BY DAPO AKINREFON

BARRISTER Ignatius Onyejekwe was an All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA senatorial aspirant in the Imo West Senatorial District, but eventually stepped down ahead of the primaries. In this interview with Vanguard, he calls on Governor Rochas Okorocha to form an all inclusive government and bares his mind on other sundry issues. Excerpts:

There have been mixed reactions in Imo State over the laying off of about 10,000 workers by the state governor, Chief Okorocha. What is your take?

These were employments that were hurriedly put up by the last administration of Chief Ikedi Ohakim. The timing for the laying off of the workers was wrong, The then governor should have taken a little bit of time to assess the employments, the qualification, certificates, the areas of origin, to avoid lopsidedness in their appointment and more so to take into consideration, the budget of the state whether it could take that number of ten thousand jobs in the 2011 budget.

It is a step in the right direction, but he could have waited a little longer, like a month or two, to access the process of employment.

What are projects you think the governor should embark on to ensure development spreads across the state?

He has already started. In Imo State we have majority of people who want education and if it is something we can export beyond the state, he would have done it. He has already started well with the scholarship foundation from his Rochas Foundation. He has gone through the budget of the state, the income both internally generated revenue of the state and the federal allocation that comes monthly, he has been able to know that we can also have free education.

From Crèche, Nursery, Primary and Secondary level he has seen that it is possible to have free education. But for University education, the school fees is being proposed to be slashed by 200 per cent so that an average student in all the university both in Imo State University, the Polytechnic and school of Agriculture could pay nothing less than 20 to 25 per cent a semester.

Apart from education, what other thing can be done to empower the people?
He is a business mogul as we all know and he has this mind, industrial clusters, for smithing, welding, carpentry, barbing saloon and wood work, metal work.

The problem will be power generation, so he is talking with a few people who will in each community, where we have an industrial cluster, where they will have power generation between 8am to 6pm, privately generated and then pay at an affordable rate so that every other business that will need power will centre in those areas.

As for government, there are some communities that they have taken record of who are into animal husbandry, they rear goats, pigs, poultry and grass cutter farm, snail farm and these are fish farms, these are little things that will not take too much capital for the rural communities but it will vary from one community to the other.

In your view, what step should the governor take in ensuring that everybody is involved in his government?

The government of Owelle Rochas Okorocha is a government for the youth, the women and the less privileged, we will not forget also the elders both the male and the female, but if am asked to suggest to him, I will advice him to form a council of elders of pensioners in the civil service, in the teaching profession, the nurses, the medical profession who will in every community give ideas, suggestions as to what is the scale of preference of the community, what they require, that will help the government to move forward; more so in terms of sports.

For example, he can develop facilities, not only for sport, it could be used in social events to earn money for the state.  We can also develop athletes for National and International sporting activities activities, they can also have talents, and we know athletes, footballers have medical team attached to them, they have their team managers, they have their legal officers, all these people earn their leaving from the sports.