By Felix Oguejiofor Abugu
The Chairman of Igbo-Eze North Local Government Area, Enugu State, Engr. Michael Uchenna Ogalla, has reassured of the commitment of his Administration to providing adequate security for lives and property in the sprawling 20-ward all but one-town LGA, using both kinetic and non-kinetic means.
Pointing to a mass of electric poles on the premises of the local government secretariat, Ogrute, Enugu-Ezike, Ogalla explained that they had been procured for the security infrastructure that would be located at strategic places across the LGA, and designed as technology-assisted intelligence gathering machinery aimed at enhancing the efficiency of the local government’s security personnel (vigilantes) and related security personnel.
Mayor Ogalla spoke on Monday, May 19, in his office at the impressive Igbo-Eze North local government secretariat, Ogrute Enugu-Ezike, while addressing visiting members of the Executive Committee of the Nsukka Journalists Forum (NJF), led by their chairman, Chief Benson Ezugwu.
In his opening remarks, Chief Ezugwu had congratulated the chairman on his election and successful inauguration, assuring that NJF, as a professional body of journalists and media practitioners from the Nsukka cultural zone, is committed to constructive engagements with political, cultural and business leaders on the best, inclusive ways to engender socio-economic and political development and progress in the cultural zone.
Explaining that Igbo-Eze North was the 4th LGA to be visited by the NJF executives, Ezugwu, a Senior Editor with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) and a Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) executive, said that as society’s watchdog and conscience of the cultural zone, NJF would continue to partner with political leaderships in Nsukka to ensure the provision of qualitative education, adequate healthcare, youth and women empowerment, political inclusivity and industrialisation in the cultural zone.
He apologised for the mix-up in the exact time of the appointment with the Chairman, which caused the late arrival of his team, disclosing that had his team arrived earlier, “we would have loved to take a tour of the sites of the projects executed or being executed by the local government Chairman as that is always part of our schedules while on an assignment like this.”
Expressing his appreciation to the NJF team for finding the time and interest to visit Igbo-Eze North (IGN), Mayor Ogalla, however, assured his media guests of his readiness to arrange another visit to enable the team to visit sites of projects executed and or being executed by his Administration.
Pointing to the issue of education, Engr. Ogalla expressed his excitement about partnering with NJF in that regard, tasking the group on the education of the grassroots to enable them to properly understand the policies and programmes of government beyond the oft-jaundiced interpretations of such policies and programmes by social media crusaders.
“I am all for partnering with you in the area of education, especially in the education of the grassroots about the substance of the policies and programmes of government. Without proper education and deeper understanding of such policies, programmes and actions of government, citizens at the grassroots are likely to be misled by what they read or hear on social media (citizen blogs and tv), which are most often largely false or grossly exaggerated,” Ogalla said.
Returning to security, which he described as the fulcrum of administrations at all levels of government in Nigeria, the IGN Local Government boss disclosed that his government is rejigging the Council’s local security administration through a pragmatic funding arrangement that will bring practically all hands on deck.
Photo: Mabel Obioma Ogili, PRO, Igbo-Eze North.
Stating that he is guided by his security background in all the security decisions and steps he had so far taken, Ogalla explained that he adopted a “proactive approach” to issues of security as soon he came into office, pointing out that waiting like a hen to shout (react) when her chick has been picked by the hawk ( such as after kidnappers have carried their victims away) is never a strategic, pragmatic approach.
“The proactive approach is often the most undervalued because, the way we are, once there are no incidents, it means that no security challenges are being tackled by the government, until there is an incident and we all begin to shout and blame the government of the day for its supposed inaction or lack of concerned,” Ogalla contended.
According to him, it was in keeping with that strategic approach that his government decided to levy Nri Order, a security tax in existence long before he was born, at a uniform N50,000 across Igbo-Eze North, where some communities were hitherto paying as much N70,000 to N100,000, some N50,000 and so on to their vigilance groups.
Insisting that his government only harmonised an existing tax not levy new one, as was widely misconstrued, so as to level the burden of the seasonal, occasion-only tax on payers, Mayor Ogalla said the harmonization of the Nri Order tax followed the decision of his administration that going forward, all large-crowd events, such as burials and marriage ceremonies, must be be guarded and protected by the local vigilantes, hence the payment of a token N30,000 for use by the community to mobilize the vigilantes and the remaining N20,000 into the local government purse to augment the salaries it pays out to the vigilantes across Igbo-Eze at the end of every month.
He further explained that although the levy came to be misconstrued as “harsh tax” and demonized by a vocal citizen press, causing his government to delay its full implementation for “peace to reign”, he told the visiting journalists that he had set up a ‘cultural committee’, comprising stakeholders from across the broad spectrum of Igbo-Eze North political blocs, to advise his government on the best approach to the implementation of the Nri Order tax, and other cultural development matters, expressing his optimism that the committee, which is expected to submit its report on Thursday, May 22 (tomorrow), will properly advise the local government.
In answer to a question, Engr. Ogalla denied that any trader or group of traders lost their goods in the demolition-for-reconstruction that took place at Eke Ozzi, pointing out that since no such complaints had been brought to his notice, it means that there was no substance in the allegations.
He disclosed that the issue of modernization of Eke Ozzi into an international daily market was one of the dominant requests by the traders themselves during his electioneering for the September 21, 2024 local government election in Enugu, adding that from that time through to his inauguration to February when formal notice was given, to April when the actual demolition started, all concerned were sufficiently aware of the impending demolition-for-reconstruction exercise and had, to the best of his knowledge, take appropriate steps to avoid incurring losses.
In answer to another question, Ogalla assured that his government, within the limits of what possible is possible and working the intricate inter-government and inter-agency relationships, is tackling infrastructural decay and sanitation in IGN and would deliver on his promise in that area.
Giving a vote of thanks, Mr. Felix Oguejiofor Abugu, Editor-in-Chief of AbeyaNews, thanked the IGN chairman for hosting the NJF team, reiterating, on behalf of the Chairman and members of NJF as a whole, the Forum’s commitment to partnering with the Igbo-Eze North, and indeed other council chairmen in the Nsukka cultural zone, to promote development and progress in the zone.
Present at the NJF Exco’s interaction session with the Chairman was the Secretary to the Local Government (SLG), Hon. Onyekachi Eya.
