A former presidential aspirant on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Charles Okwudili Ugwu, has called for massive support for Barrister Nyesom Wike in his “transformative mission” as the new FCT Minister, saying the immediate past Rivers State Governor needs such support to enable him leverage his ‘historic’ appointment by President Bola Tinubu to bring his ‘prodigious’ work ethic in Rivers to bear on the discharge of his duties as Minister of the FCT, “for the good of all Nigerians.”

In a statement titled ‘Let Wike breathe’, which he personally signed and released to the media on Monday, Ugwu, an Abuja-based lawyer and businessman, said that given the exemplary development strides witnessed in Rivers under Wike, President Tinubu couldn’t have made a better choice in picking the former Governor to reenact his Rivers miracle in Abuja, which, according to the Enugu-born politician and developer, needs a man with the courage and convictions of Wike to maintain its existing social infrastructure and build new ones within the shortest possible time.

“Abuja needs a man like His Excellency, Barrister Nyesom Wike, who is courageous enough to walk his talk, to run its affairs at this point in time,” Ugwu declared, insisting that Wike needs the support of Nigerians to enable him focus on his work and reenact in Abuja his development miracle in Rivers, not the name-calling that seems to be the case now.

“FCT needs a man like Wike to maintain its decaying social infrastructure as well as add new ones so that wherever citizens live within the FCT, they will enjoy as much quality infrastructure as in the city centre.”

On the alleged distortion of the Abuja Master Plan by developers, which the Minister has openly warned he will not allow to continue without a robust response from government, Ugwu maintained that the distortion could be easily seen even by untrained eyes, adding that Wike was right to warn of the impending demolition of any structure erected in violation of the master-plan, irrespective of who owns it.

According to him, all over the world, people build according to master plans, especially according to city master-plans, and Nigeria should not be an exception.

“Cities, towns, others are planned and built according to such plans so that people will not only enjoy the beauty of such planned cities and or towns, even countries as a whole, but also live in safety,” he observed.

“We are all witnesses to how floods, for instance, constantly ravage our cities and rural communities. This is in most part due to the haphazard erection of buildings in our cities, a lot of them blocking drainages. This must not be allowed to happen not only in Abuja but also in any other part of the country.

“People must be disciplined enough to do due diligence on lands they want to buy so they don’t get duped by unscrupulous speculators who dump illegal property on them only for them to build and see their property destroyed. If you do not follow the city’s master-plan and build haphazardly, why would your property not be demolished?”

He took umbrage at people throwing brickbats at Wike for sounding a note of warning on illegal structures, describing such vituperations as unfair and stemming from “undue partisanship which should have been put aside after the elections.”

“Politics apart, it is time for all of us to join hands to rebuild our nation thoroughly battered under the immediate past federal administration,” Ugwu emphasized.

“Unfortunately, people seem to be still hurting from the defeat of their principal in Rivers and elsewhere in the past election and are still taking it out on Wike for his role in such defeat; people just haven’t learnt to let go so that we can all work together as a people move the country forward,” Ugwu, who is also the Onowu (traditional prime minister) of Igugu in Udenu LGA of Enugu State, remonstrated.

“I am referring to statements credited to one of the spokesmen of our presidential candidate in the February 25, 2023 election, and a former presidential aspirant like myself. I think they were wrong in the positions they took in so far as they made those statements on the basis of politics.

“What Wike is saying – and I agree with him – is that this is the time to join hands to develop Nigeria, not continue to play the politics of an election that has since come and gone. We must move forward. We must let Wike be so that, for the good of all of us, he can concentrate on the assignment that the president has given him to do.”

On the reported protest by some Muslim groups against Wike’s appointment, which they contended contravened an unwritten rule that only Muslims must be appointed the FCT Minister, Ugwu, a commercial lawyer and developer, said the position of the Muslim groups did not tally with the reality of Nigeria as a federal republic governed in accordance with its constitution.

Reminding that that same constitution gives the president the power to appoint anyone he so pleases as minister of the FCT or that of any other Ministry for that matter, as long as the person so appointed is a fit and proper person, Ugwu declared: “I think the most important consideration should be the competence of the person so appointed, not his faith, ethnic group or State of origin and, in the consideration of most Nigerians, I believe, Wike is more than qualified and competent to hold the position of the Minister of the FCT.”

“Indeed, I must commend President Tinubu for breaking with what had become a norm, and appointing a non-Muslim and a non-northerner as FCT Minister, if only to remind us that Nigeria is still one country where citizens, irrespective of their States of origin, religion or creed, enjoy equal rights and obligations within the territory of Nigeria,” he stressed.

“I recall that not since Mark Okoye as Minister of State for the FCT in 1979 has any other Southerner served as the FCT Minister until Tinubu took the initiative to break with the practice whereby former presidents appointed only northern Muslims as FCT Ministers.”

The former presidential aspirant, who is a major PDP stakeholder in the South East, urged Barrister Wike not to be distracted by the negative comments of “closet politicians” but to focus on the job at hand, so that he can creditably deliver on the assignment given to him by President Tinubu as the first non-Muslim substantive Minister of the FCT.

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