2023: Mbah pledges zero tolerance to poverty, prioritises development

The Governorship Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Enugu State, Dr Peter Mbah, has promised to tackle and kick out poverty in the state if elected as governor.

He also said he would prioritise development and education if elected in the forthcoming gubernatorial election.

Mbah disclosed this during the Town-Hall meetings on Tuesday at Achi-Uno and Achi-Agu autonomous communities, both headquarters of Oji River Central and Oji River East Development Centres in Enugu.

The PDP guber candidate said his administration would have zero tolerance for poverty by waging war against it through massive integrated development programmes enshrined in his manifesto.

Mbah, while reacting to the list of demands presented by the people of the development centres, vowed that his administration would leave no stone unturned in overhauling the general welfare of the people.

He stressed that infrastructure development was key to attracting investors to the state.

Mbah also said he would declare emergency on education, healthcare, agriculture sectors and other social services.

According to him, robust programmes designed to meet the peculiarities and demands of the present times will transform the state and provide thousands of jobs, healthy workforce, and improve the living standard of the people.

Mbah stated that he understood the huge economic deposits in the area and assured that those dormant assets in the communities would be harnessed into productive assets to create wealth and urbanise the council area.

“With my managerial experience and skills in the private sector, our administration would move the state’s economy from $4.4 billion to $30 billion by upscaling the production and agriculture sectors.

“The agriculture sector will contribute a minimum of $10 billion through the attraction of commercial farmers and migration of subsistence farming to commercial agriculture,” Mbah said.

He added that the farming model in the local government would be round the year.

Earlier at the meetings, some stakeholders from the development centres pledged to work for the electoral victory of Mbah.

They said that his background, entrepreneurial breakthrough and world-class businesses had placed him ahead of other contenders.

Sen. Hyde Onuaguluchi, the council chairman, Mr Chinedu Onyeagba, former member of the House of Representatives and Mr KGB Ogwuakwa, among others, extolled Mbah’s initiative of the town-hall meeting.

Some of the community leaders who spoke at the event, however, appealed to Mbah to upgrade their primary healthcare system, construct new secondary schools to meet up with the demand of the growing population in their areas, when elected.

They also urged him to complete the abandoned Greater Achi Water Project, started by Chief Jim Nwobodo’s administration, and revisit the Rural Green City at Odoro, a 5,000-hectare land donated by the community for commercial agriculture.