By Dennis Agbo
ABAKALIKI—MIXED reactions have trailed Governor Martin Elechi’s receipt of an award as the best governor on road construction by a group known as Builtcraft in conjunction with the Federal Ministry of Transport, with opposition parties and other groups faulting the award that the governor received in Lagos, weekend.

Whereas a former Ebonyi State Chairman of the Progressive Peoples Alliance, PPA, Anselm Enigwe, aligned himself with the award and described it as coming at the right time, the governorship aspirant of All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA, in the state,

Mr. Jude Nkama, condemned the award and blamed the Minister for Transport for allowing the ministry to be tricked into what was a public deceit.

Meanwhile, the President General of Igbo Union in Lagos, Chief Chris Eze, at the occasion in Lagos faulted the South East governors’ position in next year’s election, stating that the five governors who foreclosed any Igboman from contesting the presidency spoke for themselves alone.

Nkama, the APGA gubernatorial aspirant, said the minister for transport had never been to Ebonyi State and wondered how his ministry arrived at such conclusion “when every road in Ebonyi State, both federal and state, are in shambles.”

Nkama flayed the award in Lagos, stating that in the first place, the ministry of transport does not have its head office in Lagos but Abuja.

.“My take is that it is a 419 award,” he said, advising the ministry of transport to visit the state so it could revise the award.

The APGA chieftain stated that the purported award came at a time no road had been commissioned by the PDP-led government in the state, even close the end of four years administration of Governor Elechi.

He cited impassable roads in the state to include the Ogbaga road which, he alleged, was awarded to Elechi’s firm as the contractor during the Sam Egwu’s administration.
President General of Igbo Union in Lagos, Chief Chris Eze said that “the governors of the South East did not do well by being in haste to say that nobody from the zone will either contest for presidency or vice without consulting all the Igbos living in the different parts of the country.”

He also called on the South East governors to construct schools where the children of the zone will learn Igbo language which, according to him, is on the verge of going into extinction due to the lack of teaching and learning of the language at all stages of learning.