John Kalu, former Commissioner of Trade and Investment in Abia State, has claimed that ex-Governor Okezie Ikpeazu was exceptional and probably one of the best things that happened to the state.
Kalu said Ikpeazu’s major fault in governance was that he didn’t like media noise.
He stated this on Monday while fielding questions on Arise Television’s Morning Show programme.
Kalu claimed that the ex-Governor just focused on getting the job done, noting that all the good roads and even the traffic lights that people attribute to Gov. Alex Otti were indeed done by Ikpeazu.
He said: “Okezie Ikpeazu was an exceptional governor, probably one of the best things that happened to Abia State, even though he had this fault that he didn’t want to make noise. He doesn’t like media noise. Rather, he wanted to work and work and work.
“That governor did over 230 road projects in Abia State. As at the time we came to power, there was no single road leading into Aba.
“For instance, all the good roads you see today in Aba, all the traffic lights, all the street lights that most people come to social media to advertise as Alex Otti’s projects, they were done by Ikpeazu. I am speaking publicly now, and I will invite them to say that I’m not speaking the truth because he was in Aba when we installed the traffic lights at Brass Junction with hidden cameras, which nobody knew about.
“Ikpeazu did roads, schools, four modern schools and over 600 new classroom blocks. Ikpeazu did hospitals, apart from the four general hospitals.
“He was the first to link all 700 Primary Health Care Centers via telemetry to a 24/7 call response center.”;
Kalu continued, “Ikpeazu was assessed by the federal government when they conducted the multidimensional poverty study in Nigeria.
“The independent teams from the World Bank, Federal Ministry of Finance, and other federal agencies that conducted it rated Ikpeazu’s Abia as the third best. What they measured included security, infrastructure, and all those areas of development.”;
