…Says 85% Abia youths are jobless
A serving ex-officio of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) Chief Nduka Anyanwu, has called on President Muhammadu Buhari, to urgently sack the Minister Trade and Investment Okechukwu Enelama and other non-performing cabinet members from the South-east for their inability to quell the agitation by the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).
Loading ...The APC national officer, who said the secession agitation by the Nnamdi Kanu led group was unnecessary, blaming past and present governors in the region for bad governance which he said has rendered more than 85 percent of the youths jobless.
Speaking in an interview with a select newsmen on Monday in Abuja, the APC chieftain said apart from the fact that the Minister’s appointment was imposed on the Abia state chapter, he (Minister) has refused to visit the state, the party secretariat since his appointment.
“Abians are very likeable people that will vote Buhari for 2019 if he comes out and which we are going to ask Buhari to come out. Nigerians need Buhari. Buhari is the best thing that s happened to this country but the issue is that few people that are working for him now in South-east are not really taking care of that zone, they are not doing much.
“Like in my state, my minister is not close to any of us, he is demarketing Buhari in the state. Is he the minister for only Abuja? I don’t think he has visited the state secretariat, I don’t think he has electoral value in his ward, what are we talking? I am asking President Buhari to reshuffle the cabinet and let them bring in somebody.
“When this IPOB agitation started Iwas expecting the Minister of Trade and Investment, because he is the one representing us at the cabinet, to see how he would have parley with all these boys that are agitating but till today, that man has never spoken out anything, which is very bad.
“If you want to appoint a Minister, you must look for somebody who is ready to work for you, not somebody who would go and speak only grammar. Politics is not a child’s play, it is a very serious business. I am saying that we need an experienced politician. There are lots of us that are highly educated in Abia State who can do the job better than him. We are saying this because of the issues of agitations in South-east. I am asking them to begin to look inwardly, to look at the really core party people who worked for Buhari in the South-east.
“The one that is representing us now is not working in Abia State, we don’t know him, he’s not part of us. All the time we were campaigning, using our money to do sorts of things, they called us all sorts of names, he was not there with us, why being the Minister of Trade and Investment? The terrain of things in Abia State now, we need a very experienced person who will be able to reach all parties to bring things together. I am saying that we want Abia State to be the APC State by 2019 but with the way things are going now, if we don’t make changes quickly now, we won’t get there.”
While calling on the Biafra agitators to blame successive governments, including the present Abia state government and not President Buhari for the backwardness in Abia state, the APC chieftain added that: “the issue now is that since 1999 in South-east especially in my state, Abia State, I can tell you that things are not really working.
“If I were Nnamdi Kanu, he would have begun to agitate within the people that have ruled that state since 1999 and begin to ask questions, what have you people done? Can you give us account of stewardship since 1999? You can see in Abia State that all the infrastructures have so dilapidated. You can see poverty is visible. If you visit there at night, is like a goat stand, nothing is working.
“I can tell you, I stand to be corrected, 85% of the youths are not working, they are jobless. Why do they agitate? They say idle hand is devil’s workshop because these youths are not doing anything, they are all vulnerable, that is why Nnamdi was able to peneterate them and begin to tell them what to do because they don’t have future and they are looking at the whole thing that nothing is working.
According to Anyanwu, “I can tell you that Government house in Abia state is like three-bedroomed flat. What are we talking about? All the elders in Abia state are not speaking because of what they are getting from the governor. This is the right time for EFCC and ICPC to visit Abia state and begin to ask questions. What is going on? and if they don’t go to the root of this matter, IPOB is not working today, tomorrow, another one will come out continuously because poverty is visible in Abia state.
“For the past two years now, I can tell you that I have not seen any project going on in Abia state apart from the ones working on by the federal government. Nothing is going on, they are busy parading themselves and at the end of the month, they will just sit down at the government house and share the money and it ends there, nobody is speaking; Abians are not speaking; nobody is talking; everybody is afraid.”
