The economic growth and infrastructural development of any society is strongly linked to a responsive and responsible leader with the requisite knowledge to formulate good policies that will help drive their administration.
Before now in Abia State, one of the major factors hampering development was the lack of adequate and quality road network. Kudos to the present administration under Gov. Okezie Ikpeazu, who has done excellently well in providing good road network and has laid a solid foundation for the next PDP government to work on.
To complement the effort of the present administration in fast-tracking development in Abia State, the PDP Gubernatorial candidate in the state, Prof. Eleazar Uchenna Ikonne, has published the five developmental pillars of his administration and their enablers.
These five developmental pillars include; Trade, Industrialization, Good Governance, Education and Health Care and Rural Development. Their enablers include: Electricity, Finance, Diaspora Engagement, Social Protection, Environmental Protection, Security, Technology, Justice, Innovation and Social Values.
Prof. Uche Ikonne, on different platforms has promised a better Abia under his watch. According to him “within a decade, Abia will become Nigeria’s export capital, double its economy, reduce joblessness by half, and improve the quality of life of its people by focusing on these five developmental pillars.”
Prof. Ikonne is promising a TIGER economy where all Abia must prosper. An economy with a focus on access to finance, access to market, open up regional linkages, promotion of trade and investment and good policies that will provide good environment for ease of doing business.
Prof will be running an industrial revolution that will be enabled by economic infrastructure, access to cutting edge knowledge, talent hunt and provision of the resources that will ensure productivity and competitiveness. He has also raised the bar in providing ingredients that will engineer good governance in his administration. He has promised to run a participatory, accountable, effective, efficient, equitable, responsive and inclusive administration if elected. He is therefore committed to the all round development of the state.
This erudite Professor, when elected will ensure that education and health care receive a boost. He will improve the quality of education and human capital development. There will be an improved life expectancy, per capital income and overall quality of life in Abia State.
The rural areas are not left out in his proposed TIGER economy. For Prof. Ikonne, there will be a rural development and integration that will focus on improving the lives and socioeconomic well being of those living in our rural areas, thereby closing the decades-old urban-rural disparities.
Finally, with Prof. Eleazar Uchenna Ikonne and His TIGER economy, Abia will be on a fast lane of infrastructural and economic development. That is what Abia State needs right now.
Kingsley Maduforo, a Public Affairs Analyst, writes from Umuahia.
