Chidoka’s Stunning Uli Declaration: ‘Eliminate Poverty, Not Ameliorate It’
The Oasis Reporters
October 9, 2017
“Gathering at this ruin to launch this governorship campaign signals the start of a new engagement; a new dream nurtured by the essentials of our inner consciousness as a people in Nigeria”.
~ Chief Ositadinma Benjamin Chidoka, United Progressive Party, UPP Governorship Candidate In The Anambra Gubernatorial Election.
In concluding his new deal, new engagement with ‘Ndi Anambra’, Osita Chidoka said,
“A state where we will not alleviate poverty but overthrow poverty; a state where we will not reduce injustice but imprison injustice;
a state where we will not reduce inequality but abolish all privileges that obstruct equal opportunities.
So help me God”.
At this stage, the feeling in the audience became electrifying.
How for instance would Chidoka and his party “eliminate poverty” ?
People asked one another.
In Nigeria’s entire history, the country has had government officials and First Ladies who often launch programs like Poverty Alleviation schemes, Better Life Programs etc. Yet none of them ever dared to mention the elimination of poverty. Therefore they asked, is it possible to eliminate poverty?
Mazi Uchenna was at the campaign launch and he went down memory lane, then nodded slowly.
He was twelve years old when the last flight took General Chukwuemeka Ojukwu out of Biafra in “search of peace”. He remembers the starvation, visible ribs, people eating lizards, raw grass etc, just to survive the war and as children, they had no clothes to wear.
He grew up to see the resurgence of the Igbo spirit and a renaissance in the Igbo people such that in a few short years, Igbos turned their backs on food hunger, starting with the paltry £20 a few people got to start life again with.
He told our correspondent on the phone that what surprised him a few years later in another part of Nigeria was the sight of under aged children begging for food, despite their region holding the reins of power at the time Igbos were in limbo.
“Chidoka can do it. He has a people who have the success mentality and that will make the job easier for him”, Mazi Uchenna concluded.
The Oasis Reporters editorial team decided to dig into the background of the UPP candidate to find out what fuels his confidence in this new deal with the good people of Anambra .
After reading Chief Osita Chidoka’s, impressive bio which shows that “In 2002, Osita earned a Postgraduate Diploma in Marine and Port Management from the National University of Singapore”, we knew exactly what was propelling that belief that poverty can be eliminated, not tolerated.
Widely traveled Chidoka knows the Island city state of Singapore pretty well.
About the time Ositadinma Benjamin Chidoka was born in Enugu, the then capital of old Anambra State, South-East Nigeria, on the 18th of July 1971, to the household of Ogbueshi Ben Ejikeme Chidoka, Singapore was a derelict, decrepit, rundown city State without natural resources. As the island port city component of then Malaya, they woke up one Monday morning to learn that the mainland that was economically buoyant had expelled the Singaporean island from the Union because they lived on subsidy from the mainland and they indeed had nothing.
Mainland had renamed itself, Malaysia and the Island was left to survive on it’s own with nothing in the kitty.
But they had a leader, Lee Kwan Yew who vowed not to beg and without crude oil like Nigeria or vast farmlands like Northern Nigeria, Mr. Lee Kwan Yew used Singapore’s human resource as the only asset, ensured compulsory, qualitative and functional education and the well educated and well trained populace worked smartly and paid taxes to maintain the state, which he was to later turn from the backwaters of the Third World in quick strides to become a First World State.
In 2012, the former poverty stricken Singapore had the fifth largest financial reserves in the world after the US, Japan, China and Taiwan.
Malaysia that expelled Singapore to be a country of its own was nowhere to be found in the rankings.
Today that former poverty stricken Island is now an oasis of prosperity, refining crude oil and sending Petroleum products back to Nigeria where they obtained the crude oil from ab initio.
That was where Chief Ositadinma Chidoka went to study and understudy the success strategies of Lee Kwan Yew, in order to turn Anambra into an industrial and manufacturing hub of not only Nigeria, but for Africa as a whole.
Besides that education in Singapore, Chidoka is also a transport administrator and politician of repute, and considered to be one of the leading lights of the post-civil war generation of political intellectuals of Igbo extraction, driving the reformation of Nigeria’s political space.
He was a Government Relations Advisor to American oil giant; Exxon Mobil; Corps Marshall and CEO of Nigeria’s Federal Road Safety Corps; and a one-time Minister of Aviation in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
He is married to Chidinma Chidoka and they have four children.
Background
Before going to Singapore for further studies, Osita first attended Union Boys’ Secondary School Awkunanaw, Enugu where he got his school leaving certificate in 1988, then proceeded to the prestigious University of Nigeria, Nsukka graduating with honours in Management in 1995.
During his National Youth Service (NYSC) Programme in Abuja, he won the FCT Award for the Best Corps Member in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) for the year 1995. With the award came an automatic employment into the FCT administration, thus kick starting a long career in public service.
In 2002, Osita earned a Postgraduate Diploma in Marine and Port Management from the National University of Singapore. In 2004, he earned a Certificate in Global Strategy and Political Economy from the Mansfield College, Oxford University in the UK. He was then admitted to the George Mason School of Public Policy, Virginia, USA; where he gained a Master’s degree in Transport Policy and Logistics in 2006.
He is currently undergoing a degree programme in Law at the Baze University, Abuja.
Career
All through his career, Osita has distinguished himself as a performer, a high flyer and result driven public official.
He started his public service career as an Administrative Officer in the Protocol Office of the Federal Capital Territory Minister in 1996. In 1997 he was appointed Personal Assistant to the Minister of State for Works and Housing on secondment from the FCT. He returned to the FCT in 1998 after the dissolution of the cabinet. In 2000 he was appointed a Personal Assistant to the Minister of Transport. In 2003 his performance earned him a promotion to the Special Assistant to the Senior Special Adviser to the Nigerian President on Legal Matters.
During his career at the FCT, he served on various committees that gave him an opportunity to contribute to the development of key national policies. In 1998, he was the Secretary of the National Committee that coordinated the visit of Pope Johnpaul II to Nigeria. He served as the Assistant Secretary to the 1999 Handover Committee, for the transition from Military to Civilian rule in Nigeria. In 2002 He was also the Team Leader for the Committee that developed Nigeria’s current Port Policy.
In 2002 Osita served on the Committee that drafted the non-motorized transport mode policy to provide infrastructure for safe walking, bicycling and other transport modes that are sustainable and environmentally friendly, He was also a team member of the committee on the review of Abuja master plan in 2000
In 2006, he was recruited by oil giant Exxon Mobil, to serve as its Government and Business Relations Advisor for the Nigerian Business.
On 28th May 2007, President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed Chidoka the Corps Marshall and CEO of Nigeria’s Federal Road Safety Commission making him the youngest individual at 36 years to ever hold such a significant position in the history of the organisation.
In July 2014, President Goodluck Jonathan appointed Chidoka the Federal Minister of Aviation. He stepped down from the post after his then party the PDP, lost the 2015 general elections to the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC).
Chidoka is currently running to become the governor of his home state Anambra, under the United Progressive Party (UPP).
Chidoka is acknowledged to have within seven years, reformed the FRSC from a ragtag paramilitary road safety organisation, into an efficient traffic management organisation, leveraging on the application of information and communication technology, to reposition its operations.
As part of his strategies to enhance the operational and rescue capabilities of the FRSC; Osita established a call/data centre, created more accident clinics/help areas across major highways in the country, aggressively pursued capacity-building programmes for FRSC staff both in Nigeria and abroad, and promoted intensive driver training initiatives through driving school standardization programmes and renewal of the Highway Code.
During Chidoka’s tenure of service, the FRSC also improved its patrol and law enforcement function, sustained the enforcement of the law on the use of crash helmets by motorcyclists, and the campaign against overloading of passengers by commercial transport operators. These last two factors before then, had contributed prominently to road fatalities.
With these and several other initiatives, Chidoka made significant impacts on the nation’s highways, achieving a 35 per cent reduction in road traffic accidents countrywide. He attracted global partnership towards improving the nation’s road safety, particularly through the launch of the United Nations’ Decade of Action on Road Safety in Nigeria, as well as support from the World Bank.
In February 2011, in a bid to develop a new database on driver’s license that would conform to international standards, the agency upgraded all categories of driver’s license issued by authorities across the country. The development of the database drastically reduced the inundation of fake drivers’ license in circulation, and restored sanity to the system.
The Nigerian vehicle registration system was also cleaned up, helping reduce auto theft by making it hard to re-register stolen cars. Chidoka centralized the system, eliminating fake license plates from the system, and restoring integrity and sanity to a hitherto compromised process.
Chidoka was also recognised as a hands-on leader. He calls on the people of Anambra State to join hands with him to build a new Anambra State where smart work would make poverty an alien by voting for the United Progressive Party, UPP on November 18th, 2017.
Look for the “Isi Agwu”, the face of the Tiger.
He is the UPP flagbearer in the gubernatorial election in Anambra State on Nov. 18, 2017
