed to have facilities, which the schools in the district can share, like library, modern science laboratory, computer centre, and facilities for recreation. I believe that because of paucity of funds, these centres are still being built. We also did a lot of work to rejuvenate our library system. So far, we have hired over 3000 teachers at both levels. We also built some modern schools, in collaboration with Education Trust Fund. Our teachers’ salaries are at par with the civil servants. For the first time, we also made sure our teachers can rise to level 16 and I believe even 17 in the civil service. All these are done to motivate them. Other little things like getting them sponsored on continuous education, traveling outside for their conferences uplift their self-esteem. Education is also free up to JSS3. We’ve done a lot. We can certainly do better. I will go and check the figures of Imo as they stand side by side the figures of Enugu, because it is a veritable parameter to determine whether we are making progress or not.

Q: Do you think these legacies will be sustained?

A: I have no doubt at all. In Enugu, we say that the desire of every father is that his son should be greater than him. We in Enugu think future governments will do even better, build upon our heritage.
I’m wondering if ACD that appears to be spreading rapidly in the country takes over Enugu state these things will be sustained…

There is no ACD in Enugu. We have not heard about them. I don’t even think it has been launched. We have been a one party state for seven years. I don’t think anything will change it. If these ACD people have some money to distribute, we can send some people to them. When the ACD carnival arrives Enugu, our cadres will participate in the carnival, get whatever they have, but ultimately, Enugu will remain a PDP state.

Q: Are you not worried about what is happening to your party at the national level A parallel PDP has already been formed. The reconciliatory moves have also failed?

A: You see, we in Enugu state are used to this. For seven years now we have had to face one coalition or the other, either Abuja coalition or “Progressive” The quarrel is not about policy-agric policy, education policy, health policy, image policy or scientific research policy – it is not. It is a boardroom disagreement by the political elites, by the power cabal that has controlled our people over the years. People going from one regime change to another. People who are comfortable with military, just as they are comfortable with the civilian class. So they quarrel. And why do they do this? They want to be “settled.” And when you settle them, they are back to the PDP. If you don’t settle them as a last resort they will move elsewhere. What you call faction is just an attempt to coalesce opposition. There is no problem with the PDP. All the structures of the party at the state and federal levels are intact. They are recognized. Whatever you do, if you don’t dislodge these structures you are wasting time.

Q: We hear that the ACD already has 16 governors…

A: It is not true. I am a governor so I should know. If 16 of my colleagues have joined ACD I will know.

Q: But some of these PDP governors shunned the reconciliation meeting.

A: Yes, some of them were busy. I know governors who were not in town. You know, with the governors’ meeting going on, some of them were in Abuja. It was not a result of lack of interest. Over 90 per cent of the governors welcome the reconciliation. I saw Donald Duke, Makarfi, welcoming Bode George in Kaduna. We saw all those things on TV.

Q: The point is some of the people who have dumped your party are heavyweights. Does it not bother you that the party could lose the 2007 election?

A: Like in most constitutional democracies anchored on federal system, the strength of the party is derived from the state governments they control and PDP still controls 27 states. If these state governments start leaving the PDP, then there will be a problem. Otherwise I don’t see any. The states will be delivered to the PDP. The PDP-controlled states should be able, based on what they have on ground, to campaign and win the votes.

Q: President Olusegun Obasanjo has expressed the desire to have a serving governor succeed him in 2007 but it is said that the Governor’s forum is sharply divided…

A: (Cuts in) I have to thank the President for the confidence he has in us (Governors). It means that all is well with us. No doubt, what you read in the papers are news leaks designed to achieve the political agenda of some sections of the political power class. It will be unusual if governors just agree overnight. But I believe that the process is in place and it will be consensus-driven. We will make recommendations to the party.

Q: The clamour for a president from the south-East appears to be waning…

A: That is not true. The clamour for president from the South East did not start today. It is an attempt to address some level of injustice, to address a power imbalance. I am an apostle of excellence, of the best for the most important job in the land. We should be talking about our best eleven. If the best will anchor our telecom, banking, both fiscal policy and commercial banking and even our football team, then the best should anchor the ship of the nation. The clamour for a president from the South East is derived from the reality that the foundation of our nation state was based on a tripod, look at our history, from the merger of the Lagos colony and Southern Nigeria, the amalgamation of northern and southern Nigeria, our fathers bargained on the basis of North, West and East. To discuss just North and South is to wipe away that arrangement. The agitation is plain and simple. It’s been there. What I see is a fundamental fact. There is input by the political power class in whatever emerges in the press. I believe there has been a deliberate attempt by a power class, possibly emanating from South-South, and even the North, that does have some level of control on the print and electronic media, to make it a contestation between South-South and North, to give impression that South-East, as it were, are not interested. I’ve seen press conferences or press releases by Ohanaeze youths, even Ohanaeze itself, some papers gave it two or three lines. I do know. I have access to information, some of these people are my friends. I know it is a deliberate attempt to almost type-cast a “no show” for the South-East.

Q: A lot of people think you will run for the presidency. Are you no longer interested?

A: I don’t think we ever told anybody that we are interested. But I know that it is an election year associated with a lot of consultations, a lot of movements, a lot of alliance building in Enugu State, our major goal is to complete our projects as soon as possible, so we can pay attention to the election. We do not believe that the story of 2007 has been written, it has not even begun.

Q: Which of your projects is very close to your heart?

A: It is a very tricky question. I will say my greater achievement is human capacity building. When I returned to Nigeria, a lot of people thought we were joking. You must understand that what we have done in Enugu State is total displacement of a political class that has domineered the sensibilities of our people over the years. A political class that has been beneficiary of regime change, whether military or civilian in this country. A political class that has lived at the expense of our people. Purveyors of CV; perennial recommender of appointments over the years, whom we dislodged. Without them we are where we are today. Our own political grouping has produced a senate president, senators, members of house of representatives, ministers and I know how all these people emerged, even ward chairmen. There has been a lot of reinvigoration, building of self-esteem. People who otherwise had abandoned life as it were, working with us. We helped them rejuvenate their dreams. We have repositioned Enugu State. Is it the assessment by development partners, National Planning Commission. Whatever permutation you want to use, whatever statistical indices you want to use, the fact is Enugu came first. The result we have, we don’t know of any state that scored higher, that came a close second to Enugu state. That is an affirmation that we are doing well. Or is it the assessment by the European ambassadors or assessment by the President himself? Part of what I am proud of is using Enugu as a model of what democracy can do in an emerging African society. Then of course, the projects, those are legacies. I leave those for our children, 25, 30, years from now to assess.

Q: Tell me the impact working and schooling abroad has had on your style of administration.

A: My alma maters, yes, not just University of Nigeria, Nsukka. There is also where I trained in the United states, where I did obstetrics and gynaecology in Brooklyn in New York, and more importantly, where I did maternal medicine at Loma Linda. For a kid at Agbani, going to Loma Linda is a symbol that there is still a place called hope. Loma Linda is an institution that is engaged in cutting edge medical research. That was where the first baboon heart transplant was done. It is an institution willing to push the boundaries of human possibilities. It showed me that dreaming is possible, that God has investment in all of us, has a path chosen for all of us, and of course, being able to train, practice in the United States, being able to compete and succeed there gave me the confidence to come home, believing I should be able to deal with my local terrain. Clearly in America I was just a number. But in Nigeria I am more than a number. America equipped me to know that man has to go beyond the animal. Animals, if they see food they eat it, if they see water, they drink it. But man creates food, creates water. Man changes his environment; he does not dominate or domineer his environment. America gave me the confidence to rise up and be counted, so that when the story is told in future, they will say we were here, and this was what we stood for. America gave me the confidence to venture into dens of lions, while hoping to come out unscathed.