Mr. Paul Odili is the Manager, Communications  to Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan.  A political journalist, Mr. Odili in this interview asserts that Dr. Uduaghan has performed excellently in infrastructure and social programmes. He also unravels personal attributes of the governor that have kept him focused on what he claims to be an ambitious vision to position Delta State above its peers. Excerpts

How would you assess the performance of Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan in the last seven years?

In the last six to seven years, the governor has in the actual sense of the word completely changed the landscape of Delta State in such a way that anybody who had been to the state before he assumed office in 2007 would today, readily confess the physical impact of what he has done in terms of infrastructural development.

He has undertaken some of the most ambitious infrastructural programmes any government in this country could think of.

He built a brand new airport that is easily adjudged the best in the country and started an independent power plant. He has expanded the road infrastructure, upgraded the schools and in the area of health care, we have some of the best healthcare facilities in the country in Oghara Teaching Hospital and Eku Specialist Hospital.

Paul Odili

When we  talk about social programmes, Delta easily has the most liberal social programmes in the country. There is our free maternal healthcare. If you talk to the average person on the street who before now faced an enormous challenge to pay for healthcare cost for the wife and the new born baby, he is receiving same service at free cost.

Schools in Delta State are virtually free from primary to tertiary level and there are scholarship schemes: the first class scholarship scheme, the bursary awards and all that. Another very important social scheme with salutary effect is transportation. The mass transit scheme has done a lot in the state.

You hear about Uduaghan park and Uduaghan buses. All of these have enabled people to move around in air-conditioned buses at minimal cost and in comfort. This was something that was not available before, but today everybody enjoys it and it is almost taken for granted.

The governor has been very focused and has got enough to show. So it is not out of place and I am pleased and happy for him that a major institution like Vanguard has deemed it fit to honour him by giving him Man of the Year. I think it is deserving, the facts speak for themselves, he is a very focused and visionary person and he has run a very competent government. He has always talked about finishing strong and I think, today people are beginning to understand what that means.

Initially, there wasn’t a full understanding of what he meant, especially when he talked about Delta Beyond Oil and creating the infrastructure to support that kind of vision.

But some of those things are the kind of infrastructure that need to be made but which also took some bit of time to manifest. Right now that some of it have emerged, it is no longer a question of what exactly is it about, the challenge is for the people to insist that the next administration continues on the path that he has set.

The next government will find that a lot of the burdens and challenges that it would have encountered have already been taken care of in the sense that the foundational work that any government would do to develop an economy has already been done by this government. So, if you want me to describe him, I will say he is the modern builder of Delta State and it wouldn’t be out of place saying that. What he has done fulfills the vision of the founding fathers of Delta State.

What would you describe as the personal attributes of the governor that have helped him in office?

First, he is a man who is fascinated by ideas. He likes ideas and he is also a risk taker. I know that some of the things he has done at the time he started doing them were quite risky, that would not fetch immediate political benefit.

Like  what?

Simultaneously in 2007, we undertook some of these projects I talked about, airport, IPP, dualisation of major roads like the Ughelli-Asaba. The Oghara Teaching Hospital you see today was like 50% done when he came into office. These things were going on simultaneously and these were not small things you do.

In spreading your resources in very difficult projects that take time, people are bound to misunderstand what you are trying to do, but you understand that you have to do them because if you don’t do them, by the time you start off, they may never be done.He could have abandoned those things.

These things are causing too much political pressure if you follow that path and then do many populist projects that can give you votes but will not in the long term translate into real economic growth and development. So, he is a man I respect because of his vision and his ambition. He is a good listener and by nature, he is a taciturn. He is also a very passionate person. He doesn’t constrain you.