Abia State Governor, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu has said he wants to be remembered by the number of roads that would stand 30 years after his tenure as Governor.
Ikpeazu who stated this while addressing members of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, (NGE) who came on a tour of project sites in Aba, explained that three of the best construction companies in the country have been working for five years to deliver quality roads across the state.
He assured that his successor would build on the quality roads he is delivering and won’t be faced with doing palliatives on the same roads he had done.
In his words; ‘I don’t want to be remembered by the number of roads that I have done, rather I would like to be remembered by the number of roads that stand 30 years after I had left. It is only this strategy that we can build on our infrastructure stock so that the man coming after me will continue from where I will stop and not going back to do palliatives on roads I have done. And this is why Abia has deployed three grade A contractors to do our roads. We have Arab Contractors, Setraco and Bulletin. All the roads we are doing are roads that lead to economic centres.
“Our roads are done with cement pavement technology with concrete and rods which we started doing since 2015. Most of the roads in the state have concrete and rods beneath them despite the fact that they have drainages on both sides. We would rather not build any road than not building it with concrete and rods and drainages on both sides.You may have heard about a certain ‘mammy water’ that was rumoured to be behind the perennial flooding at Ama Ikonne and Ifeobara pond, even though that was a laughable narrative towards the cause of the flooding, let me announce to you that all the ‘mammy waters’ have now disappeared courtesy of hitech engineering works we deployed to the concerned spots. And with this, we knew we have made a statement over time.”
Ikpeazu noted most investors who left Abia have returned to the state due to the upgrade of infrastructure and business friendly climate in the state.
“People didn’t realize that if you want to attract foreign or local investment, you don’t do it by making statements and shouting. No investor will come to your state because you have met him ten times. An investor must do calculation about return on investment and he is going to make profit in his business and plough it into the enterprise. And before this, he looks at electricity and durability of the infrastructure. If he sees a poorly done road, he will know that the road will collapse in less than a year. In this case, there would be no access road to his business place. But if you throw cement and rod and asphalt it, the investor will invest knowing that it will take 40 years before he begins to have problem of access road to his business place. I don’t need to shout too much about investors, all I need is to speak through the quality of work we are doing.
He assured that his administration is focused on the policy of reconstructing roads leading to markets and other economic centres in the state.
“During the last election we had here, somebody said Governor Ikpeazu has not done the road leading to his village, but that was a positive one for me that I’m unable to be selfish to do the road leading to my village. My response was that there is no big market in my village. Why should I prefer to do the road to my village over the road leading to Ariaria market? We are focused on promoting those things our people can do and others cant.Abia state is blessed with people with enormous capacity. Abia people can manufacture anything. Aba possess the ‘can do spirit’, the never say die spirit, very resilient people. Today, every part of Aba is a market place, and we are doing roads in clusters. Aba is a land of endless opportunities.”