My beloved Abians,
 
Let me first thank you for your enthusiastic and overwhelming support during the ceremonies that ushered me into office as the 4th Governor of our great state. During the election campaigns, I travelled the length and breadth of this state and felt your collective yearning that Abia was due for a comprehensive transformation. Today as your Governor, I pledge, that before the expiration of my tenure I will deliver  “A New Abia”. An Abia state that is better and more focused on uplifting the lives of all Abians.
 
The new Abia will be defined by the our people’s time honoured values;
• Performance – We deliver to the “best in class” standards and operate at the highest ethical standards
• Ownership  - We live, breath & think Abia and we take full responsibility all the time
• Innovation   - We create solutions to optimize every opportunity & Challenge
• Commitment – We put our best effort into play
• Integrity – We say what we will do and we do what we say. We have zero tolerance for corruption

As contained in my inaugural speech, I will like to emphasize that our direction will revolve around our 5 key growth pillars; Manufacturing, Trade and Commerce, Agriculture, Infrastructure and Environment.
Mindful of the importance of infrastructure to economic development, we will focus on the improvement of electricity, potable water, rural & urban roads and the railway system. Partnerships will be activated to facilitate the provision of necessary infrastructure. Our Manufacturing programme will focus on re-igniting the brand “Made In Aba” and make Abians once more to be proud of their products. Trade and Commerce will be anchored on the regeneration of Aba and her recreation as a hub for business in West Africa. We will exploit agriculture aggressively to create employment, ensure food security, grow our economy and empower our people. Finally no longer shall our cities be associated with flooded streets and nauseous refuse dumps

While we will be strategic in our approach to achieving the “New Abia”, we have also identified some quick wins. We have flagged off our “Clean Aba Programme” and the rehabilitation and reconstruction of several arterial roads in Aba and Umuahia. Over the next few days we will be making major interventions in some very key areas.
Waste Management remains a very big challenge in our state. Our major streets, especially in Aba have been taken over by refuse. In the New Abia, this will no longer be tolerated. Commencing tomorrow we will start a massive intervention on domestic waste management. We will be deploying equipment to the streets of Aba. We are also exploring the fastest and most efficient ways of managing waste dump sites, to avoid our major highways being blocked with refuse. We must collectively take responsibility for this task. Henceforth dropping of refuse in non-designated places is prohibited and offenders will be sanctioned. If there are no designated refuse drop points in your area, we strongly advise that you call our waste management hot line for prompt intervention

Road Construction/Rehabilitation will be a major thrust of our 100 days plan. A lot of our roads are impassable and we feel the pains and frustration of Abians in this regard. With our lean resources, it is impossible to fix these problems all at once, so it has to be phased. We will begin the simultaneous rehabilitation of 10 major roads in our State and you have our commitment to deliver them to the highest standards possible. This will be made possible by simultaneously managing the drainage problems that undermine our roads, making them to fail soon after completion. We have commenced the assessment of the Aba underground tunnels as a possible solution to fixing the perennial drainage challenge in Aba. In line with this, drainage rehabilitation, construction, channelization, storm water and erosion control will receive immediate attention. These roads will be delivered with street lights which will extend the business hours in our urban centers. In the spirit of this development I urge all those with unserviceable or abandoned vehicles to remove them immediately. Structures that are erected on the way of the roads and drainages will certainly be pulled down irrespective of who is involved.

As part of our plan to improve on the ease of doing business in Abia, we have commenced the process of harmonizing our tax collection process. Until this process is completed, all forms of Multiple Taxation must stop henceforth and all Agents and Touts are hereby advised to stop collection henceforth. Any agent that is caught collecting taxes and rates illegally will be sanctioned.

We are determined to pay salaries and pensions as at when due, but we shall lead Abians to challenge our public service to fish out ghost workers as well as plug all leakages in revenue. We shall deploy technology in keeping with world best practices to streamline our payroll and audit system. However, I assure all diligent and resourceful staff that their hard work and commitment will be rewarded.

Security of lives and property is of great importance to us and will be reflected in our coming actions and policies. We have commenced meetings with the Security Chiefs in the state and we are committed to providing the necessary support for the security agencies to sustain and uphold the prevailing peaceful and secure atmosphere of our State.

As a bold step to managing Unemployment meaningfully, empowering our youths and meeting the capability needs of our industries, we have concluded plans to launch an education for employment (E4E) program which will enable 100,000 youths acquire fit-for-purpose skills over the next 4 years. We are commencing a pilot at BTC Aba during these first 100 days.

Agriculture is of critical importance to our economy and we have a need to boost our agricultural production for food security and to create jobs. Against this background, over the next 3 months we will distribute 2,000 bags of fertilizer per Local Government and supply agro-chemicals at 50% discount to all our farmers. Both interventions will help improve our crop production yield this farming season. During the period, we will train and equip 10 youths per Local Government in agro-chemical deployment.
Our desire to claim our position as the SME capital of Nigeria will be realized through the proposed New Industrial City with emphasis in leather and garments. We will begin to develop our industrial clusters within our first hundred days.

My beloved Abians, I will like to state that we cannot achieve our goal of uplifting the lives of Abians, without participation and commitment from every Abian. We all have our roles to play on this journey; I therefore solicit your support. We all have to embrace and live the 5 Abia Values, which we have proposed earlier in this speech.
I urge everyone to be a watchdog. Please report any breach of our laws and non-conformity to our values to relevant authorities and demand feedback on actions taken. We need sincere, constructive assessment and feedback of our performance. We have opened-up feedback platforms to enable you criticise and send your suggestions on how we can meaningfully improve our performance and achieve our collective dream.
We would urge you to Pay Your Taxes as at when due, your demand for performance only becomes credible when you perform your civic responsibilities. We urge you to Think Abia all the time.

Let me use this opportunity to thank the outgoing members of the Abia State Executive Council for a job well done over the years. I will also like to use this opportunity to request that they handover to their Permanent Secretaries latest close-of-business, Wednesday 3rd of June 2015. I join other Abians to congratulate them for their selfless service to our fatherland and promise to call you up as the need arises, because the reward for hard work is more work.
 
Finally, I will like all Abians to demand the same high standards of delivery that we have promised, because I am most optimistic, that with good conscience as our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, and with God on our side we will provide the leadership that we all will be proud of.

Kanyi Mezie Abia   !!!
God Bless Abia state!!!

OKEZIE  IKPEAZU PHD
GOVERNOR OF ABIA STATE

 

My beloved Abians, I am humbled by the great and onerous responsibility you have bestowed on me to serve you and lead our State as the 4th democratically elected Governor, to develop her potentials and achieve our collective dream of uplifting the life of every Abian. I accept it with a heart full of love and commitment for our dear state. I regard it as the highest honor to lead Abia at this time in our democratic journey. I pledge to use all my strength and ability to live up to your expectation of me, as your Governor. 

As we acknowledge our electoral achievement, let us remind ourselves that it is not so much a victory of one party over another but a celebration of our democracy and our collective resolve to deepen and sustain it in Abia and Nigeria. We thank GOD and our great party men and women who through their selfless efforts and hard work contributed to our victory. I salute you! Your clamour for an even and effective distribution of our common wealth is captured in our slogan “Okezuo Abia”. Your desire and aspirations shall drive our actions in Government.

I am personally indebted to: 

 The Immediate past Governor of Abia State, His Excellency Theodore Ahamefula Orji
 The people of Abia, who came out in hundreds of thousands under rain and sun, in long queues for many hours, to elect me. These include; Mothers, Fathers, Youths, Market Women, Trade Unions and Town Unions
 The People Democratic Party on whose platform I have been elected and given this mandate
 Ndi Eze, Religious Leaders…. and many others out there. May God continue to bless you.

We extend the hand of fellowship to our brothers and sisters in other Parties, who contested with us in the elections. I share these words of Tom Wilson, for our benefit “Many of us are more capable than some of us…but none of us is as capable as all of us” We are all winners. We all desire the upliftment of the living standard of our people and for Abia State to achieve greatness. Now is the time to set aside our differences and work together to deliver the greatness we recognise in ourselves and aspire to for all of us.

Our dear State is known as ‘God’s own State’ and the time has come for us to explore and optimize fully all the resources and advantages that God has bestowed on us. The resourcefulness and diligence of our people, our unique geographical location and natural resources must be developed and utilized to the collective benefit of our people and those around us.

To the glory of God, the hitherto pervasive insecurity which plagued Abia in years past has been reversed, thanks to the diligence of our dear Governor Theodore Ahamefule Orji. Ochendo, his commitment to ensuring the entrenchment of security, peace and equity in our state is very much appreciated and we shall build on that Legacy to transform our state, . 

Our story as a people is one of entrepreneurship, resourcefulness and diligence. This is our pride. We have astounded the world with our homegrown technical skills, especially during a period of pervasive adversity, and followed it up with our trade and commercial prowess elevating one of our cities, Aba, into a prominent commercial hub within the West African region. This historic renown is to become our future narrative. The time is ripe to use the over 110,000 shoemakers and 50,000 garment makers as a launching pad to enable Abia to truly become the undisputed SME capital of Nigeria. 

I agree with the view of the great American industrialist, Harvey Firestone, “The growth and development of people is our highest calling of leadership”.

Great Abians, our administration is fully committed to providing the enabling environment and infrastructure to facilitate the growth and development of Abia and its people; positioning it as a premier residential, business and tourism destination, with the ultimate objective of uplifting the lives of our people. It is achievable!!! But it requires our collective commitment, sacrifices and contributions, ‘ka oke zuo onye obula’ as well as upholding our values of Being God fearing, Belief in Abia, Integrity, Innovation and Quality.

Aba was for many years a thriving hub for manufacturing and commerce until epileptic electricity supply and insecurity forced the shutdown of most of our indigenous and foreign owned industries. We must therefore recognize and appreciate the efforts of the Geometric Power Group and the Federal Government’s NIPP project at Alaoji towards providing a solution to the perennial challenges of electricity supply to our state. The forthcoming operationalisation of these plants will provide a critical input towards the actualization of our blueprint and roadmap for the regeneration of Aba and the entire Abia State. We shall pursue it with vigor.

In line with our commitment to strengthening the existing security situation in the state, we will continue to provide support to the law enforcement agencies to improve and sustain a more efficient incident response time and introduce contemporary technology-based solutions to assist in the enhancement of Security. This is the dawn of the new Abia. 

In this new Abia, instead of giving our people fish (handouts), we will focus on leading them to grow economically. Fortunately, the average Abian is hardworking and enterprising, we shall therefore launch Abia into an accelerated economic growth phase by building on the following FOURENABLERS or FACILITATORS of economic and social development:

1. Ease of Business and Governance Pledge - As we strive to increasingly devolve to a largely private sector driven economy in the State, we will undertake a re-orientation and restructuring of the public service aimed at instilling private sector models and mindsets, professionalism and efficiency in the delivery of services to our people. 

To encourage increased private sector participation in the State’s economy we will constitute and empower an Investment Promotion Agency (a One-Stop Shop) to streamline processes, and facilitate investment inflow into Abia Their remit will include ensuring that it becomes easy to do business in our State and accelerate the rate of investment attraction. As an example of what we plan to do, our pledge is that the time for processing land titles will be comparable to any other state in Nigeria. 
2. Infrastructure Pledge – We will put in place infrastructure that drives economic development but also makes our society, environment clean and sustainable. To this end, we will actively engage the Federal Government and private sector partners to give life to our development plans for our transport systems, for drainage rehabilitation, construction, channelization of storm water and erosion control. Initiation and beautification of leisure parks will be encouraged, just as we introduce coordinated traffic management initiatives to resolve traffic chaos. The regeneration of Aba, will create modern neighbourhood markets and parks, including crucial developments of business and leisure along the Aba river, and new residential and business locations.

3. Security Pledge – Security of lives and property is of great importance to me and will be reflected in our coming actions and policies. My administration will continue to provide necessary support to the security agencies to sustain and uphold the current peaceful atmosphere. 

4. Healthcare Pledge – “Health is wealth”! This government aims to improve access to effective and efficient healthcare services for all. Our blueprint for strengthening the existing 710 government-owned primary healthcare facilities across the state will be implemented with PPP support. As part of our first 100 days in office, we will work with the private sector to equip up to two hospitals in each of our three senatorial zones. We want all our communities to have access to quality modern healthcare. So in addition to improving medical facilities, we will invite leading healthcare providers to ensure also that necessary training and quality healthcare is available in our state. 

Our land Abia is blessed with its strategic geographic location and direct accesses to 7 other states. We can regain our status as a major commercial and transport hub in the South-East/South-South region of Nigeria. We have opportunities to forge partnerships that enable us all to implement economic goals, drive accelerated growth in our KEY ECOMOMIC SECTORS so our hopes and dreams are achieved.

These sectors include:
1. Agriculture - Our land is blessed, fertile and is supportive of agriculture. My government will actively engage and support agriculture activities especially in mechanized farming of Cassava, Rice, and Palm Oil in line with the Federal Government’s programs and our state’s areas of natural advantage. In addition to the creation of a Commodity Marketing System, we will support our small farmers through organized cooperatives, agricultural extension services and partnerships with foreign donor agencies and development finance institutions. We will actively procure FG funds targeted at the agricultural areas we want to focus on and also encourage large-scale farmers to invest.

2. Trade and Commerce – Our heritage and source of pride will be reinvigorated because this Government’s pledge is to work towards accelerated growth in trading and commercial activities. We will support this with business initiatives including the regeneration of Aba and redevelopment of the Ariaria market. Key to this drive will be the involvement of all parts of the state. 13 other identified major markets across the state will be upgraded with modern structures and improved access roads. 

3. Start-Up Business – By the year 2016, Abia State through Aba should be able to supply the Military, Customs, NPF, Immigration, and NYSC all their uniforms and foot wear

4. Manufacturing – We will make those working in these sectors realise their true potential and make Nigeria and us proud. As a priority, we will facilitate the rebuilding of major manufacturing companies and plants across the state by leveraging the two power plants in the state. Industrial hubs will be created where Public-Private Partnerships can provide necessary infrastructure. Access to finance and markets are areas of SME development will be given significant attention. The new Marketing Board will help globalize our leather and garment industries, set up standards organization modeled after SON and aimed at ensuring that ‘Made in Aba’ becomes something of high quality and in high demand. I am proud to stand in front of this crowd today clad in all made in Aba attire. I pleadge to wear made in Aba all through my service as Governor and beyond, not because of lack of options but because it is good to be proud of what we have, especially if it’s thebest 
5. Oil & Gas – Abia State will become a major logistics base if we exploit the Federal Government initiatives and policies in the petroleum industry and our proximity to the major oil producing neighboring states. As an oil-bearing state we have the opportunity and will facilitate also the exploration of existing and potential hydrocarbon reserves for the benefit of our people. Establishment of an industrial Gas city at Owaza to serve as a basin for Gas related industries and businesses.

6. Education and People- Our people are our pride and strength and building them will continually be a major thrust of my administration. Everyone especially the youth can benefit from qualitative formal and informal education that develops knowledge, skills and competencies. We will access all available intervention funds nationally and internationally to transform the educational sector in Abia, upgrade existing and create new technical training programs ranging from basic artisan to advanced ICT skills and provide our young with employable capabilities thus empowering them to uplift their standard of living through self-sufficiency. In my first 100 days in office the Boys Technical college in Aba will receive significant attention aimed at enabling it provide certificate programmes in carefully chosen vocational areas including garment and shoe making. In the long term they will be significant private sector involvement in BTC.

7. Sports – We will create a strong Marketing arm to commercialize the Iconic image of Eyimba and Wariours. We have to reactivate schools sports and re-ignite the Academicals

This government will aim to work with educational visionaries to embolden people and prepare them to embrace local, national and global opportunities. We will create an environment where a concentration of world-class educational facilities are present in the state in an area we will call a schools district. The location of this district will be made public before or at the first year anniversary of this administration.

Still in the area of advancing the capabilities (i.e. skills and mindsets of our people) this administration will institute an EYIMBA CARNIVAL. We will rebuild our cultural environment with a large elephant in the lead. This carnival will be a show of our rich culture and our commercial creativity and will be held every December starting from next year.

Our vision is ambitious but entirely achievable and will require sacrifice and perseverance. In the light of dwindling federal allocations to states, and as we facilitate a paradigm shift in terms of income generation for the state, hard decisions are necessary. My government has as a priority huge optimization in government spending. While this will go a long way, it must be complimented by very significant internally generated revenue growth. This is a MUST DO.

This government intends to be firm in plugging all revenue leakages alongside developing new channels. I call on all sons and daughters of Abia to key into this by ensuring that they fulfill their statutory obligation to pay all their taxes timely. We will restructure our Inland Revenue Service to become a strategic contributory parastatal in the actualization of our vision for Abia. We will bring private sector competence and mindset to this agency thus paving the way for significantly increased IGR levels. With this, our vision for better life for our people can be realized. 

In addition to all the above this administration will emphasize the following

a. The Judiciary –We will provide all necessary logistic, financial, human capacity and operational support to maintain a strong, efficient and equitable judicial system in Abia State.

b. Legislature, Traditional Rulers and Religious Leaders – We will strive to have an excellent relationship with the legislature to ensure we bring to fore the best policies for our state and its citizens. I will organize a workshop in my early days to socialize my economic blueprint to the members of the house to ensure we get their full buy in. Our traditional rulers and religious leaders will also be engaged from time to time to ensure a holistic partnership is achieved across board. In fact our blueprint will be hosted on the Abia State website for everyone, home and abroad to have full visibility of.

c. Citizen and private sector engagement – My government will embark on targeted meetings with citizens. I will also inaugurate the Abia Economic Advisory Council in my first week in office. This body will be made responsible for advising my team on the policies to adopt. This is best practice and is a way for several leaders regardless of party affiliation to have an avenue to contribute to the progress of our dear state.

We must make it work for all of us. I want to call on our sons and daughters in the diaspora, Abians in the organized private sector, Abians at home, the organized private sector in Nigeria and the Federal Government to engage and partner with us in the development of our state. "Individual commitment to a group effort” That is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work." Those are the wise words of Vince Lombardi, the great American sports coach.

I ask our brothers and sisters in diaspora to key into opportunities that emerge - bring your investment funds, but more importantly afford us the benefits of your knowledge, insights and experiences. We will greatly appreciate them. Start an office or a new business in Abia today and you would have started making your support count immediately.
Finally, my beloved Abians, ask of us the same high standards of character and sacrifice that we have promised you, because I am most optimistic, that with good conscience as our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, and with God on our side we will provide the leadership that we all will be proud of. 

Nde Abia, unu emela. Oge iru oru erula. Unu jikere wooo!!! God Bless Abia state!!!

DR OKEZIE VICTOR IKPEAZU, GOVERNOR OF ABIA STATE.