Enugu faults APGA chieftain's claims of poor performance
From Lawrence Njoku, Enugu
ALLEGATIONS of poor performance against the Enugu State government by the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) have been described as spurious and selfishly-motivated.
In a reaction yesterday, the Commissioner for Information, Culture and Tourism, Chief Ayogu Eze, reeled out projects executed by the Chimaroke Nnamani administration.
He said they were not elephant projects because they were on ground and making impact on the people.
Eze declared that the current administration had performed beyond the people's expectations and advised those seeking relevance by criticising government to do so within the ambit of good conscience.
A former Commissioner for Works in Enugu, Chief Ugochukwu Agballah had told reporters that the Nnamani-led government was corrupt and mismanaged N23 billion accruing to the state from the Federation Account, as well as the local councils and internally-generated revenue.
He stated that there was no accountability in the administration to the extent that "those who came into government without an address today own the choicest property in the state".
Agballah further alleged that the governor had destroyed the two higher institutions in the state and set up a private higher institution at Agbani with the state fund.
Challenging the governor to explain to the people how he spent the money in view of the decay that has greeted every strata of the state, Agballah said: "There is nothing on ground to show that Nnamani has collected as much as N23 billion. We are tired of watching edited project films that were used during campaigns. Enugu people know that those roads were only constructed in Agbani and Nkanu-West. We want to see roads in Udi Local Council. We want to see roads in Eziagu. We want to see roads in Oji and in Nsukka.
He continued: We are tired of watching Nnamani drink from the Amodu Water Scheme that was commissioned by the Agbaje administration and leave a legacy that posterity will always judge him with".
The commissioner cited the multi-billion naira permanent site of the Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT), which would be commissioned in 2006 as a legacy of the Nnamani administration.
He also listed the ESUT Teaching Hospital, the dualisation of New Haven Road, among others, as some of the on-going projects embarked upon by the administration.
The government, he added, had embarked on the construction of more roads including the Ebeano Bye-pass, Enugu Ezike-Nsukka Road, Oji-River-Awgu Road, Odume-Mpu-Okpanku Road, Ikem-Ehamufu Road.
On agriculture, Eze said government was committed to providing the enabling environment while the people take up the actual farming, stressing that government could not do everything.
"The government has shown itself to be a very bad businessman. All the government can do is to provide incentives and the necessary atmosphere. That is what we are doing through extension services and provision of micro-credit scheme", he added.
