Engr Ernest Ndukwe, immediate past Executive Vice-Chairman of the Nigeria Communications Commission, NCC is the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) senatorial candidate for Anambra South zone.

A thoroughbred technocrat, he recently made the decision to seek further service through the political front and is now campaigning round his constituency. One thing is clear, the wealth of experience he will be bringing to the legislature if elected, is something every Nigerian should look forward to. In fact, it’s reasonable to expect

ICT-driven legislation to better the lives of people if elected, given his antecedents. He spoke to Adekunle Adekoya, General Editor. Excerpts:

OZIOMA 2015 is your campaign slogan. What is it all about?

Ozioma 2015 is all about good news to the people and the fact that we want to provide a breath of fresh air, a new approach to the representation of our people in the National Assembly and also making it possible for a new dawn for the people of quality and integrity to be able to represent our people at the Upper chamber of the National assembly. Basically, I bring good news to our people, a new dawn for quality representation.

After your serial accomplishments, especially in the telecoms sector, why politics, and why now?

My motivation for coming out to represent my people is borne out of fact that so far we have not had quality representation. Anambra state is a copiously endowed state in Nigeria in terms of manpower and human development.

Quality of representation

It is from this state that we have the foremost politicians in the country like the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and other reputable politicians. But  in the recent past we have had a situation where people are wondering what is happening to our state, to our politicians.

So the motivation is to see whether  we can improve on the quality of representation, and by so doing bring development, infrastructure, hope to the citizens and work for a better tomorrow for our people generally and also reputation to the state.

What are those challenges which you are going to face for the betterment of the people?

What I have noticed since I started my campaigns is that there is widespread high level of poverty in our land. I used to think that Anambra State is where people don’t necessarily beg for bread.

As I have been going round there are some places things are not the way it’s supposed to be or expected to be and that  has even motivated me more. These things are not very difficult things to improve on; we are in a country where oil tends to be the main concentration of everybody. I think that Anambra State is in a unique position to take the lead and charge to turn things around in our country because the people of Anambra are very hard working people.

You know in those days we believe that the Igbo man never believes in free money, he works hard for his money. We now come to the stage where people don’t have freedom which is to do what they want to do to the best of their ability. People keep struggling for infrastructure. We don’t have electricity supply, water supply and other basic amenities and we also need massive orientation and re-orientation.

There is also a very big problem in our country today which is the high level corruption in our country. We also need to tackle that through basic orientation and I hope that if some of us will be able to go to the upper chamber of the National Assembly, we will stamp down our feet making sure that the cankerworm is dealt with; making sure that it is reduced to the barest minimum. Unless that happens, our country will keep on suffering all manner of setbacks.

What is your take on the forthcoming elections?

I personally don’t have big fears because I think that this election will go well. Nigeria has a way of solving her problems no matter how mighty they tend to be. God has always intervened in our affairs and made things possible for us. But that doesn’t  mean we should take things for granted and start doing things wrongly. On the elections, everything depends on how prepared INEC is for this job at hand.

Once INEC is fully prepared they have to provide a proper orientation and put the right people in service then we could think of a successful election.

I think like we say in APGA, APGA is more of a movement. I am very happy to be part of APGA and what it represents for our people. It is a party that is well organized locally here in Anambra State.

We have today a governor who is fully committed to the development of APGA and to make sure that the dreams of our founding fathers will continue. I am happy running the flag of APGA because it is a disciplined and well organized party.