By Austin Ogwuda

MR. Chike Ogeah, is the Delta State Commissioner for Information. In this interview, he speaks on the progress made so far in the state and what the administration of Dr Emmanuel Udughan has in the offing for people of the state. Excerpts:

Twenty years down the line, can you beat your chest and say that Delta State has progressed?

The truth is the if you have a child of twenty years you know that that child is no more a child but you cannot say the child is fully grown; you say that child is a young adult that can now take some responsibilities to large extent for him or herself, so it is with us in Delta State.

Twenty years down the line, we thank God first and foremost and we thank our founding fathers especially Samuel Ogbemudia, whom I call the founding father of modern Delta State. And taking from the legacies that our fathers have left, we will not forget Chief Dennis Osadebay, the first Premier of the Region when it was Midwestern Nigeria.

Twenty years ago, we were broken into Delta and Edo States, brothers but now each charting its own course and its own destiny. The truth is that we have come a long way from twenty years ago. We have had twelve years of unbroken democracy. My party, the PDP, has been in the saddle for all that time.

In the different areas of development, we can see how far we have come. If we go back to the present administration, the present governor, Dr. Emmanuel Eweta Uduaghan, we know the agenda he is using to drive the state which is a three point agenda. Now we thank God that the first and the basic agenda which is peace and security which I think everything rest upon, has been achieved. And it is a glory that we have amnesty in Nigeria because he first tried it out in Delta and that, I think, is a lasting legacy for him.

With the last four years what I think he has been trying to do is to now develop the other two points on the agenda and bring them to synergize and have a holistic approach to governance. And what are those two points? We are talking about the human development and the infrastructural development.

In the area of infrastructure, I think that is where he has done exceedingly well because not only has he brought great development to Delta State, I think he has also dared where angels feared to thread because he has gone for those projects I call mega or transformational projects; those projects that change lives, those projects that change economy and we have all those projects scattered all over the state. Do we want to start from the airport in Asaba where we know that once that airport is in full stream, the whole Delta North, the corridor of the whole Asaba-Agbor  will be changed even Onitsha (because Onitsha is around the corner) the biggest market in sub Sahara Africa. So you can imagine when the warehouses and all the cargo companies move into this state.

Already you can see the hospitality business all moving along the whole corridor: new hotels are springing up, even new shopping malls like the Palm in Lagos. So there is going to be great development that is going to have a multiplier effect from the airport, apart from the aviation business going on in the airport.

Then we go to the area of roads. The idea is to have a ring road in Delta and I know that to a very large extent, we want to be able to go round Delta in a circle (the Asaba-Ughelli region). You can see what is going on now. It is not totally complete but I know that will soon be done.

Not too long ago, we saw investors coming from China and from India to invest several billion dollars on fertilizer and petro chemical plants in Warri. This is in addition to the Chevron Gas Liquid project in Escravos. Don’t forget, they have also opened up the Koko Export Free trading zone also in Koko where the ports are being dredged and we are going to have that kind of port activities. So there is going to be an airport in Delta North, there is going to be a seaport in Delta South, then we will have a teaching hospital of world class standard in Oghara, then the different farm settlements; the one in Mbiri built by Chief Obafemi

Awolowo that the governor again is about to take back to its lost glory, same thing with the Obasanjo Farms Nigeria Limited which we are in the partnership with . You know these are all live changing projects that are generational that will change the economy of the state drastically.

We also have the three industrial parks in all the three senatorial zones. But the governor has also looked critically and felt that apart from having these projects, what about the people, the human capital that will drive these projects?

And what did we find? We found that the greatest challenge we have in Delta today is youth unemployment. We are churning out youths that I personally call unemployable because even those that have had some resemblance of education, when you ask them to write a simple application letter, you will be surprised to see what you’ll see.

So, the governor has developed tailored governance in this his final legacy years to suit and cure this defect. We now have a ministry of youth affairs, where the youths would be empowered and trained and re-trained regardless of whatever formal education they have gotten. We now want to adopt them to real life. This ministry of youth affair will work in tandem with the ministry of poverty alleviation where the small and medium enterprises would be created and jobs would be created for them.

Can you justify the pace of development vis-à-vis the money coming in?
To a large extent, the challenges are there because the money that is received by every state, not even Delta alone in Nigeria, is totally inadequate because of the different challenges these governors have to confront.