A New Pledge to Do More

A New Pledge to Do More

Being the inaugural address of His Excellency, Sullivan Iheanacho Chime, on his inauguration as Governor, Enugu State on May 29, 2011 at Michael Okpara Square, Enugu at 10.00 am.

PROTOCOL

Today, as I always do, I want to begin by giving thanks to the Almighty God, who has made this event possible. I thank Him for my life and the lives of the members of my family. I thank Him for the lives of all of us here and for the lives of our relatives and friends, who, for one reason or another, are unable to be physically present here today. I thank Him for the good health, which has enabled us to be here at this time. I thank Him for the very clement weather.

Exactly four years ago, I stood at this very place on this same date to pledge to work for the welfare of our people. On that day also, I asked for your understanding, for your support and for your prayers. I must say that, notwithstanding the distractions that we endured from some of our brothers and sisters, I have received and enjoyed the strongest support and the most fervent and effective prayers that any Governor has enjoyed in the history of our dear State.

You also demonstrated your faith in me, and your approval of the successes that we have worked together to accomplish in these past 4 years, when on Tuesday April 26, 2011, you trooped out in your large numbers and voted for me and His Excellency, the Deputy Governor, in an overwhelming manner to return to office as your Governor for a new and final term of 4 years beginning from today.

I cannot, and I will never, take these gestures of love, trust and solidarity for granted. And for these, and for many more, I say a sincere and humble thank you to all the good people of Enugu State. I also thank our friends from outside our State, who have in one way or another, supported us and wished us well in our quest and struggle to use the instrumentality of government to put permanent smiles on the faces of our people. May God continue to bless and reward all of you.

As we celebrate today the continuing entrenchment of democracy in our country, we must pay special tribute to the young members of the Nigerian Youth Service Corps, who sacrificed their lives in the course of the elections. These young Nigerians represent to me the martyrs and the true heroes of our nascent democracy. May the Good Lord accept their souls in heaven, as we also pray for their families to bear the loss. Their ultimate sacrifice shall not be in vain.

When 4 years ago on this date I stood on this podium to make my inaugural speech as Governor, I committed myself to do no other thing but to serve you, my brothers and sisters, with all my heart; with all my power; and to the best of my ability. I promised to make a clean break from the past; and I pledged to run a responsible and accountable government that would deliver services to our people. I made a vow to make our State a safe and secure place where everyone, who desires, would feel happy to live, work and bring up their children. I believe, with all sense of humility, that I have kept faith with my commitment. I believe that, working together, we have fundamentally changed the face our State and the fortunes of our citizens. I believe that we have restored the faith of our people in the ability of government to work solely for the welfare of the citizens, and the ability of public officials to keep their word. We have revived the right of the people to demand for services from the government as their right and not to anticipate government services as a favour.

Let me at this point extend my special gratitude to the Honourable Members of the Enugu State House of Assembly who gave us all the support and cooperation that we needed to do the things that we did. I must also pay special tribute to members of my outgoing Executive Council. The credit for the achievements of the government in the last 4 years does not belong to me alone: it must also go to each and every one of you.

I stand here today to make a new pledge to you, my people. It is a pledge to do more. With the unmistaken mandate that we received on April 26, 2011, confirming the approval by our people of the thrust of our current policies and programmes, I pledge that we shall continue to consolidate and build upon the gains of our current achievements, driven by our 4-Point Agenda and the needs of our rural communities as articulated under the Visit-Every-Community (VEC) initiative. But I also know that we must refine and refocus the strategies for the implementation of the 4-Point Agenda in a way that will ensure that we improve on our ability and expand our resources to meet the key development needs of our people.

We cannot secure the future of our State if we do not equip our children to compete in the knowledge economy by providing them with the best education that our resources can afford. To this end, the new administration that we inaugurate today shall review the investment of our government in education. We shall ensure that when our children go to school, they shall sit on stable school desks and in proper classrooms. We shall ensure that our schools receive sufficient funding to provide basic teaching materials. And we shall ensure that our teachers are qualified to teach, and that they go to school every day and teach our children as they are employed to do. I have already approved the employment of 2,000 additional teachers for our secondary schools especially in the core subjects of English, mathematics and the sciences; and these teachers must be in our classrooms as our children return to begin the next academic session. I will also ensure that an effective monitoring mechanism is put in place to guarantee that our children derive maximum benefits from these investments that we shall make in the next 4 years.

Over the past 4 years, Enugu has begun to transform from a 'civil service' State to a new centre of modern commerce and industry. We thank our friends who have established new businesses in Enugu in response to our unequivocal efforts to create an enabling environment for businesses to optimize their potentials. I make a pledge that my government shall do more in the next 4 years to make Enugu an investors' haven. It is only by encouraging private business and entrepreneurship in our State that we shall be able to create employment for our people. I, therefore, call on business people and entrepreneurs to take advantage of the business friendly environment in our State to come in and establish new businesses and create jobs for our people. We shall continue to encourage agriculture as a means of creating wealth and jobs. And we shall also take concrete steps in the next few months to revive and or privatise all moribund government-owned enterprises in the State. If we would create jobs for our people, which we must, we do not have any alternative than to encourage and work with the private sector. I hereby renew my commitment to continue to listen to businesses that wish to come into our State and to do whatever we can to make their activities here seamless and profitable.

But our people cannot hold jobs if they are sick; our children cannot study if they are not healthy. I am, therefore, personally distressed by the long absence of most of our health workers from their places of work some of them since November last year. In the build up to the last general elections, I was inundated by demands for enhanced and specialized salary scales for various groups in the public service. These demands came at a time that the Federal Government and the governments of the various States in the country were considering the need to increase the minimum wage. I could not in good faith negotiate with any of these groups, who formed a small minority of the public servants in the State without determining the minimum wage question and confirming its impact on the lean resources of our State. And I made this position known to them. While some of the groups decided to postpone their demands, some other groups decided to press home their claims. I did not want to politicize these matters: and so I took a principled position. Today most of our health workers have remained at home; and the bulk of our people, who are unable to afford medical services from private providers, suffer.

Today, I appeal to those of our health workers who have still not resumed work to live true to their professional oath to save life and go back to work. I plead with you to go back to work in the interest of the welfare of the majority of our people who have been deprived of modern medical services on account of your absence from work. We are willing to listen to you, as we are willing to listen to all our public servants, to ensure that you get the best remuneration for your services within the limits of the resources of the State.

Today, I extend a hand of fellowship to our health workers to join me as I make a commitment to chart a new and irreversible course for an effective and efficient healthcare delivery system in the State. I hope that our brothers and sisters in the health sector would reciprocate this gesture of goodwill as I am committed to take all necessary action, and promptly too, to save the public healthcare system in the State from collapse.

We must build on the gains of the Free Maternal and Child Care Programme; we must work out a sustainable way, in partnership with the local government councils, to ensure that our primary and secondary healthcare facilities work. And I have made a vow to myself that our Ultra-modern Diagnostic Centre must become operational before the 1st half of this new term so that our doctors can know exactly what ailments afflict our people.

To consolidate the successes we have achieved in the last 4 years and to build upon these accomplishments, we must continue to be prudent in the management and deployment of our resources. Enugu State is not yet a rich State we shall one day in the near future become a very rich and prosperous State. But we have been able to achieve what we have achieved so far because we have managed and deployed our resources prudently and wisely. I pledge more transparency and accountability in the activities of government; and I enjoin all those who desire to join me in this new administration to make prudence, transparency and accountability their watchwords. As I said during my first inauguration, and as I have continued to demonstrate through my personal example, it can no longer be business as usual.

But our successes and reforms may not survive the end of our administration if we do not live behind a functional public service that effectively works to provide service to the public. The roads that we build today will require to be maintained tomorrow, and new roads will have to be built in the future; the classrooms that we build today will need to be renovated tomorrow, and new classrooms will have to be built in the future; the hospitals we build today will have to be modernized tomorrow, and new hospitals may need to be built in the future; our courts will need to function to dispense justice; and our citizens should feel confident to approach a government office and be treated with dispatch and respect. All these and more will not be possible if we do not have public servants who are in public service to serve the public. We must therefore re-dedicate ourselves to re-invent the public service system. Our public service must rise to become a model service in the country a service that is responsible and accountable to the ordinary citizens in the State. This is the greatest legacy that I hope to bequeath our State. A public service that has the knowledge, the courage and integrity to ensure that the public resources of our State are utilized prudently and exclusively for the benefit of our people. It is also only such a public service that can ensure that no politician in the future takes us away from the path of development upon which we have now set ourselves as a people.

As a government, we have continued to meet our obligations to our public servants in a prompt and responsible manner. I also look forward to approving the implementation of the new minimum wage structure for the State as soon as the details are worked out and presented to me. I will also ensure, as I have always done, that we make adequate provision for the training and re-training of our public servants. I, therefore, call on all our brothers and sisters in the public service to join me in this historic journey to entrench knowledge, courage and integrity in our public service system our quest to irreversibly institute a public service system that works.

As we march into this crucial second part of our journey as a people to irreversible greatness, I call for the support and understanding of all our brothers and sisters no matter their political affiliation or persuasion. The season of politics and elections has ended: we are now in the season of development. What is at stake now is no longer who wins the election. The challenge that confronts us as a people is the challenge of development: how do we create jobs and wealth for our people; how do we educate our children; how do we prevent our people from sickness and how do we cure them if sickness occurs? We should all come together to build a safe, educated, healthy and prosperous State, where everyday basic comfort of life is taken for granted. This is what we owe our children and our children's children. We cannot afford to fail posterity.

As I make to end this speech, I shall leave you with the injunction that Robert Kennedy gave to his countrymen “The future is not a gift. It is an achievement.” Let us work together to achieve a pleasant future for our people.

Let us continue to place our faith and trust in God; with God on our side, we shall surely triumph.

Thank you and God bless.

Sullivan I. Chime
Governor, Enugu State of Nigeria