Anambra 2014: Why GovObi will not anoint a successor – Okunna, Chief of Staff

By Levinus Nwabughiogu
She misses her students in the Mass Communication Department of the
Nnamdi Azikiwe University where she lectured. But there are other ways
to render service to the people, she says. In the last eight years of
Governor Peter Obi's government in Anambra State, Professor Chinyere
Stella Okunna, who was first appointed as Commissioner for Information
and later asked to Head the Budget and Economic Planning Ministry
which she runs concurrently as Chief of Staff to the Governor, in this
interview, looks back and says that anyone who disagrees that the
administration has not performed is crazy. She explains why her
principal, ahead of the 2014 gubernatorial election in the state, will
not anoint a successor.
Excerpts:
How has it been in the last eight years that you have been in active politics?
It's been good. At the beginning really,it was tough because I have
always been a teacher all my life. And leaving the classroom was a big
blow to me in many ways and it took me time to adapt coupled with the
fear of politics. When I came in here, I didn't know what to expect. I
dreaded politics. At the beginning, the portfolio I was given was
Information; back then, I was always afraid because there is this
belief that Information Commissionersor Ministers are propagandists.
And if you are a Commissioner or Minister of Information; if your
principal is not doing well, woe betide you because you will turn into
a liar. You have to tell lies to cover their shortcomings. So, there
was this fear I had when I came in here.
So, the first year or thereabouts, I was trying to juggle everything.
But, luckily, the man I came to work with, Peter Obi, wasn't a man you
have to liefor. He was a man whom I thought had vision. So my belief
in his vision made the work easier for me because I saw a good reason
for leaving the classroom.But that didn't mean I didn't miss my
students
because I believe in mentoring people particularly young women and
being here for so long has not given me the opportunity to mentor as
manyyoung women as directly I wanted. But, all the same, I left the
classroom, alittle bit apprehensive in the beginning but what I saw
here strengthened my resolve that my leaving the classroom was worth
it.
Peter Obi gave me good reasons to believe that the move I made wasn't
in vain. He had a vision, policy direction, vehicle for reaching a
destination. And I have done so much to support that vision and to
make the vehicle reach its destination.
Would you say that the vision has beenrealized?
The vision is to achieve the MillenniumDevelopment Goals, MDGs. Eight
of those goals are practically basic goals and we are achieving them.
We chose a strategy for achieving that vision that is multi-sectoral.
The MDGs cut across various sectors from povertyto education to
health, water resources, the environment, women empowerment. And to
achieve them, government must also adopt a multi-sectoral approach
and we did that by adopting as a vehicle what we called "the Anambra
Integrated Development Strategy" (ANIDS).
Specifically, can you mention those areas you have performed creditably?
I will begin with addressing poverty which is goal one of the MDGs.
Fortunately for us as a state, Anambra cannot described as a poor
state that isin terms of its people because the Igboperson is
entrepreneurial. The Igbo person abhors begging or being dependent on
others. So, by our very nature, we are people who make an effort to
pull ourselves out of poverty.
We are supporting that spirit of our people by also intervening in
various ways to make sure poverty is not extreme. The very first thing
we did was to do a poverty mapping as a state. You cannot fight a
monster you don't know what it looks like or hard to find. Poverty had
to be identified to tackle it.
We did a poverty mapping of the state to identify the poorest LGAs.
Once we identify them without neglecting others, we scaled up
interventions in those areas. And we found out
that one thing that makes people poor is poor in those areas was poor
access.The poorest LGAs had no access from the seat of power into the
remote areas. They had no access to evacuate agricultural produce and
they are also the food producing areas.
The poorest areas are in Anambra West, Orumba South, Awka North and
Ogbaru and these are the food baskets of the state. Because there was
no road in those areas, they couldn't bring their produce to market
here to earn better income. People couldn't go in there to give
agricultural inputs.
So, what we did was to work in those areas with good roads. And in
Awka North, most communities did not have electricity not to talk of
water supply. We are begging to build there now. And the governor's
wife undertook something that was unprecedented.She began poverty
intervention thing for women, vulnerable women, mainlywidows and other
poverty challenged women. She visited them personally. The governor
also toured those areas to empower them and give grants. Andright now,
we are beginning something that I consider as the climax of our
poverty eradication scheme.
We are a CCT, Conditional Cash Transfer, through the MDG where
morethan 2,000 poor house-holds were selected from five poor LGAs and
the criteria are there and every month, we give each of them N5,000.
And at the end of one year we give a bulk of N100,000 for them to
begin an agric related entrepreneurial something. And again, these are
those four local government areas that are mainly agrarian in nature.
We have done well in education. Education here was in a very pitiable
condition mainly becausewhen the war ended, government took over
schools from the Missions.
Most good schools in those days were Missions Schools and government
tookthem by force, and, I think, they mismanaged them. When we can in,
education was in a very horrible state, practically all the structures
were dilapidated. So the governor did what was unthinkable, what
other governments did not find the courage to do. He returned schools
to the former owners, the Missions.
We did not just return the schools, we retained payment of salaries of
teachers. Above all, we are still giving grants. So, almost every
year, the government is disbursing billions of Naira directly to the
bishops overseeing those schools.
Althogether there were about a thousand schools. About four hundred
and something were Catholic Church owned, three hundred and something
by Anglican Church and two hundred and something by
government. Go there now and see the amount of work, renovation,
rehabilitation being done and the schools are beginning to come back
to what they used to be.
Government came under heavy criticism because of that.
It was the right way to go. People normally think government property
isnobody's property. No body takes care of it. It is just there. But
the church is eminently qualified to manage schools. If you recall
Senator Chukwumereji speaking at Prof. Achebe's burial, he counted and
said if you know all those who became people in those days, they
either wentto Government College or schools like that. The difference
is clear. There is this single-minded commitment by the church to
their own school and they are doing well. Morality has improved.
Values have come back to school. Children are beginning to behave like
human beings. We used to do school tours with the governor then and
the kind of children we saw in school before the handover was
something else. And there is now competition between the schools owned
by the Anglican Church and the ones owned by the Catholic Church. And
even the government schools are beginning to sit up to try and measure
up with the standard of Mission Schools. The difference is there.
Anybody saying it was a wrong thing is not knowledgeable about school
management in Anambra State. He should come home and we take him tothe
schools.
There is something most people consider a big minus in Peter Obi's
administration. In the whole of eight years, the governor did not
conduct local government elections against the letters and spirit of
the Constitution. Morally and legally, do you think that it
justifiable?
Well, right and wrong are relative. Legally maybe, if it is in the
Constitution, that means it is not legal not to have elected people at
that level. But legality is not always morality.
There are reasons why we hadn't donelocal government elections here.
Much of it, legal. Much of it, litigations. Much of it, opposition.
Much of it, bad blood, so to say.
We have preferred to conduct elections several times and they
werescuttled. First of all, there was this
reason that we shouldn't do it with theexisting voters list. When we
got over that hurdle, people went to court to stop us from conducting
elections. I don't know what the legality is now. I am not a lawyer
but I know our hands had been tied.
So, we struggled with all those issues and I think the governor
himself said that if all those people who are in court against us
could withdraw all those suits, we will do the elections.
Tell me about the opposition in Anambra. How has this administration
been working with the opposition because you mentioned them earlier?
Some of them are just crazy, truly, trulycrazy because even when you
see a government doing the right thing and people know they are doing
the right, some lunatics say they are not doing anything. You can see
government is achieving things and you are trying to say we are not
doing any thing. I think that is lunacy.For me, democracy means even
when you are opposing somebody, at least you should acknowledge where
the person has done well. Look at what I just mentioned in education
and you are telling me now people are saying it is not the way to go.
They are merelyopposing for opposing sake. Talk to the bishops where
schools have been returned. Go the schools and see what was there
before they were returned and see what is going on there now and you
marvel at what has been done. The partnership between the church and
the state is unheard of anywhere.