The governorship candidate of the Social Democratic
Party (SDP) in Cross River, Mr Eyo Ekpo says the state needs a
functioning administration to step up its development.
In an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on
Wednesday in Calabar, Ekpo said that the state requires a new lease of
life to meet current challenges.
He said getting the state back on the path to
success, required a functional government with plans and capable hands
that would execute the plans and a governor willing to monitor
performance.
Ekpo said that the state needed to have a
budgeting system capable of managing its debt profile which was huge and
was preventing it from raising more funds.
“We don’t have infrastructure in
Cross River anymore, we have a power plant that is not delivering power
to anybody, roads that are not maintained, water boards that are not
delivering water and rural electrification agency that is not doing its
work.
“We had a programme that was backed by the
African Development Bank (AfDB) that was designed to take Agricultural
produce from the hinterlands to the roads. Unfortunately, that is not
happening anymore.
“The
Cross River plan is to invite investments into our state, if you don’t
have a state that is functionally governed, with good infrastructure
that takes care of social welfare issues particularly health care,
education, security and is not attracting investment, the youths have no
business doing there.
“I have engaged with young people around
the state and I see how they bubbled with ideas, what they don’t have is
a government that will enable them and not treat them as thugs that
money should be thrown at.
“The future is Information and
Communication Technology (ICT), application-based work, and this is a
sector that takes a lot of young people. We can create an ICT hub in
Tinapa which is built for research and innovation and engage a lot of
these young people.
“We have a programme called the
Cross River Trust Fund, we will take a fraction of what is spent on
people in the name of putting food on their table and put it in the
trust fund and secure counterpart funding from private investors and
every year we will get 100 to 200 business ideas from young people on
the ground.
“We know some of these ideas will fail but
we will keep that percentage low but the rest will succeed and they
will employ labour because we will give them mentors and monitor them.
“We have a huge power plant in Cross
River, 550 megawatt that nobody is deploying, we can take some energy
from there, I know how to do it because I was in electricity business, I
know how to get energy from point A to point B.
“We need to see our young people as agents
of growth, it is just a question of vision and leadership. The state is
very fertile and I know what it takes to provide them with
opportunities.
“We have everything in Cross River, the
problem is that we have just allowed them to die which is why my
campaign is titled ‘recover and restore’,” he said.
Ekpo said he believed that the Independent
National Electoral Commission (INEC) had tried its best to ensure free
and fair elections.
He, therefore, urged residents of Cross River
to come out on the election days and express themselves if they believed
they had a right to good governance.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that
Ekpo, a lawyer, was the state former Attorney General and Commissioner
for Justice and an energy sector specialist.
He has 35 years old Mr Okoi-Wofai Ewa as his running mate.