The emergence of Pharm. Anthony Ogbonnia Ekoh, Jnr., as Afikpo North/Afikpo South Federal Constituency candidate in the National Assembly election of 25th February, 2023, on the platform of the Labour Party, came to the good people of this federal constituency as a huge relief; considering the general rejection of APC and PDP by Nigerians nationwide.
Pharm. Anthony Ekoh Jnr is not new to the business of politics. He had served as Afikpo North East Development Centre (DC) Executive Chairman and later Coordinator of the DC.
He relocated Afikpo North East DC from its Uko-Ugwuegu temporary office to its permanent site at Amaozara. He also built the secretariat.
Unfortunately, his successors, particularly the present Coordinator, Hon. Innocent Inya Eluu (Omerikete), has not added even one block on the foundation Pharm. Ekoh Jrn laid.
He has spent over ten wasted years there as Coordinator and he is still counting. Take a trip to that DC Secretariat today… You will weep! Omerikete has ruined the entire place.
Pharm. Ekoh Jrn emerged the Afikpo North LGA Executive Chairman in November, 2010 and before he left the office in 2015, he made tremendous impacts as follows:
- He rebuilt the Council Secretariat and all the offices therein; thereby giving them the ultramodern infrastructural outlook it wears today.
- He reconstructed the council road network and asphalted it; thereby boosting the aesthetics of the council secretariat.
- He re-electrified the entire Council Secretariat and procured 150KVA lister energy as a veritable alternative source of power at the Council.
- He also drilled motorized boreholes in the council premises to solve the water needs of workers and residents at the council quarters.
Recall that before his emergence as Council Executive Chairman, the secretariat was an eyesore.
Past administrations didn’t bother about the embarrassing condition of the secretariat because they were more interested in sharing money.
Pharm. Ekoh Jrn came and said that he is ashamed presiding and superintending a council secretariat as deplorable as this. He went down to work. Today, successive council administrations leverage on his legacies.
Pharm. Ekoh Jrn also ran the most open-door policy of administration in the history of Afikpo North LGA. He cleared debts owed individuals and groups by his predecessors and paid his predecessors severance allowances.
He also made massive appointments of SSAs, SAs and EAs numbering over 100 youths and women and paid them monthly allowances ranging from N40,000 to N50,000; when N18,000 was the national minimum wage.
Pharm. Ekoh Jrn also set up the Afikpo Environmental Taskforce, composed mainly of over 100 women, who were paid monthly and saddled with the daily sanitation of the entire Afikpo North LGA.
He also carried out the greatest empowerment programmes for youths, women, widows and indigents in the history of the LGA.
Before the end of his tenure in 2015, Pharm. Ekoh Jrn gave each ward of the 12 federal wards in Afikpo North at least two motorized boreholes each, with generators as alternative power source for the pumping. He also drilled motorized boreholes in other public places like the Afikpo Timber Shade, the famous Eke-Ukwu Market, etc. He also upgraded the Afikpo main motor park with concrete technology.
Pharm. Ekoh Jrn donated brand new transformers to almost all the communities in Afikpo North LGA, including Government College, Afikpo. His administration equally engaged in massive rural electrification in the LGA, including Amaozara and Amaoge-Ozizza Rural Electrification Projects.
While other Council Executive Chairmen in his time, pocketed the SURE-P empowerment funds of the federal government, under President Goodluck Jonathan, Pharm. Ekoh Jrn used that of Afikpo North LGA to create opportunities for the youths and women of the LGA, who massively benefitted from the funds.
He set up a vigilante group for the LGA made up of over 100 youths, who were provided operational vehicles and paid monthly to maintain law and order, peace security in the area. All through his tenure there was no crisis of any kind in the LGA.
Pharm. Ekoh Jrn also procured vehicles to principal officers of the Council to ease the discharge of their duties.
He also equipped all the health centers in Afikpo North LGA with medical facilities and drugs.
He upgraded the computer department of the Council to an Internet Communication Technology (ICT) Center, with internet connectivity for the training of Afikpo youths and women in ICT.
Again, while other LGA Executive Chairmen of his generation pocketed funds meant for compensation of flood victims in their LGAs, Pharm. Ekoh Jr ensured that the funds meant for Afikpo North LGA got to the victims of the disaster.
The good works of Pharm. Ekoh Jrn as Afikpo North LGA Executive Chairman are monumental and inexhaustible; they are overwhelming.
Pharm. Ekoh Jrn is like Peter Obi, who left APGA for PDP and left PDP for Labour Party in his quest for a veritable political platform for selfless service to Nigerians.
Towards the end of his tenure as Council Executive Chairman, Pharm. Ekoh Jrn left the PDP for Labour Party; due to the political circumstances of the time.
After his tenure, he joined the APC, under which platform he contested the Afikpo North/Afikpo South Federal Constituency in 2019 and won the election, but the PDP stakeholders of the time connived with hungry APC stakeholders in Amasiri and Akpoha, who collected pittance from the PDP and looked the other way while the election was massively rigged in these areas in favour of the PDP.
Pharm. Ekoh Jrn, who won the election, took it with equanimity. Even when he was advised to go to court like his counterpart, Comrade Chinedu Ogah, who was equally rigged out by the PDP in Ikwo, Pharm. Ekoh Jrn chose to take the situation with the philosophy of the stoics, believing that there is nemesis.
Today, he is back to the Labour Party as the third force and the nemesis of the PDP as well as the conspiratorial APC that rigged him out in 2019.
This is Pharm. Ekoh Jrn. This is Onwa. He is not looking for anything for himself. He is just calling on the good people of Afikpo North/Afikpo South Federal Constituency to take back their constituency from these pretenders, who only set traps for more opulence at the expense of the suffering masses.
What we need primarily in the Nigeria of today is to build humanity. We need massive empowerment through federal and state employment and creation of jobs as well as funds for small, minimum and large scale businesses.
When government builds people, the people will build infrastructure, but if you build infrastructures without building human beings, the human beings in anger shall destroy the infrastructures.
Pharm. Ekoh Jnr is coming to build men and women of Edda and Afikpo through the promotion of legislation on massive empowerment and attracting massive funding from the federal government.
The PDP and the APC, know it now that the great politician and humanist you colluded and rigged out in 2019 is back again to deal with you!
The good people of Afikpo North/Afikpo South Federal Constituency, voting for Pharm. Ekoh Jrn is easy and very simple.
He is on the ballot with Peter Obi on Saturday 25th February.
25th February is Labour Party day.
So, as you vote papa, mama and pikin logo for Peter Obi, do same for Pharm. Ekoh Jnr.
Those of us who are beneficiaries of his good deeds will always stand by him.
Vote for Labour Party on all the ballot papers. That’s the only way to ensure victory for Peter Obi and Pharm. Ekoh Jrn.
As we do this, may God bless us all!
Hon. Oko Chukwu Otuu is a political analyst and writes from Afikpo North, Ebonyi State
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