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Contract with the People of Imo State
By Hon (Barr.) Emeka Nwajiuba and
Dr. S. Okechukwu Mezu
Great citizens of Imo State, Nigeria, we are
victims of a failed system of governance that is
not accountable to anyone, not even those who
run it. Since the great years of late Honorable
Sam Mbakwe, Imo State has not made any
measurable or visible progress in any area. In
fact living conditions are so deteriorated that
a significant majority of our citizens live in
stark dehumanizing conditions. Our citizens
have lost hope and faith in government, and
frankly in themselves and in their neighbors and
relatives. From the simplest of human rights
such as the right to shelter and pay for
services provided to opportunities to excel and
progress financially have been viciously
stripped by very few political architects in
this state.
The gap between the poor and the rich has
widened dramatically the past two decades. The
middle class has disappeared and citizens are
either hopelessly cloaked in poverty or
excessively adorned in wealth. People are
forced to choose between buying medication or
seeking life saving treatment and putting food
on the table. Many workers have lost their zeal
to serve and be productive because their hard
work only yields late pay and denied pensions.
Many can no longer afford basic primary
education for their children.
University education eludes many promising young
citizens, and for those who manage to obtain
university admission, obtaining education that
makes them employable, effective and
knowledgeable when employed, or competitive in
the global arena is a wild dream. Death has
become a common occurrence and dying from any
cause early has become an acceptable norm.
As citizens, we have hoped for several decades
for a miracle, for change that we can experience
whether we start off poor or rich, whether we
are educated, uneducated or planning to be
educated, whether we are born to royalty or not,
independent of where we start off the day we are
born. Unfortunately, the miracle has evaded us,
and for good reason— we have been sitting on the
fence with arms folded, hopelessly hoping, and
not acting on our hopes, dreams, and visions. A
man once said that one is not to fear men who
dream in their sleep but to be wary of those who
dream with their eyes open for they act upon
their visions.
Indeed, there is need for those who have
profited from citizens dreaming in their sleep
of a day of liberation to worry—this is the
season for citizens who dream with their eyes
open to take over the helm of affairs in Imo
State. We have outlined our dreams and
aspirations for the state in what we prefer to
call “The Contract with the People of Imo
State”. It is a contract because we want to be
held accountable. In this contract, we outline
our goals for Imo State and our strategy for
meeting these goals. Our vision is to create
new wealth and expand existing wealth, create
new entrepreneurs and assist existing ones reach
new heights, create new and secure jobs and
reduce unemployment, increase access to much
needed health care, reduce pollution in our
environment, revitalize the educational system
to produce students and graduates that can
compete for jobs worldwide, create a robust and
diverse local economy, generate hope, encourage
creativity among citizens, and restore human
dignity.
We envision a state like no other, a state where
every man, woman and child progresses according
to his or her own desires and interests, a state
where all rather than a select few are lifted
up, a state where every citizen can plan to own
a house, a car, a university education, to own a
family and are enabled to execute their dreams,
a state that tourists and business interests
identify with, a state where young families
believe they can successfully raise their
children, a state where citizens live their
lives fully without fear of criminals and
without mitigating conditions that cause members
of society to adopt criminality as a
profession. We envision a state where every
citizen, and in particular public servants
including elected leaders are held accountable
by the people to the state. This is the Imo
State of the future, not Imo State of a hundred
years from today or the next two to three
generations. This is the Imo State of the next
decade, starting from April.
Our plan is comprehensive, based on our visions
for excellence, and designed to assure that
every citizen experiences change in their own
sphere of existence. The plan is deliberately
comprehensive because every aspect of life in
Imo State is broken, and progress can only come
through a holistic and concerted effort to
address the multiple sores in our system. We
are in this race to propagate change that is
visible not just at government house, Owerri or
in shared commons such as roads and hospitals,
but in the quality of life of Imo state
indigenes. We lay out our unhindered visions
because we want to be accountable to you and we
want you to understand how we plan to bring
about change.
Key areas of Change for the Nwajiuba-Mezu
Government
Security:
A key priority for our administration is
security. Without security in Imo State, it is
impossible to attract development and the
business and human capital necessary to advance
the state. Our first mission is to secure the
state so that citizens, investors and visitors
alike can feel assured of their safety whether
they visit or reside in Imo State. Our key
objectives are:
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Improve security services provided by the
police in the state
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Create incentives in law enforcement to
reward and encourage good work.
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Provide training and increased pay for law
enforcement agents.
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Enhance the powers of the judiciary to
enforce criminal penalties
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Develop the capacity of citizens to
participate in law enforcement in their
respective communities through programs such
as community oriented policing.
Economic Development of the state and
empowerment of its citizens:
There are two key aspects to this objective.
First, we need to bring economic development to
the state by attracting investors across a
variety of sectors including manufacturing,
transportation, financial services, agriculture,
technology, and health to mention a few.
Second, we intend to assure that development
activities translate to jobs and increased
business and earning potential for the citizens
of Imo State. To achieve this objective, we
plan to:
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Develop an economic agenda for Imo State
within six months of our administration.
This economic agenda will outline a plan for
attracting investors to Imo State including
through the use of incentives such as
monetary incentives.
-
Draft a plan for developing the local
business sectors through a model of
empowering local business men and women.
Specifically, we want to assure that
citizens of Imo State who are interested in
any given sector are adequately equipped to
excel in their chosen venture and remain
competitive in the larger market. Also, we
hope to break monopolies driven by financial
limitations so that prices for services
provided by local businesses are attractive.
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Work with each local government to develop
an economic agenda that is unique to its
needs, resources and potential.
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Reinvigorate the Imo State Chamber of
Commerce and infuse it with expertise from
international advisers in areas such as
microfinance, marketing, exports, etc
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Expand the agro sector using the network of
farmers in Imo State by providing: access to
technical support and training; access to
prime seedlings and starter livestock;
opportunities for diversification to
maintain competitive prices and diversity in
agricultural products; financial support to
starter farmers and established farmers who
plan to run commercialized farms; and
marketing services to provide farmers with
access to high value buyers and
international markets.
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Solicit funding from international
organizations for microfinance projects to
enhance economic development in Imo State
and economic empowerment of Imo State
citizens.
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Solicit foreign investment in Imo State
through partnership programs that emphasize
indigenous shares and facilitate the growth
of worker-owned companies. We envision
ownership as an important driver of
productivity, accountability and
sustainability.
Infrastructure Development and maintenance:
It is unfortunate that the citizens of Imo State
and indeed all of Nigeria have to live without
basic amenities of the 21st century such as
electricity, good roads, airports, affordable
and safe transportation services, hospitals with
equipment that address the health needs of this
century, and standard classrooms and learning
facilities to mention a few. Without
electricity, good roads and transportation
means, Imo State will remain economically very
unattractive to major and particularly
international investors. Without well equipped
hospitals and diagnostic services and increased
access to such services, Imo State indigenes
will continue to suffer high mortality rates
from modern and ancient diseases.
Finally, our children will never reach their
maximum potential if their classroom environment
is less than conducive for learning. Our goal
for infrastructure development is to develop a
three year plan to improve infrastructure across
the state. Given that everything is broken down
and completely dysfunctional, it is impossible
to remedy different infrastructure in all areas
at the same time. However, we want to assure
that each local government receives a boost in
areas that are critical to its development with
increased access to services like centrally
located schools and hospitals, pending the
complete distribution of these services
throughout each local government.
Within six months of our administration, develop
a three year plan that identifies key
infrastructure in each local government that
will be the focus of targeted development
activities.
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Provide support for the enhancement of two
existing hospitals to state of the art
facilities equipped to treat diseases of the
21st century.
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Provide economic incentives for the
development of privately owned diagnostic
service companies to provide state of the
art health diagnostic services to Imo State
citizens.
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Restore major roads and arterials to key
economic and residential destinations in the
state.
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Identify an industrial zone in the state to
locate new businesses.
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Develop a long term power generation plan
for Imo State that is independent of the
national power grid.
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Bring the technology sector in Imo State
into the 21st century.
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Develop a long term infrastructure and city
development plan for Imo State that embraces
zoning and urban planning, without causing
people to lose their inherited property.
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Create new satellite townships that promote
social, mental, and physical well-being, and
that discourage class segregation.
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Develop home-ownership plans that provide
financial support and access to standard
homes to citizens of Imo State with
employment or means to afford housing.
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Upgrade Imo State airport to a world class
airport facility complete with aviation
maintenance companies.
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Build a satellite airport to provide
additional services to tourist areas that
will be created and also to economic
empowerment zones that are outside the
Owerri metropolis.
Public Health and Health Care Delivery
It is unfortunate that in the 21st century, the
government is unable to make intelligent
statements about the state of health in the
state. Nobody, including government, knows:
how many people now suffer and die from cancers,
how many people suffer from heart disease,
stroke, aneurisms and other diseases of the 21st
century; how many children are born prematurely
and in need of special care; and what types of
infectious diseases (perhaps with the exclusion
of HIV because of international interest) plague
our people and the impact of these diseases on
our people. Nobody trusts the health care
system and the general consensus is that a visit
to the hospital is the first stop on the way to
the morgue.
Doctors are not accountable for their errors and
there is no central system to verify the
credentials and performance of medical
personnel. Every death is blamed on the devil;
whether the person received appropriate and
timely care is never questioned. Basic
preventive care is unavailable. Many citizens
are uninformed about what they need to do to
promote good health such as good nutrition,
avoiding simple hazards in their environment,
etc. Of course, this is no surprise given that
the public health system is virtually
non-existent in our communities and health care
delivery has failed because the system is
ill-equipped and there are no checks and
balances to assure a baseline level of care.
Our administration will tackle these issues
using the following strategy:
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Create a council of public health advisors
for the state. This advisory group will
boast expertise in different fields of
medicine and public health. The advisory
group will provide a report replete with
recommendations within six months of our
administration to the government on the
state of health in Imo State,
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Develop a comprehensive state of the art
electronic birth and death registry.
-
Provide training for existing health care
staff – public health professionals,
doctors, etc to bring them into the 21st
century.
-
Partner with world class academic
institutions to develop and enhance capacity
of our educational sector to provide
training to public health and health care
professionals, and to provide some of this
training.
-
Reactivate the primary health care delivery
system and integrate maternal and child
care, infectious diseases, social, mental
and environmental health services into the
system. Enhance the capacity of community
health care centers to deliver a range of
preventive and basic curative services to
the people of Imo State, and that will
provide sentinel reports of the state of
health in Imo State.
-
Introduce technological advancements to
support data collection and dissemination.
-
Develop a public health system that is
sensitive to emerging and re-emerging
diseases using the revitalized public health
network of community health centers.
Education
Illiteracy is the bane of progress because good
education is a sure ticket to enlightenment,
employment and a good quality of life. Our
strategy for the educational sector is to:
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Establish partnerships between our local
universities and world class educational
institutions in different parts of the world
to facilitate information exchange, capacity
building, knowledge sharing, and research
partnerships in all fields including health,
public health, engineering, computing,
management sciences to mention a few.
-
Rehabilitate the primary and secondary
education system by setting up continuing
education credit systems through which
teachers are armed with up to date
strategies and knowledge for teaching.
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Review and revise the pay structure in the
primary and secondary education system to
assure that good teachers are attracted to
the profession.
-
Introduce a system of accountability across
the educational sector so that pay is
commensurate with performance. Provide
mechanisms through which teachers are
accountable.
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Provide access to technology in classrooms
to foster learning in a modern world.
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Establish a world class library in the
capital city that enhances citizen access to
various types of information and places
research and new information from the rest
of the world at the finger tips of Imo State
citizens.
Accountability
Accountability of government to the people of
Imo State: The citizens of Imo State have been
left in the dark about the distribution of their
resources. Our citizens are completely in the
dark and unable to determine for themselves
whether what they pay for is what they get.
This government will be accountable to the
citizens. We believe in commensurate pay for
work done. We believe that local companies that
provide services to government should be paid
for their services including making profits to
keep them viable, and more importantly that the
services provided are optimal and commensurate
with the work done. We believe that as civil
servants, we should all be paid for demonstrable
work. Our strategy for accountability at all
levels and for everyone is as follows:
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Develop a system of accountability for all
government expenditures in all parastatals.
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Provide live reports to the people of Imo
State about the state of their state, with a
focus on key areas of this plan.
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Develop and disseminate biennial progress
reports on key objectives of this strategy
to the people of Imo State.
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Nwajiuba-Mezu
for Imo State Governor
Change Imo for
Better – YES WE CAN!!!
Hon (Barr.) Emeka Nwajiuba
Dr. S. Okechukwu Mezu
Honesty and Integrity / Security
Growing a
Sustainable Agro-economy
Equity and Creation of Wealth for the People Accountability
Infrastructure Development
Stability and Reform of Educational
Institutions
Reform Health Care Sector / Socio-Economic Revival
True Rehabilitation of Roads / Tourism
Real Service to the People of Imo State
cpcimostate.org/
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Responses to America Best Inn Rally
Baltimore, Friday 18 February 2011
"I am glad I could be there. My late father is
about the only other father figure I know for
whom common good is second nature. I remembered
him yesterday, listening to Dr. S.Okechukwu Mezu
speak. It was a good feeling. . . I was moved
by daddy's rendition of his contributions to Imo
State in the 70s. . . I think young ones would
be inspired. your daddy's past contributions to
Imo State and how he plans to bring back
idealism to a dead state. . . "—Young
woman
"When I first heard about this mission, I never
for once thought about whether it was possible
or not because of my belief - When God says yes,
who can say no? As you know mommy, the bible
says that we should call the things that are not
as if they are. What we need to glorify him,
he has already made available. We just have to
believe, reach out and take it. When it is
God's way and plan, the impossible becomes
possible. . . This mission will yield monumental
change. I don't know what the nature of the
change is but it will be great and will glorify
God's name. I will be diligent in prayer for
this mission . That is all he asks of us.
Faith, diligence and hard work."—Dr.
Maechi Nweke
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Capitalism and Slavery (Eric Williams)
/
The Slave Ship (Marcus Rediker
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Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music)
posted 21 February 2011
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