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Former member that represented Aniocha-Oshimili Constituency in the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon.Ndudi Elumelu says so far,that Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta state has done well in his nearly three years in the saddle.
Elumelu gave the governor the pass mark recently at an interaction with members of the Delta Online Publishers Forum, DOPF,in his country home,Onicha-Uku in Aniocha North Local Government Area.
He was asked: “In November 2014, you ran a fantastic opening campaign at the Oshimili Arcade. Infact, if Campaigns were used to assess popularity for candidates, I think on that day you would have become Governor and we all hailed the campaign. But the key thing about the campaign was that, it was anchored on a programme, “Shine Delta”. Against the backdrop to what has happened when SMART Agenda took over, do you think the SMART Agenda has reflected your visions and ideas in the Shine Delta Campaign?
Ans: On the issues of what I wanted to do for Deltans… I have been so impressed with Okowa. One for the situation that he found himself. I don’t know of about other aspirants but I knew where we where in terms of balances. I knew as at that time that we were contesting, I was seeing about 800 Billion deficit and I don’t know what himself knew.
The difference was that, I had structured mine on a way that I would have handled it without recourse to affecting or disrupting activities by going to the secondary market but because of what he found out, he has been able to swim under and inside it and he seems to be coming out strong. So to that, I give him kudos.
He has done reasonably well to kind of actualize what I had hope for but for only one thing that I had wanted to add. I had a vision to reduce the traffic of commuters within two years by completing a rail road from Asaba to Oleh, from Oleh to Warri, from Warri to Agbor. In effect, what we had wanted to do was that, whether you are a farmer… we will have three coaches; First Class, Business and Economy. Economy will be both for Farmers, Students and others, the other one will be for workers who will always buy pass on monthly basis. If you going to Warri for instance and you are going to Asaba, you will just use that pass, you know that you don’t need a car, just get to Asaba and hop out and go into your office which would have taken along Nnebisi road. We structured it Airport-Nnebisi road and it was going to be Built, Operate and Transfer.
So in effect, Delta State government was not going to touch one naira in it, we had met with Hitachi with my Brother and they had agreed to come and do it for us just like what they did in Dubai. I went and saw them and told them about the viability of it and also, Ughelli Transcorp Power Plant, which is of course my brother’s own, had promised to give us 20Mega Watts of electricity in such a way that the rail line will never be disrupted. So that is the only area that I probably think my dream hasn’t come true but every other thing, he has done excellently well.