Senator Chukwuka Utazi, a lawyer and a two-term senator representing Enugu North Senatorial District of Enugu State in the 8th and 9th Senate. Known for his fearlessness in conversing his positions, which are always pro-people, and advocacy for effective governance in the Red Chamber, Senator Utazi’s passion for the welfare of his people is as towering as his physical stature, going by the number of projects that impact positively on the wellbeing of his people that he has attracted to his senatorial district in the past five years. He has also sponsored a number of important Bills and motions. In this interview with 365Daily’s EDWARD T. DIBIANA, he speaks on his representation, second wave of COVID-19 and the reopening of Nigeria’s land borders, among others.
As a representative of your people in the Senate, could you give us an overview of your stewardship to your constituents?
The duty of a lawmaker is three-fold; representation, lawmaking and oversight. In terms of lawmaking, I have sponsored a lot of Bills and motions that are aimed at addressing the welfare and wellbeing of the people. I am the chairman of the Senate Committee on Primary Healthcare and Communicable Diseases.
When I came on board, we discovered that we had some policy issues during the lockdown, as a result of COVID-19, then I came up with the National Health Emergency Bill, which we are still working on in the National Assembly today. We are going through all the processes. I brought several motions as a lawmaker, in terms of representation which touch on the wellbeing of my constituency and other Nigerians.
I have been able to do a lot of things for our people. Firstly, if you go from Ninth Mile to Makurdi, which is the road that connects the South East and the North Central, I was able to spearhead the dualization of the Ninth Mile/Makurdi Express Way, which is ongoing. The same thing in the old road from Ninth Mile through Opi, and all that which is also ongoing. Within this time frame, I have been able to also ensure that the Umurokpa/Nkpologu Road, that since the 8th Assembly, I have been fighting for inclusion in the budget for design and construction. Today, we have over N1.2 billion awarded by the Federal Executive Council to get things done for our people. I have done that.
The Nsukka/Obimo/Mkpuru/Nimbo/Adani to Anambra border, the road that gets to Ontisha, from our place; you can go to Ontisha within 30 minutes, that road had been dilapidated. I trekked and covered it with the camera of my handset, showing the nature of that road which has taken almost all my zonal intervention funds for this past two years in this 9th Assembly. It has taken all my resources because that road is as if it was left for me to make sure that it is done.
I have been working on it to make sure that people pass through that road. Criminals had taken advantage of the nature of the road with kidnappings, killings and robbery. I have been begging the government, the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing to include that road in that project. I have succeeded in one, which I have been pursuing, hoping that one way or the other, that road is going to be done.
In 2019, I shared over N120 million worth of items as empowerment to my people, which had never happened in Enugu North Senatorial District of Enugu State. I sat down for over two weeks distributing items including tricycles (Keke Napep), motorcycles, grinding machines, transformers and all that. All these, I did for our people, helping the less privileged.
I did same in the 8th Assembly, but in 2019, August 19, I did that using the church as a means of getting to the down-trodden and vulnerable in our society. The ones I did in the past I used party officials to help. During this period of the pandemic, I have gone out in order to reach out to our people giving my own palliatives, which I did three times using the churches to help me achieve that through the Catholics, Anglicans and others.
I have also gone on my own, going from one ward to another. I have followed within the time frame when everyone was running from our people because of COVID. People were afraid of going to hospitals but I risked my life to do a free medical outreach in the district. I went round the whole places, got committed doctors to help out, using a former consultant with WHO who is working on his own to go on such exercise. I prayed over it and asked the team to do the same, that within the process we won’t be infected with COVID. And we covered over 3,000 people and all sorts of illnesses were treated and free surgeries done. Fibroid and what have you, name it, we handled them. Within this time frame we did that for our people and we are continuing. This is the third time I’m doing free medical outreach for our people.
We are sinking boreholes in all the district, because water is a major problem in Enugu North Senatorial District. As I speak with you, we are doing new ones . I am building a police station along the Nsukka Road to take care of the crime wave in that area, making sure that by next year, the IG of police will commission that place for us and send men to manage it.
I have built a college within this period – Joro’s Community Secondary School – in Ogba. In my area, we don’t have any Technical College of note, in Uzo Uwani area; and we have three in Nsukka; one at Enugu Ezike, one at Obollo-Afor and one at Nguru Nsukka, but in my own area, we don’t have any. I am converting that college to a technical college to serve the young ones in my area, who can now go to college and learn skills, because we discovered that after university education, if you don’t have any skill, you still go back to learn one thing or the other. If you go to that college I am talking about, we are upgrading it to make sure everything works out.
I am doing teaching empowerment. If you go to University of Nigeria Nsukka, the Centre for Energy Development and all that, they are training youths in my area on how to create solar energy, install it for people and earn a living. As I speak with you, it is going on in the University of Nsukka, and I am partnering with that Centre for Energy Research to do that for our people.
Outside that, I have a pet programme which is for the training of the unemployed graduates in Enugu North Senatorial District, which is ongoing. The last batch for this year is going on at the sports centre at Nsukkka Local Governments Area at GRA.
I am discussing with the Hasal Micro-finance Bank, which is empowering this people with a minimum of N3million to N10million to start up business. I am partnering with them. It’s just because of this interview that I haven’t gone to Hasal Micro-finance bank today, because I said after the plenary I would go there to get update on the list of people we have sent there, which is over 2,400 people.
These are the things I am doing for our people. In terms of employment, I have also been getting the little I can to make sure my constituents are getting employment at the federal level. We are following them up. In fact after every sitting I move on to do what I call ward round, visiting the MDAs, following those ones we have sent application letters to check what they are doing about it, to ensure that our people are taken care of. These are some of the things we have done.
In the oversight, which is purely legislative, I am following all the agencies that are under me, making sure that things work for our people. As I speak to you I am working for the addition of Federal Medical Centre in Enugu North Senatorial District because we don’t have any. A Bill has been sponsored in that regard. I have a Bill in the works also for the establishment of a federal polytechnic, because every state is entitled to a polytechnic but Enugu doesn’t have.
As I speak to you I have a Bill for sighting of federal polytechnic in my area. These are the things I am doing to make sure that things work for our people. I am at home with this job and we are working very hard . These are the few that I can remember, I have plenty but how do I go about it? I have a newsletter and all these things I have said are going to be in this newsletter. I have told our people that when they gave me the opportunity in 2015 that my scorecard will always be available for them to see.
In the 8th Assembly I had two newsletters showing what I did within those four years. When we come back next year, I will do another newsletter to give account of my stewardship. The final one, towards 2023, to tell our people that we are not here to joke or play, we are here to touch their lives; we are here to make sure that things work for our people and they would have value for money for standing by me as their representative in these two terms in the National Assembly.
As a stakeholder and chairman of the Senate Committee on Primary Healthcare and Communicable Diseases, what do you think should be done as regards this second wave of COVID-19?
First of all, we thank God who has helped us in our efforts to control or suppress the onslaught of this COVID-19 that most of the first world countries are still battling with, to no avail. But one way or the other, God has a way of doing things for people who are disadvantaged, rightly or wrongly. There were scenarios of what was happening in the Western countries and people expected it would be worse off here, because of our usual lack of preparedness and our response mechanism. Our weather and system contributed immensely and the timely shutdown of the country’s borders also contributed immensely too in controlling things.
That is just where we are today and again the resurgence over there, which is the second wave is now giving everybody cause for concern . This second wave, we have been talking with the leadership of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 that we really have to sit up. Shutting down the economy is a problem like we did in the past, the side effect of the first shutdown are still here with us, we are yet to recover from it and to go ahead with a second shutdown will be bad, but we must be creative with the way we go about it.
The reason why we are thinking so is because the people in Europe and America that shutdown initially are shutting their country down because of the effect of the pandemic but they haven’t allowed the economy to be shutdown, because their flights are still moving in and out even when they are on the red line. So what that means is that they are fighting for survival and that was why we allowed Lagos and Abuja for international flights, we wanted to do that of Kano and Port Harcourt but along the line we saw some reasons and said the take-off would be next year; and there is this fear that if we open all the international airports, we are going to expose ourselves to danger, that is why we restricted it to Lagos and Abuja, and the two we had approved would be coming next year towards March.
When we did this many people wanted the Enugu Airport opened. You know our people in the South East travel a lot, but I looked at all those issues and told our people in the South East to take it easy, let’s manage with Lagos and Abuja for now and it helped because as the Enugu Airport wasn’t opened, people in the South East didn’t have that upsurge in COVID, because the airline that used to come to Enugu, Ethiopian Air, was not forthcoming, so we took advantage of that.
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Yes, we suffered because our (Enugu) airport was closed in order for it to be upgraded. So what we are saying and praying for now is safety all the way. We will not shut the economy. We will also prepare for our people who are coming into the country especially during the Christmas season. The people in Southern Nigeria, this period means so much to them, because most of them have brothers and sisters that are outside the country and they use this opportunity to visit their people once a year. They look forward to traveling during Christmas, to interact and mix up with people.
We have also been telling our people in overseas, “If you don’t have any need to come, please don’t come. If it is all about sending money and goods, please parcel them, do waybill to your brothers and sisters and they will come to the airport to pick them. Those of us in the South East and South South use this period for development programmes in our areas, so they can send those monies to the areas of need so that their people can represent them, but don’t come, so that together we can fight this common enemy.
Are you not worried that with the recent opening of our land borders, we risk the possibility of people bringing in COVID into Nigeria from neighboring countries?
The opening of the land borders is purely economic and also for security reasons, because most of the West African countries depend on Nigeria for business, this is their own America. We have the capacity to get all those things down here, they come here to do their own small businesses across the border and go but now that we shutdown, they are all crying and then we are depending on the same people to help us in fighting Boko Haram insurgency.
I think it is for strategic reasons that we are doing that, because all the people we do business with have been crying that the closure of our land borders has been hurting them and I think government just wanted to open the borders knowing fully well that this period of the year, people do businesses, we want to open it and allow those people a breather for some time and then we might come back to close the border.
But in the North, if you say closure of border in Nigeria, it is only effective in Southern Nigeria. Those of us who go to the North know that there is nothing you can do about it because in the north there is free trade. For instance, in Kano you see trucks from all parts of West Africa coming to buy things and it is their way of life. If you go to Niger and Chad, they come on a daily basis to Nigeria to do businesses and return to their countries. If you also go to the Cameroon border, close to Adamawa, you just walk over, do your business and return, and there is nothing you can do about it, these people have been there over the years.
It is only in the South here that we are having this issue; and that is just what we are trying to manage to ensure that things work for our people and help stabilize our economy, especially in agricultural sector. Most of our people are now picking up in rice cultivation, poultry, fishery and all that, which is what we need to improve the economy, unlike when you import all the rice from Thailand, people pick up this rice and our own economy suffers at the end of it. So we are trying to control this thing at the border.