Zoning promotes mediocrity – Abia SDP chairman

The Chairman, Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Abia, Chief Chidi Nwosu, has faulted the zoning of governorship position in Abia, saying that the system promotes mediocrity in government.

Nwosu said this in Umuahia on Thursday, while briefing newsmen on the current efforts to rebuild the party and woo more Abians to it.

He regretted that zoning had helped to throw up mediocre political leaders, who according to him, lacks the capacity to transform the state.

He said that SDP believed in excellence and would choose anybody it considered capable to develop the state and provide quality and selfless service.

“Today, we are looking for a messiah and wherever we get one we take him,” he said, adding that the party did not believe in zoning.

Nwosu, who defected from the All Progressive Congress recently, said that SDP had come “to liberate Abia from political jobbers who have impoverished the state.”

He said that the party would promote social justice and economic development of the state, “when it takes over Abia in 2019”.

He regretted that the state had not recorded any meaningful foreign investment, in spite of all the resources spent by the past and present administrations allegedly in search of foreign investors.

Nwosu further spoke on the heaps of refuse in different parts of Umuahia, the state capital and its environs.

He flayed the Gov. Okezie Ikpeazu-administration for the deplorable refuse condition in Umuahia.

He feared that the situation could lead to an outbreak of an epidemic if urgent steps were not taken to rid the city of filth.

“The odour that is oozing from the heaps of decomposing refuse that litter the entire Umuahia metropolis is capable of causing an epidemic,” he said.

He decried the dearth of industries and failure by the government to harness the agricultural potential of the state to transform the state and create jobs for the teeming unemployed youths.

“Things are going from bad to worse in Abia,” Nwosu said, adding that SDP had come to correct the ills created by past administrations in the state.

He said that the qualities that gave the party victory in the 1993 general elections were still strongly upheld by the current leadership at the national and state levels.

He said that SDP remained a grassroot party, adding that it was contending with the challenge of the influx of new members.