Written By: Chinweozo Amuta

Before Governor Willie Obiano came on board on March 17, 2014, prominent citizens of the state such as a former deputy governor, serving commissioners, traditional rulers, academics, entrepreneurs and topflight movie stars were being kidnapped with impunity, while armed robbers were on rampage, killing and maiming innocent person’s and stealing their money and property.

Consequently, many people and businesses were compelled to relocate elsewhere in the country. Ndi Anambra living in the Diaspora were scared of coming home for socio-cultural and business activities because of threat of being abducted or murdered in cold blood.

Happily, this is no longer the case nowadays. Today, Anambra has become the safest state, thanks to the world class digitalized CCTV security architecture put in place by the Obiano administration.

Secondly, before Governor Obiano came on board, no government in Nigeria contemplated a policy or programme that would effectively take democracy dividends down to the grassroots of the society. He broke the jinx by introducing the “community choose your projects initiative” whereby the state government has since 2017, consistently been giving twenty million naira grant every year to the one hundred and seventy nine communities in the state to execute any project of their choice. For special reasons, Onitsha and Obosi towns get extra twenty million naira each annually, thus bringing the number of communities benefitting from the initiative to one hundred and eighty one.

Again, the aesthetic beauty of Awka has significantly been enhanced with the construction of three magnificent and flood light adorned flyovers with traffic lights at the Aroma, Kwata and Amawbia junctions on the Enugu-Onitsha expressway. Recreation parks for relaxation and parks for commercial buses and tricycles have been created at strategic points in the state capital thus checkmating unnecessary congestions in some parts of Awka.

The Awka Capital Territory Development Authority, ACTDA, created by the Obiano government is also doing a lot to fast track the transformation of Awka and its environs into an ideal administrative headquarters of a modern state. Perhaps, if not for Governor Obiano, the ongoing agricultural revolution in Anambra state would not have commenced.

Today, Anambra is one of the foremost rice producers and millers in Nigeria. Vegetables, cassava and rice productions have improved astronomically and for export to Europe and United States of America. The state is equally doing well in livestock production of chickens, eggs, fish and Efi Igbo.

It is also a thing of joy that Anambra has the biggest and most modern oxygen production plant in the Southeast, situated at the Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu University Teaching Hospital, Amaku, Awka. Anambra is also the first state in the country to initiate and implement a health insurance scheme popularly known as ASHIA, which has made access to medical treatment easier and very cheap for families who subscribe to it.

Another people-oriented programme of the present state government is facilitation of soft loans for micro, small and medium scale enterprises by ASBA from the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN. The Anambra Small Business Agency, ASBA, did not exist in the state before the emergence of Governor Obiano. On the first of August last year, the Presidency gave an award to the Anambra state government as the Most Supportive State Government in Nigeria for Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises in the country.

None of the previous administrations in the state ever thought of providing street lights in major roads and streets across the state until Obiano began to do it successfully. Notwithstanding paucity of funds, the state government has demonstrated its responsiveness in the manner it is systematically constructing new roads and bridges in addition to rehabilitation of deplorable roads, hitherto poorly constructed across the state.

An International Conference Centre, ICC, is currently under construction in Agu Awka. It is nearing completion. The present administration is equally poised to commence and deliver three additional legacy projects at Umuleri and the Awka Capital Territory, before the end of the second and final tenure of Governor Willie Obiano on March 17, 2022. In spite of the orchestrated propaganda of his political opponents, the governor has, in less than six years, surpassed the achievements of virtually all his predecessors.

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